Start with the pain point and go from there

Often, I talk to business owners who find the whole world of social media marketing quite overwhelming.
 
The sheer thought of creating content, writing copy that is interesting, and engaging with an online audience is something that makes the head spin. It’s a scary task at the best of times for most business owners.
 
And the most common thing I hear from business owners is “I'm an X, and that's not exciting, my day to day is boring, I have nothing exciting to post about”.

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There is no doubt about it that business owners know they need to be playing the game and marketing their products or services online, and many may not have the resources to outsource.
 
Managing your own social media is achievable in business.

Here are my tips for posting engaging content that aligns with who you are as a brand.
 
Start with the pain point and go from there.
 
We all get into business to solve a problem. If you are a service-based business, you are solving a problem of time or expertise.
 
For example, if you are a great bookkeeper who saves people time by doing all those things that many business owners hate, like raising invoices and chasing outstanding payments, then that is the pain point you are solving.
 
Think about the reason people hire you, need your services, or buy your product. Relate this to the problem you solve and create your content strategy around this.
 
For example, if you are service-based, you can get customer testimonials to use as content. Talk to your audience directly about how you can make their lives easier, fix a problem for them etc.
 
Great images are key to social media marketing.
 
Content is king in the world of digital marketing and having a bank of great images to draw upon for content marketing is key to success. It’s so much easier to map out content in advance if you have a store of great images to draw on.
 
So, it might be time to invest in some professional images. If you are in a service-based business, you will want images of you doing your work and pictures of your staff to build trust with your online audience.
 
If you are product-based business, you will want to have on hand a professional portfolio of product images both for your website and content marketing.
 
These can and should evolve over time, but you will be much better able to conquer the beast that is social media if you have some great imagery from the get-go.
 
Start small and build from there.
 
If you are a small business, managing your social media can be daunting, and you might wonder where to start. You might look at what everyone else is doing, get overwhelmed and stop before you’ve even begun.
 
Our advice is to start small with what is manageable for you. You are better off to post twice a week to one or two platforms with great content that engages with your audience, than try to do too much at once.
 
Just like starting any routine, if it’s not manageable from the get-go, you are going to give up pretty quickly. Pick what works for you and be consistent with your plan.
 
Planning is key to success.
 
The best way to avoid digital marketing getting the best of you is to plan in advance.
 
We recommend planning a month's worth of content in one sitting (daunting I know), but if you are posting two times a week to two different platforms, it’s essentially only eight pieces of content. 
 
Print off a calendar, put in key events coming up, specials, sales, etc and go from there. Once you have a plan it’s a lot easier to execute on it.
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Write down the day in the calendar the content will go out, what image you will use, and what you want to say in a summary. This will make it a whole lot easier to manage your social media in-house.
 
Engage.
 
Now that you know what problem your business solves for others, go out and seek customers who fit into your target demographic. There is no more natural place to do this than on Instagram.
 
You can search hashtags that are relevant to your business, location, industry, and start following likeminded people who might benefit from your business expertise.
 
Talk to them, ask questions of your audience, and spend 15 mins a day (or every second day) if you can just reaching out to your audience.
 
I hope these tips help you get started. Once it becomes routine, you will get the hang of it, promise.
 
Kate Bickford