Social Media Strategy for Small Businesses, Entrepreneurs & Realtors

Are you posting daily, but not seeing any results? This is very typical unless you take all the steps necessary to build a strong social media marketing strategy. This is not an overnight solution to your declining sales. This is a strategy for long term growth.

If you are marketing the way you marketed 10 or 20 years ago by just promoting your product or company, you are not going to see the results you want. What you want to do is help your potential clients. First, you need to know what their problem is. For example, if you are a travel advisor are your clients stressed out and need to relax? Or if you are a realtor, do your clients need to sell their homes to retire? If you own a coffee shop do your clients need a friendly neighborhood spot to socialize?

Next you need to know who your clients really are. The smaller the niche the better. Perhaps the travel advisor is targeting stressed out busy professionals. The realtor might want to target empty nesters who are downsizing. The coffee shop owner could target Moms with young kids.

Now you are ready to start adding value to your clients by giving them awesome information. You can be entertaining, useful, or convenient. There are many ways you can help your potential customers. Imagine providing how to make the perfect cup of coffee or information on social gatherings for Moms. Or top 10 beaches for Spring Break. How to save money when selling your home?

Provide a checklist

What you want to do is help your customers on social media. This means providing information, checklists, articles, and videos. Help them with their problems. Maybe 1 out of every 10 posts can be about you or your company. The rest should be about helping the customer.

To select the right platform or platforms think about where your potential customers are hanging out. If they are young you might do best on Instagram. If they are business professionals, try Linkedin. If they are interior designers you might try Pinterest. Also I would recommend using the platform with the least head to head competition. If every real estate agent is on Instagram, you might try You Tube. You want to stand out and be helpful.

One more thing you would want to do on social is help people get to know you as a person or brand. What do you enjoy doing, what is your mission, what are you passionate about? Some of your posts can help customers connect with you as a friend would. For example, the coffee shop might post about neighborhood activities, recipes you like, charities you support and what your first job was. The travel advisor might recommend books to read, favorite websites for selecting restaurants, or apps to use.

Now you just have to keep giving them great information and connecting with them consistently. Think of this like dating. You don’t ask someone to get married the first time you meet them. You have to get to know each other. People buy from companies and people they know, like and trust. So what you are doing is building rapport. I would also pick just a few platforms to get started. Once you get the hang of it or if you want to use an automatic scheduler you can do several platforms. In a perfect world you would post differently on each, but you may not have the man power for that. If you do I would post great photos on Instagram and Pinterest, more business info on Linkedin and Twitter, videos on YouTube. and Facebook.

Start today and remember don’t expect to see results tomorrow. This is a long term courtship that will result in customers for life.