Social Media Success Strategies – 4 simple steps to win the year

How many times have we heard ourselves say this is the year I start leveraging social media for my business only to get caught up in the day-to-day activities and before we know it, it’s 4th of July weekend and we’re wondering how others created that fancy video post with the fireworks? Sometimes, we get the year off to a great start with our Happy New Year, and President’s Day posts, and by February we’re too busy with closings and order counts to even think about creating a Valentine’s Day post. If you can relate to this, you are not alone, it happens to most of us, after all, we’re closers, just trying to make our clients happy, we’re not influencers, and we’re not trying to go viral. Or are we? There’s one simple fact that we all need to face, we’re now in a time and place where we live in a digital world, and one of the most powerful places to meet potential customers is online.

I know this to be true because it’s a part of my story, because at WFG’s Spark event 5 years ago, I learned the importance of social media for sales, and how to leverage it. I was a sales rep for an attorney-owned title company when I attended spark and brought back everything I learned to my local market. I started teaching social media classes and practiced what I preached. I checked in on Facebook everywhere I went, displaying the value I was adding to my clients, I posted closing day photos, tagged relevant clients, celebrated holidays, and created events that put me in front of more prospects than ever before, both online and offline.

The true power of social media is influence, and storytelling is one of the most powerful channels of influence on social. It helps companies and individuals to not only engage with customers, but also influence them with the right content that helps them connect to a brand, and make a decision. The real struggle for us is figuring out how exactly can we do this and maintain our workflow and keep our clients happy. The very first thing we need to do is to realize and accept that our digital world is not going anywhere, and that making time for social media needs to become part of our workflow. What’s next? How do we implement this in our day to day and stay consistent with it?

1. Make Canva.com your best friend
Canva is one of the most user-friendly platforms to create content for social media, and with over 400,000 templates ready to go, you don’t need a marketing or design background to create beautiful content. Not only can you create content to share in just minutes, but you can also leverage their content calendar to preschedule your social media posts.

2. Reverse engineer your calendar
Everything starts with your calendar, beginning with national holidays, i.e. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s etc., schedule the dates and times you need to be posting, follow that by filling in the gaps with national day calendar posts, i.e. Chocolate chip cookie day, dates once a month to post a blog, share an article etc. Fill your calendar with scheduled posting dates until you have at least 1-2 posts per week, minimum.

3. Time-block engagement and video creation
As my friend, Sue Pinky Benson would say, “don’t post and ghost.” Time-block, 12-20 minutes every morning, to respond to comments, and to engage with your prospects and clients. Don’t just scroll the news feed, intentionally search out people that you should be engaging with to like, and/or comment on their activities. You’ll also want to time-block at least one hour per week where you get in front of the camera and start creating video, whether it’s title tips, or sharing success stories, now is the time to start doing video if you haven’t already, and since consistency is key, time-blocking an hour a week is crucial.

4. Create opportunities
If you are already feeling like none of this is for you, you’re not alone, and this may feel incredibly unnatural, but it’s time to start living in the digital world. Create opportunities to check-in (geo-tag), post photos and videos, and look at daily activities as opportunities to post. Create opportunities to be the resource, the educator, and the digital mayor. Schedule coffees, trainings, and events that give you a reason and content to post, and be ‘seen’ everywhere, and take note that online, perception is reality.

Feel free to reach out to set up a zoom call or meeting with one of your Marketing Technology Directors if you would like help with this process.