The social media offers are so tempting! Offers like “I will promote Your Website, Blog or Anything 20,000,000 Members On Facebook Twitter for $5″ or ” I will add 32000 Twitter or Instagram followers or 6000 Facebook likes for $5″ — seem too good to be true and they are!
You do not want to do this!
- More than likely, these are fake accounts, bots, and they are overseas.
- They are not your target market.
- They are not going to like, share or comment on your posts.
- Your “Insights” or demographics will be worthless.
- The networks regularly purge fake accounts and bots so you’re wasting your money.
Here’s what I mean…
At first, their 25,000 likes look impressive. Actually, to me, it was not natural. For a local business, 2000 likes would be great. The fact that over 60% are men between the ages of 18 and 34 looks cool, except the target market for this particular business is women over 40! Also, these men were mostly in Bangladesh, Turkey, and Pakistan! Again, not too helpful when it comes to a local business.
The sad part is that this particular company was paying over $1000 a month to an unscrupulous social media service provider.
A good social media campaign is combined with content marketing with a specific target market in mind. You must clearly identify a specific target market and put together strategic and tactical marketing plans combining blogging, posting, and monitoring social media.
It takes time! The 3 Ps: Persistence, Perseverance and Patience
Persistence – Be consistent and persistent in your message. Research, study and learn how each network works.
Perseverance – Keep it going. Use free tools like Sendible (affiliate link) to schedule posts to go in the future. Use Dlvr.it to automate posting content from your blog, as well as trusted sources. But don’t overdo it. That’s where strategy comes in.
Patience – it’s not going to happen overnight! The more time you devote to your content and social media marketing the faster you’ll meet your goals and get the results you want. Expect that it will take at least one month of diligent work to grow a decent following, 2 to 3 months to start seeing increased traffic to your website, and 6 months for it really to catch on.
What’s a “decent social media following“?
These should be your social media growth goals:
X (formerly Twitter) – 100 Followers. Then you can use Audiense to get analytics & demographics on your followers like what time zone they’re in and what’s the best time to tweet. Note: you can no longer get free analytics on X. It’s just for pro users and advertisers.
Facebook – 100 Likes. Then you’ll have access to the precious Insights which tell you a lot about who your fans are: gender, age, location, and which posts they liked, shared, or commented on.
LinkedIn – at least 50 Connections, as well as 25 followers on your business page.
Instagram – 100 Followers. Post pictures and videos several times a day.
Have you got your plan in place, or are you totally lost? I can help. Click here to schedule a free 15-minute phone consult and review of your marketing efforts.
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