How to fall in like with social
In our latest blog, we chatted with Stephanie, the mighty social media manager at @artcaninstitute, about how she learned to love social. Now, while you don’t HAVE to love it, if you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur, social media is a must. It’s not only a way to sell but a way to show who you and your brand are, which is an expectation of your clients and customers.
So where do you even start!? If you get to reading too many social media blogs or start following too many pieces of advice at once, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. We say, start small, start planning, and just...start!
Photo by Bruna Rico Photography // @brunarico
Find your space
Okay, before you start running scared, let’s get this one out of the way: you don’t have to start making TikTok videos! You CAN if you want, and depending on your business… you MIGHT have to, but we always recommend starting slow and steady with something you’ll be able to keep up with.
What we mean by that is, slow down, think about who your audience is… now think about where you think they hang out online. There are a lot of great resources out there to let you know the demographics of all the social media platforms. One that comes to mind would be a podcast featuring your two favourite social media co-founders. Once you know which platforms you’ll be hanging out on, it’s time to start planning.
Turn your “what do I do now?!” into a plan
Make a calendar! It can be the hardest thing to sit down and think about how you would present your own business online. But it’s as important as any other task you do each day. Decide what you want to put out there - the easiest way to do this is to decide on three to four buckets of content that you want to share, and then breaking these into posts per month. (So if you’re posting every other day, that means only four posts per bucket! You can do it!) Then decide what kind of content you want - do you need to have a photoshoot? Repost images from other accounts (don’t forget to credit!)? Get on Canva and start creating some graphics? Turns out you’re actually your brand’s number one expert, and maybe even a secret design genius (um, hi, thank you Canva!) - time to start plotting out your content calendar!
Schedule it!
Don’t kid yourself, you won’t remember to post the content on the right days at the right time, with the right hashtags… Use platforms like Sprout Social, Later, Hootsuite, or FB’s Creator Studio and let those posts appear on your feed like magic. Even if things get moved around or new updates come up throughout the month, at least you’ll know you have content ready, or content to start the next month!
Engage with your audience
While the posts hop onto the platforms, make sure you’re getting into the conversation in your comments and DMs, and start conversations with others! Go through your feed and you will be amazed at how much you can learn - give some of that love back by liking, commenting and sharing others’ posts.
Finished this blog and still getting chills at the thought of starting on your own social accounts? Follow @cleo.social to keep up with announcements on a new way to learn how to manage it all coming in 2022...