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3 Social Media Myths

Social media is a powerful technology but it’s also often misunderstood. In its simplest form, social media is a way to connect with old friends from childhood or college and a way to share pieces of your daily life. In its more complex form, social media is a unique way to market your business and products to the world in a fairly short amount of time. While you can take months or years to study the ins and outs of social media and craft corresponding business strategies, there are three common myths about social media that solopreneurs can dispel today.

Myth #1: You must use every single social media platform.

Expanding your reach is certainly a goal for solopreneurs as that generally gets more sales, which should equal increased profit. However, a question to ask before signing up and using every platform is: where is my ideal customer? Using Facebook just because it has over 1 billion users doesn’t mean those 1 billion users will find you and start purchasing. Identify your ideal customer and find out where they hang out. Those are the platforms you should use.

Myth #2: Aim for every post to go viral.

It’s fun to see a post go viral as they are usually entertaining or thought provoking but of the viral campaigns you’ve noticed recently, could you say what company sponsored them? I can’t either. Aim to provide value in your posts mixed in with some of your personality as opposed to aiming for shock or entertainment value. Your ideal customer wants to learn from you so your valuable lesson will be heard and remembered long after the latest viral video fades away.

Myth #3: Having a large number of followers equals increased profits.

It can be an ego boost to see a large number of social media followers but are these followers interacting with you? Are they liking or sharing your posts? Are they leaving comments? If not, then chances are they aren’t your ideal customer and chances are they will never purchase anything from you. Evaluate your own posts; it’s quite possible they’re boring and that’s the reason for no response. Be more creative with your posts and watch for audience interaction. You’re not appealing to everyone; you’re appealing to a small fraction of the world’s population. Pay attention to finding that demographic and the number of engaged audience members will follow, as will the profits.

Feel like you’re wasting valuable time? Write with purpose

Content is quite often considered an online entrepreneur’s primary asset. And content writing on of her key tasks.

It drives traffic and therefore helps make your sales. When done right, provides authority, credibility and gets your target audience to like you and your brand. All of which are buying triggers.

And don’t forget, it also helps you to market your business.

But unfortunately, many new solopreneurs write their content without a purpose.

They may write some great and useful content. But if it doesn’t have a clear objective, it’s missing out on an opportunity.

So ask yourself: what do you want your content to accomplish for you and your business?

It doesn’t matter if your content is short like a blog post or an article. Or a larger content piece like a report or e-book. It really needs a specific purpose.

Possible Content Purposes

drive traffic to your website
increase SEO ranking
drive traffic to a sales page for your offering
generate affiliate income
boost your authority and credibility
encourage reader response and comments
capture leads

Occasionally, you may find that your content has more than one purpose.

For example, a report may be designed to collect opt-ins and generate affiliate revenue. Or you may add a link to your sales page on your website.

But if you don’t have an objective for your content, then you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity.

Decision-Making

I have found the best time to decide on the content’s purpose is when you create your content plan. But folks take different approaches so experiment to find what works best for you.

You may plan your content for the coming week, month, quarter, or year. If you aren’t planning your content yet, please start. Content planning will help make the best use of your time.

When you plan your content you’ll choose the keywords and the topic. You’ll also decide when you’ll publish it and where.

It makes sense to integrate your content into your overall marketing strategy. This includes traffic generation, SEO, and other marketing components. This also means that you will give your content a purpose.

Here’s an example:

You plan on launching a new product in three months. Your content during that month leading up to your product launch will ideally support the launch.

You’ll want it to generate interest and excitement about your new product. The purpose of the content is to drive traffic to your opt-in page.

Folks can sign up and receive notification when you launch. They may also receive early bird pricing.

Your content can also raise awareness for the need of your new product. And it can send traffic to your sales page once you launch.

Including your purpose in your content

All of your content needs to have a call to action. If you want to get comments and feedback at the end of a blog post, ask for it. That’s your call to action.

If you want folks to click to your sales page, you need some sort of “I want to learn more” link. Your purpose will be part of your call to action.

Take a look at the content you have planned. Does each piece have a specific purpose?

Do you give a call to action? Is your content part of your overall marketing strategy? If not, make the updates so you can start seeing the benefits.

Which call to action do you find yourself using the most?

Want to be more successful with content?

If you’re an online business owner, you know that content is one of the best tools you have. It can drive a tremendous amount of traffic to your website.

When done correctly, it provides your audience with the value and information they are looking for. It also helps you market your business, products or services.

Nowadays, content is essential for online marketing success. And you can achieve even greater success if you take the time to plan your content.

Content Planning

We all do some sort of planning in our lives. Content planning is the process of deciding what to write and where to publish it.

Questions you ask yourself while planning include:

When & where will you publish the content?
What topics will you write about?
What’s the main objective of the content?
What are the keywords you’ll be using?
How can you repurpose the content in the future?

You’ll also want to decide how far ahead you want to plan your content. Many online business owners take a tiered approach.

They plan large content projects for the entire year. For example, they may publish an ebook every couple of months for a series. They also take a look at their content on a quarterly or monthly level.

If you haven’t started to plan your content yet or are struggling to plan it effectively, try:

Using a calendar that gives you a view of the big picture and you can also write on. A paper desk calendar is a great planning tool. You can write your content ideas in pencil for easy modifications later. Then, if you prefer electronic organization, you can transfer the paper plan to Outlook or e-calendar.

Setting aside time to map out how you’ll integrate your content into your overall marketing strategy. For example, you could decide that in a particular month you’re going to publish five blog posts. You may want to make sure this content ties into any launches or promotions you’re doing in the same time period.

Leaving room for change. The best content plans leave room for inspiration. The greatest ideas often come out of the blue…when you’re brushing your teeth for example.

If don’t allow room to update your content based on newly found inspiration, you risk missing out on a potentially great idea.

Don’t forget to take a look at how you can repurpose your content strategically. It’s not only a great way to get the most return on your time and energy investment, it can help fill content gaps.

When you take the time to plan your content, make sure you’re looking at the big picture and the more detailed picture.

Look ahead and take the entire year into consideration. At the same time, plan your content down to the keywords and topics.

I know you may be thinking about the time commitment. It may take a day or two to plan the year but it’ll save you tons of time later.

Instead of wondering what you’re going to write on each week, you’ll have the answers all worked out and hopefully documented in your content plan.

Best of all, your content will fit with your overall marketing strategy and be an integral part of your business growth plan.

Which do you use: a paper or electronic calendar for content planning?

Feeling overwhelmed? Spending too much valuable time writing?

Content writing for your business is investing in your business. I know you spend a lot of time writing it. You probably also spend a lot of time planning and researching before you even start to write it.

And just like any other investment, it makes sense to make the most of your investment. Repurposing and reusing your content is a great way to maximize your return.

Build

Gather articles and blog posts that go together nicely and create a report. Adding an introduction and a conclusion will help tie the ideas together.

You may also find adding some transitions and editing the content will help with a cohesive message.

And to monetize the content, consider adding affiliate and promotional links where appropriate.

Break

Try the opposite of building: if you have existing reports, break them into articles and blog posts. You have a few options here.

Pull apart segments of the report to create articles. Add an introduction and conclusion paragraph and you’re just about ready to publish. Or you can even create lists and other information-packed articles.

Here’s an example of breaking content down: if you have a “how to” report with ten steps and ten pages of content, you could:

create an article that’s a much shorter version of the report
list the ten steps with a one or two sentence explanation
write a “three things you need to do to…” article (you would actually have enough to write 3 of these articles)

Republish

Sometimes evergreen content isn’t as evergreen as you hope. Things change so quickly and most industries grow and change on a regular basis.

Go back and take a look at your “evergreen” articles and blog posts. How can you refresh them with updated content?

Partition

This is similar to breaking down reports to create articles and blog posts. You can break down e-books into:

– reports

– articles

– blog posts

You’ll see you can get quite a lot of content from an e-book. And for content ideas, take a look at the e-books you’ve purchased or written.

Group

If you’re thinking about creating a new information product, consider grouping reports to create an e-book.

You’ll need to organize the reports in a logical manner so that it flows. You’ll also likely need to add an introduction and a conclusion. Transitions will be necessary and you can add some graphics to really pull it all together.

Add checklists and worksheets to add even more value to your e-books and reports.

Repurposing and reusing your content is smart and strategic. As you create new content, consider how you might be able to use it in the future.

Content is now often key for online business success so make the most of your efforts and maximize your content to the fullest.

Which technique will you use right away to repurpose and reuse your content?