The Best Social Media Strategy for Business

Today I want to give you some steps to take now with growing your social media so that you can drive people to your blog or business.

Table of Contents

1. Be consistent across platforms

That means try your best to have the same name across platforms or at least the majority of them. You will either find me by my blog name A Fresh Start or my actual name Karissa Ancell on everything. That makes it much easier for your followers on one platform to find you on another. I could probably make the switch and get everything the same on everything. I think it works for now though to have both. I use to have a different one for Instagram and switched it to my name so it was easier to find. Three different names across platforms is too many.

Also keep the same photo on all platforms. Most of your followers don't know you in person they know you by that photo. So having the same photo makes it easier to recognize you. so get out there and make your platforms easier to find with consistent names and photos.

Also when a new platform springs up and starts getting popular. Even if you don't think you will use it head over and save your name before it gets popular. That's why I joined Periscope. I didn't know if I'd use it but I wanted to have my name. Especially if you have a common or popular name.

2. You can't be everywhere, all the time

I've mentioned this before but it is important enough to say again. You can't do all the platforms at 100%. There are too many and not enough hours in the day and no one can do it all.

So what should you do? What works for you and your blog or business. To do this look at what platforms are bringing you traffic. Those are what's working for you. So start there and take the top one or two and focus your attention there to start with. Build up the number of people following you on that platform. Engage on there. Get noticed and grow those top platforms.

After that take on one new platform at a time and work on that. I personally focus most of m time on Pinterest because it is my number one referrer and I like it the best. Then I spend some time on stumbleupon and Instagram and very little anywhere else. I will publish new posts and share stuff to Twitter and Facebook but they don't bring me a lot of traffic so I don't spend much time there.

3. Try to not fall in the comparison trap

I think this goes along with number two a little bit. One of the biggest things we compare is our numbers. The fact is that unless your “famous” in the blog world your not going to have a million followers everywhere. So don't look at some other bloggers great numbers and get discouraged.

I'm working on my Pinterest following. I've got good numbers there and have spent 2015 growing that number but if you look at my numbers everywhere this year hasn't brought much growth because I'm not focused there. I only compare my numbers to myself. I record them monthly and try to get them to go up each month. It's better to see my own growth on a monthly basis then feel bad that I don't have as many as another blogger over there.

4. Be consistent with your brand

For me this means be representative of your blog or business in all social media posts regardless of the platform. The posts should basically sound like you and what you want your brand to represent.

My blog is geared more towards bloggers and people with families so I try to remember that with what I share. I post more family friendly and non offensive things to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Sometimes I will see or read something I enjoy but the language is questionable so I choose not to share it on my social media. I have to remember I'm creating a brand and although not everyone will like everything I post. There needs to be guidelines I follow when deciding what to post.

5. Share not only your own posts. Focus on at least 70/30

If you only ever share your own blog posts and things about you on social media you might want to change that. You want to share other bloggers work or interesting articles on the topics you blog about, or that you think your readers will find interesting.

Not only will other bloggers appreciate having their work shared and some will hopefully return the favor. This helps build good relationships with other bloggers and can lead to more opportunities in the future.

This can also build you as an authority to your followers. If you are a food blogger and you constantly share amazing recipes from other sources on your social media. Your followers will begin to see you as a trusted expert in food. This will make them more likely to head over to your blog and check out what you've got in your recipe posts.

I aim for at least 70% of what I share to be other people and 30% to be mine. On most platforms. On Instagram it's mostly just my stuff and occasionally other people's work. In a future post I will share how I make this easier and not as much work for me.

I hope these five tips were helpful and informative to you. I think if you start applying them to your own social media you will see some good changes and growth. I will keep posting on Social Media throughout the month.