Why you need to be on board with your own social media campaign…

• Are you outsourcing your social media campaign to someone else?
• Are you depending on a third party to come up with content ideas?
• Do you wait for someone else to feedback whether your social media channels are working for you?
• Are you pouring money into something you don’t quite get?

If you have chosen to use social media to get noticed, drive your business and create awareness, then you can’t just dump it all on someone. You have to be involved. There are five key roles you have to play when it comes to driving and owning your social media strategy.

Have you heard of ‘Personal branding ? 

It’s a process where you differentiate yourself (rather than your company) from your competitors in order to stand out in a crowded market place and make an impact whether it’s in person, on an email or via social media.’

On the 17th October, I was a guest on Oge Okesieme’s Masterclass Series. It’s a monthly question and answer session where members of the public can ask the guest speaker on how to improve their personal branding.

Oge describes herself as a pathfinder for spiritual entrepreneurs. Her aim is to guide entrepreneurs who want to make a difference and help them to ‘shine’. Now this may sound a bit esoteric, but if you look at her steps to discovering what your personal brand is, you really can start to create a picture about how to think about the ways you want to portray yourself and what you have to offer as a brand.

Think about the following:

• What is your Personal Brand?
• Why you should care about your Personal Brand?
• How can your Personal Branding help you make an IMPACT?

It’s not you, it’s me!

Sound familiar? Most people have either delivered the line or received it or both. Either way no one really likes to hear it. It conjures up feelings of insecurity, a lack of confidence and can set you back months or even years in the journey to find "the one". I am referring to the all-to-familiar, "It’s not you, it’s me". But we are not talking about romantic relationships here, we are talking about social media relationships. And in that context, it’s true. Social media is about them – all about them. 

Traditional marketing is targeted to mass audiences through television, outdoor, print, radio. Obviously, you will do best if you can get choose a particular target market and ‘get inside their heads’, but you’re still not really interacting with individuals. The opportunity to direct your message to the right market is mostly static and limited to location, frequency and duration.  This means that campaigns using any of the above channels pretty much need to be all about me – my brand, my offer, my call-to-action, my price, my brilliance, my, my, my… This approach is very much "it’s not you, it’s me", isn’t it?

Bring on social media – where we really need to turn this way of thinking on its head. Make it all about your audience, your followers and fans. You can’t make it all about yourself. 

Do you ever ask yourself… "what shall I tweet about today?" Do you find yourself spending hours searching for something that might be of interest to your readers? If the question to either of the above is “yes” then you need a content plan.

When someone sees you on Twitter, they need to have a compelling reason to follow you. Take some time to read your own tweets and be brutally honest wit yourself. Do you find them interesting? Would you follow your own tweets?

Let’s say you’re an accountant. You have to give your readers a compelling reason to follow you. If you claim to save people tax, you need to prove it by putting tips on how to save money as well as useful news items on tax related issues. But you can’t just do that without giving it some thought. And that means more than finding ive minutes on a Monday morning. You actually need to block out some time where you brainstorm some ideas. It’s called having a content plan.