Social media marketing is meant to be easy right? Access to billions of potential customers, free to use, easy (ish) to use and a million and one online gurus telling you how fast and easy it is to make money online. But it might not feel fast and easy for you?
If you don’t know what to say or how to say and you don’t figure it out, you’re going to struggle to market your business effectively. And ultimately you won’t achieve the level of success that deep down you aspire to.
The principles of marketing are simple; the right message for the right person in the right place at the right time. But doing the marketing? That’s far from simple. In this blog I’m going to give you a few pointers so that you know where to start with your messaging.
How to overcome the “not knowing what to say” problem of social media marketing
I work with women in services based businesses. Mostly coaches, consultants and freelancers who struggle to get their content right. The most common struggle I see is not knowing what to say and what to talk about. Career coaches, executive coaches and mindset coaches in particular struggle with this. They work with so many different clients on so many different issues they often don’t know what the best thing to talk about is.
Who is your ideal client?
You will struggle to write content that converts if you don’t first have a clear idea of who you are trying to appeal to. Understanding your ideal client doesn’t mean knowing what magazines or papers they read, where they do their grocery shopping or where they go on holiday. Of course that information is relevant if you sell magazines or holidays but it doesn’t help you write content. Understanding your ideal client means understanding what their problems are, how those problems are impacting their life, health, business and relationships, knowing what difference getting a solution to that problem will make and what happens if they don’t solve it.
It’s important to have your basic demographic information about your ideal client, gender, location, preferences etc but it’s the psychological factors that will help you refine your offers and make them appealing to your target market. It will help you create content that connects to your audience on an emotional level. What is your ideal client’s underlying desire and what is their buying trigger?
Spend some time working on understanding who you are trying to target and your content will be more relevant, more engaging and will convert at a higher level.
Listen and make notes
People are telling you all day every day what they want, you just have to listen. Every time I get on a call with a client I make notes. I listen to the words they are using to describe their problem. Then I create content using those exact words. I don’t paraphrase, I don’t write what I think they said or what they should have said I use their words exactly. Because those words are the ones that brought them to my business, it’s how they and all my other dream clients are describing their problems.
People are complaining loudly about their problems all over the internet every single day. All you need to do is pay attention and make notes. If I wanted to find post ideas on social media I could write “social media marketing” “blogging” or “emailing” into the search bar of a group or platform and it would return thousands of results. Half an hour of scrolling would give me plenty of ideas to get started. Word of warning here though – make sure you’re looking in the right places and where your ideal clients are hanging out. For example business networking or business growth groups for women are an ideal stomping ground for me. Mum’s and dog owner groups are not generally packed with my target market.
Ask your audience
The best research tool available isn’t an app, it’s your audience. Ask the people in your audience what they are struggling with. Ask them what it would be most useful for you to share? Ask them what they think is stopping them from progressing or what the biggest in their ass is right now. Listening tools like Answer the Public are brilliant for SEO research but the listening tools stuck to the side of your head are the most powerful and the easiest to use.
Choose one problem and just start
“My clients come to me with lots of different problems. I don’t know which one is the best thing to talk about”
If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard this I could buy an Omaze house. I get it, it’s overwhelming and it’s the same for me. There are so many things that I could talk about, how do I know which is the right one to talk about? I choose and I start. The only way to figure out what messaging works and what doesn’t is by testing it on your audience. Choose a topic and talk about it for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Then choose another one and talk about that. Pay attention and notice what people respond to. If people start reaching out to you, ask them where they found you and what prompted them to get in touch.
Increase your chances of success
Unfortunately there is no silver bullet in marketing. A lot of successful marketing happens by accident and after a lot of failure and disappointing campaigns. Try not to take a deafening silence on social media personally. Some messages will land and some will crash and burn. It’s the nature of the beast. What sets you apart and increases your chances of success is not your ability to get your marketing right the first time, it’s your ability to dust yourself off, learn lessons, measure your results, adapt and keep going.
What next?
My name is Clair and I help coaches, consultants and service based businesses write their marketing content. I work with you to develop your practical content writing skills, a content strategy and overcome the barriers which are making it hard for you to show up and promote your business. Or if you don’t have the time, energy or capacity to learn I can do it all for you instead.
I’m a copywriter and a Master NLP coach providing training and mentoring around social media marketing, email marketing, web copy and blogging. If you need help with your messaging or content strategy you can get in touch at clair@upwriteonline.co.uk or book a free discovery call here.