Using social media strategically as a marketing tool is the key to increasing your engagement and customers, therefore increasing your revenue. In today’s episode, I’ll be discussing exactly what you need to be doing to plan, elevate and optimise your content to ensure you’re organised and ready for your best year in business yet.
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Transcription
Hello and welcome back to The Hayley Osborne Show! It’s been a little while between drinks (ha ha you know I mean episodes), but I can safely say, after a 12-month hiatus from the Podcast I am more excited, motivated, and driven than ever to bring you EPIC amounts of goodness in 2022 to help you achieve your soulful marketing goals packed with strategy so 2022 can be your best year in business yet!
It’s such a great day to relaunch the podcast too, because today, Tuesday the 8th of February is actually my birthday and although I am recording this before, the plan has always been to launch it on this day as a little present to myself. So Happy Birthday to me.
If you follow along my social media, in particular my Instagram account @socialsoulmedia, you’ll know I had a little boy in February 2021, 12 months ago, who is now almost 1. My business continued to run, and grow for that matter, however the business streams of working ON my business needed to be put on hold so I could get a good grasp of what it was like to me a new Mumma! AND, can I just say, I’ve loved every minute, love every minute still, and feel very lucky to be able to be present and in the moments to watch my little boy grow into his cheeky and lovely personality. I guess that is the beauty of running your own business.
OK, so now let’s get to talking about how to use social media effectively to increase engagement & customers in 2022.
This space…ahhh what a beast right!
It’s never too late to get started or get going again to create the business you’ve always wanted. You just have to commit to yourself and make it a priority to future proof yourself.
Something I have been saying a lot lately: “The future Hayley will be thankful for this”. This stretches as far as to the little things, like writing that social media post, taking that image, saving that piece of inspiration, or connecting with new and exciting people every day. It’s the little things that future proof yourself and set yourself up to move the needle in your business from your version of 1, to your version of 20. Only you can do this.
Ok, so OMG what a long intro I know, but I felt like this is definitely the platform for it, for you to get to know me a little better as a person as well as completely absorb my knowledge as a marketer and social media expert.
Right: How to use social media effectively to increase engagement & customers!
There are 2 things that define people on social media: 1) Those that are “on” social media and 2) Those that are “using” social media. Those using social media are using it to their advantage and being consistent within the space. On the flip side, those people that are just “on” social media are simply observing and scrolling. As a business, it’s important for you to USE social media. USE everything these platforms offer us as consumers of the medium.
To gain momentum, increase engagement and customers you must have a plan, a strategy, especially with your social media, so if you have a pen and paper, get it out and take some notes along the way. how to plan, elevate & optimise your social media with SOUL
You’re right where you need to be listening to this episode of my podcast right now if you want to use social media strategically AND you want to elevate your social media as a key marketing tool.
So, in order to increase your engagement and customers in 2022 you need to Plan, elevate and optimise your social media.
That’s right, you head me correctly: PLAN, ELEVATE and OPTIMISE your social media.
But before I tell you exactly how to do this I have some quick wins for you so write these down.
Quick wins:
Instagram Reels:
Focus in on your Instagram Reels strategy. It is a fact that Instagram gives preference to small businesses across their reels feature and function. Therefore, as a small business this is your golden nugget to MAX exposure, reaching a lot more people in a much quicker time.
Instagram Stories:
Use those Instagram stories and all the features Instagram give you within your stories like polls, questions, comments, and any other new features that appear in your stories search bar. The reason you want to be using these is so your audience interact with you. They stop on your content and potentially answer any question you may have asked, respond to your very clever poll or engage in your comments. When the back end of Instagram (those little robots behind what makes this tick) reports more hits on your content, it confirms your content as “relevant”, giving it a higher relevance score and pushes it out to more people, reaching even more of your audience.
Ok, now back to the planning, elevating, and optimizing your social media. There really are 3 parts to this puzzle.
THE FIRST PART, starting with PLANNING
I have broken these down into 4 steps to make this really easy, digestible and manageable to make sure you march out the gates with soul and maintain consistency with that swagger you know you deserve.
Step 1:
Determine out how many posts you will do per month. By month, I like to break this down further and just say per every 4 weeks. This is simply because some months are 4, some are 5 and so forth. This way you have a nice balance and no surprises.
Usually, to get any kind of consistency happening at the beginning of consistently posting, and then maintain it, I suggest 12 posts every 4 weeks. So, aim for 3 posts per week. 3 posts maintains your business as top of mind, consistent and always relative.
Step 2:
Plan date specific posts and business milestones within these 4 weeks. By this I mean if you have a business anniversary, if there is a national date day that resonated with your business or anything you consider to be relative to you.
This way when you plan in these specific days, when the next 12 months roll around, you have a fully structed plan you can refer to, build on and get so much better at.
Step 3:
Come up with ideas for photo topics, videos, or Instagram reels.
For me, my photo/video topics generally circulate around:
- My neon branding
- Pictures of me because after all, I am a service-based business, and this is important
- Family (Mark) + Me
- Coffee/Tea
- Quotes
- Testimonials
- Photography
- Sports
That is 8 photo/video topics in total, one for more than every day of the week to provide plenty of variety for myself to choose from.
A brand photo shoot is always a good idea. NOW this can be working with a photographer to get some great shots and really capture yourself as well as your brand in the most authentic yet professional way possible. OR you can set out with a friend to begin with and plan a few different outfits and start off that way. Either way, professional photos make your business appear more professional.
They help to assist you as coming across as professional to your audience from the beginning and help to build trust in your business because it shows you’re committed to your brand and therefore helps others to also trust you.
Now, I’m not saying at all that you shouldn’t mix in your professional photos with candid day to day ones as I strongly believe this is a great mix of reality and business that’s for sure. This is how I structure my social media content as well and I believe this is a great showcase and balance of work and life.
After all we’re here to build trust, educate our audience, inspire them at the same time and entertain them as well (think funny memes of videos, because hey, we all like a little laugh).
Step 4:
Pick your caption categories
For me my caption categories generally circulate around:
- About me
- Tips and tricks
- Behind the scenes
- My why
- Motivation
- The benefits of working with me
- My services
THEN, this is the exciting part where it all comes together. Picture a table with your photo topics listed across the top and your caption categories listed vertically down the side and a grid in the middle. If you were to randomly connect the dots you will have something different with a different photo topic and caption category for every day.
For a better description of how I do this check out the show notes from today’s episode on my website hayleyosborne.com/podcastepisode6 (See Appendix 1, bottom of page for table).
THE SECOND PART to this puzzle is the ELEVATE part – your content
Writing captions can be really daunting for a lot of people, however I’ve come up with an easy way to take the stress out of your caption writing and put the soul back into it. Let’s remove the ridged way of writing and try and write like you talk. This may not come easy to you at the start, but practice makes perfect, just like being consistent with your social media creates increased engagement and therefore more customers. It really is a win win situation.
OK, so I digress, but back to my caption writing hack. Think of it like this: you must always include a:
- HOOK
- LINK
- SINKER
Really this means, you must always include a:
Hook: this is your first sentence, the one everyone reads sitting above the “see more”.
Insight: Your knowledge base. What you want your audience to take away from what they’re reading. To consider you an expert in the industry whether you’re a service-based business or a product-based business, this insight still applies.
Call to action: What do you want your audience to do with the information you have presented them with? Shop now. Head to the link in my bio to find out more? Comment below? Save this post?
The list goes on of amazing calls to action for your copy writing (captions).
You see the thing is, you are selling something, be it a product or a service, so this is what you need to do, SELL IT.
Don’t be afraid to ask your audience to do something you want them to do. Whenever I mention in my social media that I have a free downloadable on my website, my email database grows. Because if you don’t ask you don’t get. It really is as simple as that.
You cannot assume your audience know everything about you, so repetition is really important. Come up with crafty ways to say the same thing differently over and over. You might sound like you keep covering the same thing in your head, but they don’t think that. I guarantee you. Remember: not all your audience see every single piece of content you put out there, which is why it’s important for you to PROMOTE PROMOTE PROMOTE.
THE THIRD PART and final part to this puzzle is the OPTIMISE part
Optimising your social media content sounds all confusing and high level, but really, it’s not and you probably, to some extent, do this already, but I want you to be really mindful of this. This is like networking at a really important party or event.
- Be present
- Connect with likeminded peeps
- Engage
- Network
- Take your Direct Messages and Inbox Messages seriously
- Geographic tags
- Use Instagram Stories
- Practice makes perfect with Instagram Reels
- Utilise the landscape
- Follow hashtags relevant to you
Remember social media is a marathon not a sprint. To effectively increase your engagement and customers in 2022 you must USE social media, not just be on social media.
So, to recap the important parts we’ve spoken about in The Hayley Osborne Show today, in order to plan your content you need to:
- Determine out how many posts you will do per month
- Plan date specific posts and business milestones
- Come up with ideas for photo topics, videos and Instagram reels
- Pick your caption categories
- Understand your hook, line and sinker, which is your hook, insight and call to action
- Optimise your content by using all the juicy tips I’ve shared.
I hope this episode has helped to motivate and inspire you to get organised and aligned across your marketing strategies and social media strategies to win this year.
In the meantime, don’t miss out on bringing Soul Game to your marketing and social media strategy in 2022, download my FREE e-book, The Ultimate Guide to Building a 6 Figure Business through Instagram www.hayleyosborne.com/ultimateguide
