Most peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly solo­pre­neurs, are play­ing the social media game com­plete­ly wrong. Their pro­file is lit­tered with a strange mix of per­son­al life and busi­ness pro­mo­tions, which ends up con­fus­ing both their clients and their real friends. Fur­ther­more, keep­ing up a con­stant stream of con­tent to post flat-out burns most peo­ple out.

Soon, three no good options emerge:

  1. Become a social media addict who con­stant­ly posts new things on all platforms.
  2. Aban­don social media and the poten­tial busi­ness growth that could come with it.
  3. Don’t post often and reap very lit­tle ben­e­fits, while still some­how seem­ing to waste a lot of time and ener­gy keep­ing up this social media game.

What if there was a bet­ter way? I’ve found the key to all things is to sim­pli­fy your approach. You don’t need 40 prod­ucts to begin. Just one that’s a rock­star. You don’t need to post con­tent about 50 dif­fer­ent mes­sages. You don’t need to be on your social accounts 24/7. Yes, you real­ly can take some time off.

It is not that we have too lit­tle time to do all the things we need to do , it is that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have. — Gary Keller

Shar­ing your mes­sage, with focus and pow­er, on social media doesn’t need to be com­pli­cat­ed. You just need to be strate­gic, dis­ci­plined, and focused.

You can’t become a mas­ter at every­thing all at once. After all, you’re not Super­man. Be strate­gic and do few­er things with more focus. What one break­through would blow up your business?

What medi­um are you most pow­er­ful in? Is it blog­ging, pod­cast­ing, Insta­gram, or some­thing else? For exam­ple, I place 90% of my focus on writ­ing. Writ­ing is one of the most pow­er­ful ways I com­mu­ni­cate my mes­sage and it’s the com­mu­ni­ca­tion method that I’m best at. When­ev­er I use oth­er medi­ums (social media posts, pod­casts, videos), most of the time it’s so I can bounce around ideas for my blog. I don’t just get on every social plat­form sim­ply to cre­ate dif­fer­ent audi­ences about dif­fer­ent things in dif­fer­ent places. I have a core cen­tral hub and I redi­rect peo­ple to that. Where can you serve your audi­ence in the best way? Pick that plat­form and mas­ter it. All the mag­ic hap­pens in one core place. Every­thing else is just gravy. Don’t try and mas­ter every sin­gle plat­form at once. And cer­tain­ly don’t try to mas­ter every type of con­tent at once.

Pick one. Mas­ter it. Make mon­ey from it. Then try oth­er stuff.

Now that you’ve decid­ed on your core com­mu­ni­ca­tion method, host this on one of your social pro­files or on your web­site. This is where peo­ple come to hang out and be served by you at a high­er lev­el (busi­ness prod­ucts) if they’re hun­gry for more. Now, what’s your strat­e­gy for oth­er plat­forms? Do you want to cre­ate dif­fer­ent audi­ences on dif­fer­ent plat­forms talk­ing about dif­fer­ent things expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fer­ent mes­sages and dif­fer­ent ideas? No! That cre­ates an enor­mous amount of incon­gru­en­cy, con­fus­es you, con­fus­es your audi­ence, and prompts the all-too-com­mon con­tent cre­ation night­mare. Your strat­e­gy on all plat­forms, except the core hub, is to gen­tly redi­rect peo­ple to where you want them to go. Post intrigu­ing and valu­able things on each plat­form and fun­nel your audi­ence to the place where you can serve them at the high­est lev­el (i.e, your core hub).

Follow the Rules When You Do

Although most peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly under­stand the redi­rect strat­e­gy and start using it, they also start to become lazy. Post­ing square pic­tures on LinkedIn that you clear­ly cre­at­ed for Insta­gram. Post­ing every­thing only to Twit­ter and then screen­shot­ting tweets and post­ing the pic­tures to oth­er places. Not going to work. You might get some trac­tion, but it’ll be hard to rise through the ranks and get great rat­ings if you’re just copy­ing and past­ing every­thing. Not all con­tent is designed for all plat­forms. Stu­pid as it may be, since all social media plat­forms are (essen­tial­ly) the same, you still have to fol­low the rules. There are cer­tain rules and cer­tain things peo­ple expect on each plat­form. So, you can’t go spam­ming your core hub on each one. Peo­ple will know. You have to be strate­gic. What do you think I’m going to do with this arti­cle? Just post pic­tures and links of it every­where? No. I’m going to pull per­haps the three most intrigu­ing quotes, make them into high-qual­i­ty Insta­gram pho­tos with beau­ti­ful back­drops, and then sub­tly include the link if they want to read the rest. If you clicked through to this arti­cle from one of my social pro­files, pay atten­tion to how it was struc­tured. I’ll apply a sim­i­lar method to each oth­er plat­form that I post this on.

Be very strate­gic. Make stuff that gets atten­tion but doesn’t turn your audi­ence off.

So many new info­pre­neurs and new busi­ness­es try and set up their pro­files with a whole bunch of fan­cy (and expen­sive) stuff that’s for the most part unnec­es­sary. Yes, your pro­files should look nice, but you should also be authen­tic. You’re a real human and your cus­tomers want to be treat­ed well by anoth­er real human. They don’t care for your big fan­cy stats and num­ber or the Lam­bo ads … Or how cool you are. You don’t need to over­in­flate or pre­tend your audi­ence is big­ger than it is. Just serve the peo­ple who are there and more will come. As I was lis­ten­ing to an inter­view with Pat Fly­nn over his new book, Super­fans, he said the eas­i­est and fastest way to build more con­nect­ed and more loy­al fans for your social media is to sim­ply pri­vate­ly mes­sage some of your fol­low­ers each day to show that you real­ly care and want to help them. Obvi­ous­ly, if you have 100,000 fol­low­ers you can’t do this with every­body, but you can start a few con­ver­sa­tions each day, and word will spread quick­ly about how awe­some you are at being per­son­al and engaged. If you’re small, you can do this with lit­er­al­ly every­one who’s fol­low­ing you, today! I did this with one of my accounts and I was able to help peo­ple. To start a con­ver­sa­tion. To refine the con­tent that I pro­duce to be more ben­e­fi­cial. And it was so, so, easy.

Don’t wor­ry about the fact that you’re not big yet. Most peo­ple aren’t. It will come even­tu­al­ly if you’re seri­ous about help­ing your audi­ence and spread­ing the message.

Peo­ple don’t buy for log­i­cal rea­sons. They buy for emo­tion­al rea­sons. — Zig Ziglar

Some peo­ple I talk to have this false belief that sell­ing is sim­ply about mon­ey. It reminds me of John Reese, a leg­endary inter­net mar­keter back in the day, who said some­thing to the effect: “you have to sell the free stuff just as much as you do the paid stuff.” Your con­tent and your ideas are use­less if you can’t get their atten­tion. Why did you read this arti­cle? Did the head­line draw you in? Am I glad I put in the work to sell you on why you need to read this? Are you glad that you bought it? Sell­ing is the most gen­er­ous thing you could do if your prospect tru­ly needs what you have and they’re in pain. You’re help­ing them. It’s just a skill you need to mas­ter. Let go of all your false beliefs that you have to put on this big show and mas­ter 500 dif­fer­ent clos­es so you can nin­ja-stop objec­tions. Your tac­ti­cal knowl­edge will nev­er pull through if your mind­set isn’t in the right place. Embrace sell­ing your mes­sage because peo­ple need it. Own it. Tru­ly own what you do. Shar­ing your ideas is sell­ing. Get­ting peo­ple to share your posts is sell­ing. Every word, image, audio file, and video you post is sell­ing some­one some­thing. Every­thing is sell­ing. Every­thing. If you have any moral objec­tions, appre­hen­sions, or fears about sell­ing, then you’re not going to suc­ceed in this game. Sell­ing is just com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It’s ignit­ing the fire under oth­ers to get them as excit­ed about your ideas as you are. It’s help­ing them to change. To get the same results that have worked for you and for your oth­er clients. Sell­ing comes in the form of time, emo­tion, ener­gy, effort, action, and mon­ey. It’s a lot big­ger than most peo­ple real­ize. Start get­ting your audi­ence to com­mit. Get them to engage in ways that you know will ulti­mate­ly help them way more than you. Sell­ing is solv­ing their prob­lems. That’s why you got into social media for your busi­ness in the first place.

You are a sales­per­son. And proud of it.

Understand Who

No, your mes­sage doesn’t apply to every­one. You have to accept that. Regard­less of how valu­able your mes­sage is, regard­less of how much you’re try­ing to give it to them, some peo­ple just won’t bite. Jesus, the great­est mes­sen­ger of all, was giv­ing away lit­er­al­ly a price­less mes­sage (eter­nal life and ever­last­ing hap­pi­ness), didn’t charge any mon­ey for it, and yet was still reject­ed and scorned by many peo­ple, who didn’t want to change them­selves. You may come across peo­ple who need your mes­sage and still refuse to accept it. Be there if they come round. They may be still learn­ing and grow­ing. Be patient. If they reject your mes­sage, wish them the best and move on. You have to real­ize that peo­ple still have the deci­sion whether or not to improve them­selves or their sit­u­a­tion by doing busi­ness with you. If they want to stay stuck with their cur­rent prob­lem because they’re scared to change, sad­ly that means, that you have to let them make that deci­sion. After you’ve tried every­thing to help some­one, you move on. When peo­ple vis­it your social pro­files and even have con­ver­sa­tions with you, and then they decide that your ser­vice just isn’t right for them, don’t try and force a bad fit. Just let them stay if they want to. The game of social media is vol­un­tary. You put ideas out because you care. If oth­ers care, they will chime in. If not, they find some­body else. Nobody is ever, at any time, oblig­at­ed to lis­ten to you. So when they give you atten­tion, respect that. And when the wrong peo­ple move on, it gives you a chance to focus on who the right peo­ple are. You’re con­stant­ly hon­ing in your mes­sage. Who, real­ly, do you want to serve? Who do you think you could get a result for? What does the dream busi­ness look like? When you get inside the head of who you real­ly want to serve, not just who you could serve, then every­thing changes. You play big­ger. You post con­tent that res­onates. You cre­ate a pow­er­ful conversation.

Refine your mes­sage and don’t be afraid to let the wrong peo­ple move on.

Social media is inher­ent­ly designed to be fick­le, to cause dis­trac­tion, and to be a waste of time.The cre­ators of these plat­forms want you to spend and waste sev­er­al hours a day on them so they can bet­ter under­stand your data and show you more ads and make more mon­ey. They want to keep peo­ple dis­tract­ed. Hence, when you, as a busi­ness own­er, start approach­ing this game with the goal of being very delib­er­ate, very focused, and very strate­gic, you’re going to get pit­falls in your way. Just remem­ber, you don’t con­sume, you cre­ate. You are here for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Own that. Don’t sim­ply down­load social media apps because it might be use­ful. Tru­ly eval­u­ate your pros and cons. And to be com­plete­ly hon­est, social media busi­ness growth is sim­ply not for every­one. It’s a deci­sion you need to strate­gi­cal­ly eval­u­ate, not sim­ply a band­wag­on to jump on because every­one else is doing it.

Remem­ber your goals. Authen­ti­cal­ly con­nect. And go for it.

SOURCE: Bet­ter­Mar­ket­ing