We all know that business. You know...the one that tries to sell you something with every single post. Every day is a new special. A new reason to buy something from them. OMG.
We all hate them.
Social Media Marketing is more than this. Remember that first word in this marketing tactic? Yeah...SOCIAL. As in being social, engaging with your fans, being part of the community. So many businesses get caught up in the last word. MARKETING. Yes, you and your business are probably on social media for marketing purposes, but it's more than that.
Want to know the easiest way to lose a follower or to get tuned out by your followers? Try to sell them with every post.
Our 80/20 Rule will help you avoid losing followers, help you actually gain followers, and in the end your sales posts will be much more successful. Let's take a look...
When creating social media content, it's important to take many things into account:
- Who is this content for?
- Are they going to engage with it?
- Why do they care?
- Do I care?
Far too much social media content goes out without any sort of forethought. Take the time to understand and answer these questions before sending out that tweet. Your followers will thank you.
Now to the 80/20 Rule:
We've all heard of the Pareto Principle - that 20% of input is responsible for 80% of the results obtained, but we're going in a different direction. For social media content creation, we recommend that 80% of your content be engagement focused. These can be posts about recent news, quizzes, videos, fun info, goofy pictures, memes, gifs, and even fun pictures of you and your team. The other 20% of your content should be sales focused. These would be posts about sales, specials, products, services, benefits, warranties, etc.
Like we talked about earlier, social media is meant to be a community. It's meant to be SOCIAL. Think about it - what content gets seen the most? What content goes (buzzword alert!) viral? Have you ever seen a sales post go viral? NEVER.
The companies that are most successful on social media are the companies that understand that their job is to entertain and engage before selling on social media. The engagement (likes, shares, comments, retweets, reactions, etc.) will help more and more people see your content and your brand.
Remember that company that had all those great sales posts every day? NOPE. That's not a thing. No one remembers those companies.
I think that we all understand that social media is not a fad and is no longer just a toy that the kids are playing with. Social media is a viable (and indespensible) marketing tactic that nearly every business should be utilizing, but the key is to use it following the 80/20 Rule.
Are you not sure if you're getting the most out of your social media marketing? Are you taking full advantage of what each network has to offer? Are you making mistakes that you don't even know you're making? We've all had those fears.
