Social Media

3 Ways To Fire Up Your Frozen Social Media Strategy

March 4, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Have you ever tried running outside in the middle of the winter? It’s downright difficult, but if you have run in the middle of the winter, you know that the only way to complete the workout is to keep on keeping on.

Maybe you live in Florida where it’s sunny all year long, or maybe this happens to be an evergreen blog post that you may first come across in the summer. But we all know what it means to be frozen from a business standpoint.

Not getting much results, losing control, no revenue to spend on different business tools.

It’s easy for a social media strategy to get frozen. Some people create elaborate social media strategies but throw up the hands if the strategy begins with a bust.

At other times, the social media strategy works but starts to see a small decline. A social media strategy can see a small decline for a variety of reasons such as a change in your audience’s tastes or outsourcing gone wrong.

No matter the reason why a social media strategy freezes up, everyone in this situation wants one thing in common. They all want to fire up that social media strategy so the frost melts away.

The results you have wanted are within that frozen social media strategy, but you must thaw the ice with the fire of your soul. Here’s how you build up the flame that thaws the ice.

#1: Expand Onto Several Social Media Platforms

If you always rely on one social network to bring you all of your results, then you are making a mistake. It’s great to focus on one social network until you master it, but once you master a social network, you must not be afraid to expand.

After I mastered Twitter, it became my blog’s most valuable asset. However, I realized I had put too much reliance on one source when, because of a weird glitch, my Twitter account would get compromised every 33 hours.

This went on for over a month, and I would have to wake up early in the morning (at 6 am or earlier) just to check my email and unlock my Twitter account if it got locked.

Sometimes, it would be locked up for hours in which none of my scheduled tweets went through.

I learned that while social media is good, you should never rely on one social network to bring you straight to the finish line. Not only because some glitch may affect your account, but also because social media is constantly changing.

Twitter is considering extending the limit from 140 characters to 10,000 characters. I conducted a Twitter poll and discovered that most users wouldn’t be happy with the change.

Are you happy with the 140 character limit or do you want to see #Twitter10K happen?

— Marc Guberti (@MarcGuberti) January 7, 2016

Maybe some people decide Twitter is just like Facebook and just spend time on Facebook instead. Maybe it’s a revolutionary change that transforms the way we use Twitter and allows businesses to thrive on it.

But speaking of Facebook…

Remember when a business page’s posts could reach out to everyone who liked the page? I don’t remember that. I became a player in the social media space too late for that.

Right now, various articles have been published that identify how many people who like a business page can organically see the post.

The number is different depending on which article you read, but typically 1-4% of your Facebook audience will organically see the post.

How do you get everyone else to see the post? Easy. You pay Facebook.

Maybe your social media strategy is frozen because you have been relying on one social network to make everything happen.

Social networks change, and different people use different platforms. The more distributed your audience is across all of the social networks, the more people are likely to come in contact with your social media posts.

#2: Outsource Your Social Media Workload The Right Way

Outsourcing has forever changed the way I do my business work. The simple reason is that I can now give any of my workload to someone else.

I asked myself what I would never outsource even if I could clone myself a hundred times. The list was small. Writing content, engaging with my audience, and creating videos were on the top of the list.

Everything else by definition became a distraction. The social media workload I had put on myself for all of these years was suddenly seen as a distraction.

So I decided to outsource a large percentage of my social media workload—scheduling tweets, growing my Twitter audience, growing my Pinterest audience, and sending out pins were just some of the things that I outsourced.

The result was that I could tap into the entrepreneur’s most valuable resource: TIME.

I suddenly had hours of extra time that allowed me to create more Udemy courses (I can now create a new course every 1-2 weeks) and returning to self-publishing.

Some of that extra time went towards making my social media strategy better.

I had more time to experiment with Facebook ads and quickly grow an audience of over 40,000 people on Facebook. I am continuing to gradually grow that audience while experimenting with Facebook ads for my posts which is where the money is on Facebook.

However, if you outsource your social media strategy incorrectly, the result will be miscommunication and a frozen social media strategy—even if you know everything there is to social media.

There are certain tools that always allow you to retain control but still outsource the work. The tool I came across for outsourcing my Twitter growth was ManageFlitter.

I knew how to get 300 followers per day, and I wasn’t getting those same results as consistently when I outsourced my workload to someone else.

ManageFlitter allowed me to regain control through RAM (Remote Account Management) and one of the best filters I have ever seen.

And for those of you curious about the RAM prices in 2016, here they are (I looked everywhere for the current prices, so now that I can always see them, I wanted to provide them in this blog post).

If you don’t feel 100% comfortable with one of your freelancers, then you need to do one or more of the following:

Communicate with that freelancer to fix the problems.
Look for someone else and fire the current freelancer.
Look for an online tool that can do the job.

Your social media audience is very important. If you decide to outsource your workload, be sure to keep an eye (especially sharp in the beginning) on the people who you give control to. Make sure they are fulfilling your expectations and doing what you tell them to do.

If any of the work you outsource to other people is time sensitive, hire a back-up freelancer to make sure the job gets done (i.e. scheduling social media posts).

#3: Spend Money On Your Social Media Strategy

Before I go into spending money on your social media strategy, I want to address that just because you spend money to grow your social media audience does not guarantee everything will fall into place.

So be cautious about how you spend your money on social media marketing, and when you decide to spend money, never dip in the red.

Now with the warning established, I’ll go more into detail about spending money on your social media strategy.

Right now, I only spend money for two parts of my business: outsourcing and social media. I have gone in detail about the outsourcing already, so I won’t mention it now.

Spending money on social media marketing is where it gets interesting. You need the combination of superior online tools, effective advertising, and a budget.

Let’s start with the superior tools. For Twitter, I use ManageFlitter and HootSuite. Just to have access to those two tools, I pay over $300 every year. The results I get from them are worth the investment, but there is more to these tools than their functionality.

Each time I must spend money to continue using HootSuite and ManageFlitter, I have added motivation to make more money from my efforts. Added motivation to create that extra training course or write that extra book. Added motivation to do more marketing.

The tools provide motivation, but their functionality is the reason I invest in them. I wouldn’t spend money just for the sake of getting motivated to make more money. Make sure that when you spend your money, it is spent in an effective manner—not for the sake of it getting spent.

As for social media advertising, Facebook is your best bet for getting results at an affordable price. Some people make their entire income from Facebook ads. I haven’t heard as much about Twitter ads. In my opinion, Twitter is better for getting an organic audience and playing without paying a penny.

The social media advertising landscape will continuously change, but right now, Facebook is king in that department.

The way people make money through Facebook advertising is by promoting their posts that lead people to (preferably) landing pages or sales pages. Initially, you should spend some money building your social proof on Facebook with inexpensive likes (depending on the countries you target, you can get Facebook likes at the rate of $0.01 or less per like).

As you spend more money on your social media strategy, you will force yourself to get more savvy. Investing in your social media strategy is an investment in yourself. That investment makes you responsible.

At that point, all you have to do is analyze your results, constantly experiment in a search for better results, and make sure you stay within your budget.

In Conclusion

Your social media strategy may look frozen now, but by taking action, you can thaw the ice and tap into your social media strategy’s inner potential.

The reason social media strategies freeze up is because results are not obtained, there is a reluctance to taking action, and there is a fear of what will happen.

Social media is the most valuable platform known to mankind. It is the platform where over 1 billion people communicate to each other using tweets, pictures, pins, and posts.

To win on social media, you must stick with it and always find a way. I know that three years ago when I didn’t understand social media, I would have been frustrated about the previous sentence.

During those times, I thought, “JUST SHOW ME!”

But the way you truly win on social media is by sticking with it and always finding a way. Logging in every day and scheduling the posts. You get closer and closer with every day that you take action.

What tips do you have for firing up a frozen social media strategy? Do you currently face the problem now? What advice do you have for people who want to avoid a frozen social media strategy? Sound off in the comments section now!

Where Social Media Fits In The Sales Funnel

December 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social media can make you a lot of money if you know where it fits in the sales funnel.

I hear a lot of talk about making money on social media. People believe that their social media audiences should result in a higher income.

But most people find themselves disappointed. They wonder if all of the time they spent on social media was worth it.

Social media isn’t the problem. The problem is how most people approach making money on social media. We can clearly see the problem in the first tweet I ever sent on Twitter

First of all, the link is broken now. The more important point is that this tweet makes no attempt at building a relationship with my audience. It was the good old “buy this product.”

I didn’t give people enough time to know, like, and trust me.

For a few weeks after that, I continued using social media wrong. My tweets were Amazon affiliate links and my blog posts (before this blog) had a strong focus on getting the sale versus providing value.

Then I focused on using social media to build the relationship with my followers. Once I changed the way I used social media, my revenue increased.

Here is the most important thing you will ever hear about making money on social media:

Social media is the best platform for generating indirect sales.

What does that mean? Social media is a platform where people get to know, like, and trust you.

Social media is also a great platform to promote your landing pages and get subscribers. The way I make money on social media is by using it to grow my email list.

Subscribers are far more likely to buy something you recommend than your social media followers. The logic is the expectation of each platform.

People are used to finding discounts and product information in their inboxes. In fact, some people welcome it.

People go on social media to escape important decisions. They want to interact and see what’s happening. They want free stuff.

In the sales funnel, social media is the very first stage. After you get your followers to complete a few other stages (i.e. subscribing), then some of them become customers.

Okay, that sounds nice. But I don’t have a landing page. Now what?

The quick answer is to create your own landing page as soon as possible. I use Optimize Press for my landing pages while other people use LeadPages. Both are excellent tools to have.

But I know that (unfortunately) not everyone will want to create a landing page right away. Don’t go back to promoting affiliate links to sales pages.

At any moment, there are dozens (or hundreds) or marketers who are asking affiliates to sell their products. These marketers offer training courses containing a wide variety of material.

At least one of those training courses will be within your niche.

These marketers put a lot of planning into their training courses’ success. They write the copy, set up the landing pages, and have affiliate links that ensure affiliates receive their proper commission.

I occasionally promote other people’s landing pages on my social media accounts for a few reasons:

#1: They have all of the email copy set up for you. These emails are optimized to get a lot of opens, clicks, and sales.

#2: The product is created for you. All you have to do is promote the landing page with your affiliate link.

#3: Each sale equals a big commission. The commissions you receive as an affiliate for a training course can get very high. Some people will provide you with a $500 or higher commission per sale.

#4: You get a better idea of how it all works. Maybe some day, you create your own training course and have your own team of affiliates.

It’s just a matter of finding people in your niche who offer this type of opportunity. Then all you have to do at that point is ride with the opportunity.

Is There Any Room For Direct Sales?

I am not actively pursuing direct sales from my social media audience. I prefer promoting landing pages and building the relationship before I offer any products.

With that said, it is possible to do some direct promotion.

I find myself looking through Kim Garst’s tweets again and again. She’s a social media expert with over 420,000 Twitter followers.

She will occasionally do a direct sale on social media that leads people straight to one of her sales pages. However, most of her tweets entice a relationship to be built.

Indirect sales are the best way to go. If you use social media to generate direct sales, my recommendation is to do so with a big discount involved. Discounts grab anyone’s attention, regardless of which platform the discount is discovered on.

When we buy something for a discount, we feel super smart. That’s the main reason discounts result in more product sales.

Sometimes, we won’t even care much for a product but buy it to feel like smart consumers.

In Conclusion

Social media is the best platform for generating indirect sales. Once you use social media with that in mind, you will get more sales in the long-term.

What are your thoughts about social media’s position in the sales funnel? Do you think direct sales work or that indirect sales are all you need? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Characteristics Of Thriving Social Media Users

December 14, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

How do they do it? I’m talking about the social media users who have large audiences. The social media users that went from zero to hundreds of thousands of followers. It was a question I often asked myself. I wondered if there was some type of secret formula they used.

Yes, there are some saucy methods involved. However, going from not knowing anything about social media to growing a massive audience is epic. A close look at the surface of these individuals quickly reveals how they became successful on social media.

People like to think there’s some secret sauce involved, but these basic characteristics that they share. It turns out we know most of these characteristics already, but they are the key to success on social media. In addition, knowing and doing are two different things.

#1: They Use It The Right Way Every Day

Most of us are good at using social media every day. Successful social media users use it more productively than the common social media user. They look for targeted audiences, engage with those targeted audiences, and provide them with awesome content.

The intent of a successful social media user is to humor the audience or to empower the audience with knowledge. Successful social media users think, “How can I create a better experience?” before they think, “How can I get more followers?”

Use social media in a powerful way, and you are bound to see powerful results.

#2: They Are Patient

You’ve heard this tip for just about everything in your life. Be patient if you want to run faster times. Be patient if you want to be a singer. Be patient, be patient, be patient (I think we all get the point).

But sure enough, patience plays a role yet again. Successful social media users eventually shift to the question “How can I reach out to more people?” Recognize they aren’t asking themselves how to make the “follower” number bigger. They want to reach and empower as many people as possible using social media.

When you first commit to growing a large social media audience, it takes time. Part of the reason is that when you first start, you won’t know everything. Successful social media users now gain hundreds of followers every day. But there was a time when these same social media users struggled to gain five followers in a given day.

Patience got these users from gaining five followers per day to gaining hundreds of followers per day.

#3: They Are Always Hungry For Knowledge

When a new social network is launched, there are two types of pioneers who grow large audiences on the new social network: The Rare Pioneer and the Expected Pioneer. The Rare Pioneer is someone who isn’t successful on any other social network. However, this Rare Pioneer loves the new social network and quickly masters it. Then, people start following this Rare Pioneer on all of the other social networks.

The Expected Pioneer is the successful social media user expanding his/her platform. The Expected Pioneer gets into the action as soon as possible. Since a new social network is getting a lot of sign-ups, it is normal to get a lot of followers just by posting something.

I did two Periscope broadcasts on the day Periscope came out. I assure you that both of them were subpar at best. For one of them, I didn’t even know I was recording a live broadcast. In the first three days after Periscope was launched, I had over 2,000 followers.

Successful social media users often acquire more knowledge by extending themselves onto other social networks. While they wait for a new social network to come out, they are reading blog posts, reading books, and watching videos about social media. They want to be connected with other successful social media users so they can learn more about the platform and build relationships.

Since you are at this point of the blog post, then you hunger for knowledge too. However, you must always hunger for knowledge and want as much of it as possible—even when you too are a successful social media user.

#4: At One Point, They Focused On One Social Network

The social media world is as easy or as complicated as you make of it. Unfortunately, most of us want to make the social media world as complicated for ourselves as possible. We’re tweeting on Twitter, pinning on Pinterest, posting on Facebook, uploading videos to YouTube, and sharing our pictures on Instagram. We’re catching up with the news about Periscope and Blab and still trying to find some time to get the Vine in.

Successful social media users utilize an arsenal of social networks. However, in the beginning of their journeys, the eventual successful social media users would stick with one social network. They tend to master one social network from the inside-out before they try to master another social network.

I view social media mastery in the same way a linguist would view mastering the romance languages. There are two approaches to mastering a series of languages:

Approach #1: I give you flash cards, proper phrases, and Rosetta Stone for French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Italian. You have to master all of these languages at the same time.

Approach #2: I give you everything I gave you in the first approach. However, you choose one language and commit yourself to mastering that one language. You only start learning another language once you have mastered the first language you are trying to master.

Give me Approach #2 any day of the week. This is the same way in which we must view social media.

Do all social media users go with the second approach? I would say about 99% of them do, and you can tell. One way you can tell is by the content they write on their blogs. If you go through this blog, you’ll discover that the first social network I discussed in great detail was Twitter. That’s because Twitter was the first social network that I strived to master.

You can also figure out the first social network a successful social media user mastered by looking at the audience sizes of their social networks. Most of the successful social media users will have large audiences elsewhere, but the social network they started on will almost always have the largest audience.

Out of all of my social media accounts, my Twitter account by far has the largest audience. That could change in the future depending on how much I invest into Facebook likes, but right now, Twitter by far has the largest percentage of my social media audience.

If you find me on social media, chances are you’ll find me on Twitter first before you find me on any of my other social networks.

In Conclusion

In our search for the secret sauce, we ignore the recipe on the kitchen door. All successful social media users achieved their success in large part because of these four characteristics. These four characteristics were the foundation that led to the acquisition of other skills.

Those skills combined with these characteristics allow social media users to become successful. These characteristics give you the GPS needed to achieve social media success. You can’t see how many miles you are away from your destination, but you’ll know that the path you are heading on is the right path for you.

Which of these characteristics do you think is the most important? Do you think there are any other defining characteristics of successful social media users? Sound off in the comments section below.

100 Social Media Tips In One Sentence Each

November 25, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Social media is a complicated tool. Once you know how to use it, social media presents one of the best opportunities for growing an audience and your business.

This blog post is a way for me to make the learning curve much easier for you. The best part is that all of these tips are one-sentence tips so they will be quick reads. Building a solid foundation for yourself is essential for you to take your social media strategy forward. Here’s the foundation:

#1: Do a little bit each day to move your social media strategy forward

#2: Be present on the top social networks (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others)

#3: Choose which social network is the best one for you and spend 80% of your social media time on that one social network

#4: Master one social network before trying to master another social network (think of mastering social networks as learning different languages)

#5: Outsource some or all of the work

#6: Post on your social networks consistently by scheduling posts with HootSuite

#7: Have a social media post calendar that identifies when social media posts for specific social networks need to get scheduled

#8: Engage with your audience

#9: Get into other conversations

#10: When a chat related to your niche is trending, join that chat and tweet with the hashtag

#11: Most of your social media posts should point back to your content (one of your blog posts, guest posts, videos, etc)

#12: Use pictures in your social media posts to boost engagement

#13: Experiment with advertising on social media (Facebook ads work the best)

#14: Utilize hashtags in your social media posts (1-2 hashtags per tweet but Instagram posts should be stuffed with seven hashtags)

#15: Promote your landing page on your social networks, and if you don’t have a landing page, create one now.

#16: Don’t over promote your products on social media

#17: Make sure your bio highlights as much about you as possible

#18: Make your bio a sentence fragment with commas and no “and” or period to list as many credentials as possible

#19: Don’t let the shiny object (i.e. a new social network) distract you from mastering your main social network

#20: Get on new social networks immediately, but don’t let those new social networks ruin what you already have going on

#21: It is ridiculously easy to gain hundreds of daily followers on the day a new social network launches, but only if you use it (I was an early Periscope adopter and gained 1,000 followers on the first day because I did two broadcasts)

#22: Occasionally share other people’s content related to your niche to provide a variety of content for your audience

#23: Recognize the fact that social media is just one part of your business so you don’t spend too much time on social media

#24: Build relationships on social media

#25: Look through your interactions to see if one of your followers wants to interview you or have you as a guest blogger

#27: Contact people who have podcasts and guest blogs and offer your help (in the form of being a guest or contributor but do so with a nice tone since some people get a lot of these types of emails/social media posts)

#28: Look for methods to save as much time as possible on social media

#29: Pay extra money for social media tools if it means you save extra time

#30: Use HootSuite to do all of your social media activity instead of going on the actual social media sites (more productive since you don’t see the trending topics and other stuff)

#31: Write down important things that you learn about social media

#32: Create a blog about social media so you force yourself to learn something new about social media every day

#33: The avatar for all of your social media accounts must either be a picture of you or your company’s logo

#34: If you make the avatar for all of your social networks the same, your followers will have an easier time identifying all of your social media accounts.

#35: Keep up with the latest social media news so you can determine if you need to make a change in your social media strategy

#36: Focus on the social networks that yield the best results

#37: Ask yourself what small changes to your social media strategy can yield better results (you’d be surprised)

#38: Remind yourself what are you aiming for in your social media strategy

#39: Get all of the social media mobile apps and engage with your audience on the go

#40: Hire one virtual assistant for your social media strategy and see how the experience goes

#41: Don’t get consumed by social media

#42: Focus on growing a targeted audience instead of merely growing an audience of people who may not even be interested in your content

#43: NEVER, EVER, EVER buy fake followers because it will taint your reputation and possibly result in your account getting suspended

#44: Cross-promote your content so all of your social networks are promoting each other

#45: If something is working very well for you right now, ride with it until it stops working

#46: Don’t get distracted by anything when you are using social media

#47: The way you use social media determines how successful you become on it

#48: Look at your post engagement so see what type of content your audience likes the most

#49: Then give them more of that content

#50: Thank the people who share your content by mentioning them or commenting on the post

#51: Understand that social media is the best platform for indirect and an okay platform for direct sales

#52: Getting indirect sales on social media means building trust and providing valuable content that eventually asks for an email address

#53: Get help if you need it

#54: Implement what you learn because most people stop at the learning part

#55: Ask your favorite experts some quick questions that don’t require lengthy answers because some of them may then respond and offer advice

#56: Follow back to build relationships

#57: Follow people in your niche who are likely to follow you back

#58: Post at the optimal times throughout the day (these differ for each social network, but for Twitter, if you are tweeting once every 15 minutes, then it doesn’t matter for Twitter)

#59: Tweet once every 15 minutes

#60: Publish two YouTube videos every week

#61: Post three Instagram pictures per day

#62: Post four Facebook posts on your FB Page per day

#63: Send pins consistently throughout the day (at least one pin per hour)

#64: Don’t do everything from Tips 59-63 if it means you are going to overwhelm yourself with work

#65: Outsource some or all of the work related to Tips 59-63

#66: Promote your social networks on your blog

#67: Promote your new blog posts at least five times on your social networks on the day your blog posts get published

#68: Create multiple social media accounts on the same social network to promote your content

#69: Create a team of ambassadors that will share your content on social media no matter what

#70: Create evergreen blog posts (they will still be valuable years later) and promote them on your social networks often

#71: It is okay to share the same thing on social media more than once

#72: It is okay to have a posting cycle that results in you sharing the same thing dozens of times throughout the year

#73: Use Twitter polls to create a new type of social media engagement

#74: Ask your followers what they want and use their suggestions as blog post or product ideas

#75: Publish your blog posts on LinkedIn so they have a greater reach

#76: Use AdWords to advertise your YouTube videos at the rate of $0.01 per view

#77: Use Facebook advertising to get your Page likes for less than $0.01 per like

#78: Constantly monitor your social media ads so you see which ones are consistent and which ones need to get tweaked

#79: Share content from authority sites like Forbes, The Huffington Post, and others

#80: Get you know your followers by name and avatar

#81: Answer a need on social media that you believe most people are missing

#82: Tweet about your niche 95% of the time because if you go off-topic too much then people won’t stick around

#83: Valuable content is content that your audience believes is valuable, not what you believe is valuable (I have read many blog posts about running but never tweet them out since my targeted audience cares more about digital marketing blog posts)

#84: Be patient with your social media success (to achieve any type of success, you must be very patient)

#85: Don’t get discouraged when you get bad results because you can always make a change

#86: Use social media in a meaningful way

#87: See what other experts in your niche do on social media and mimic then while adding in your own style

#88: For any social network, focus on getting past that 1,000 follower milestone through almost any means necessary (no buying fake followers or doing things you’ll regret later)

#89: Don’t use too many social media tools but instead ask yourself which social media tools you can live without

#90: Statistics for your social media strategy let you see your results, where you are, and how you can improve

#91: While these statistics are good, if you spend too much time viewing them without taking action, then you are walking into analysis paralysis

#92: Take a one-day break from your social networks if the workload gets too stressful

#93: Pin a tweet to the top of your profile that promotes your landing page so your audience always sees it

#94: Use social media to promote product discounts

#95: If you become a part of an affiliate program, use social media to promote other people’s landing pages that have your affiliate ID.

#96: The focus of social media should be to build trust between you and your audience

#97: Write blog posts at a consistent and frequent rate so you have more to share with your followers

#98: Search your blog’s URL on social media to see who’s sharing it (not everyone will mention you when they share your content)

#99: Use the Twitter Advanced Search to find very specific users who you can then engage with

#100: Always have fun on social media

In Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed these 100 one-sentence social media tips. It took me a while to compile the list.

The main purpose of providing you with all of these tips is to give you a foundation. I understand that you won’t implement all of these tips in one day. However, the hope is that a few of these tips grabbed your attention more than others. The tips that especially grabbed your attention are the ones that you need to get started on.

If I had to implement these tips, I would look into growing my audience and outsourcing the work. Outsourcing the work allows you to explore the implementation of more of these tips (and eventually outsource that too).

Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any other tips for social media success? Which social network do you spend most of your time on? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Better Serve Your Social Media Audience

November 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

You’ve got followers. They see your posts and send out posts of their own. These followers are individuals just like you and me. Most people only know a small portion of their audiences. However, it is possible for any person on social media to understand their entire audience.

It’s a strong statement to say that one person can understand his/her entire social media audience. But even the people with millions of followers can know some things about everyone in their audiences.

So how does someone with a large audience come to know the people within their audience? Better yet, how does this happen in a time efficient manner? The people with millions of followers are not scrolling through one follower at a time, looking at profiles, and having conversations with all of those people. That would take too long.

You serve your social media audience by knowing what that audience wants. The way you know your social media audience is by breaking them up into categories. You break them into categories based on how they engage with you and your content.

Each time you send a post, look at how people engage with that post. Some of your posts will get more engagement than others. When you see that your social media posts about a certain topic always get more shares, then you know your audience wants more of that content.

Early in the game, I discovered that the tweets of mine that received the most attention contained Twitter tips. Blog posts geared towards social media weren’t far behind.

When I made this realization, I decided to write more blog posts about Twitter. That’s why many of my blog posts are geared towards Twitter. The decision paid off. Most of the blog posts I have written about Twitter have been tweeted hundreds of times. My blog post 70 Amazing Twitter Tips has been tweeted over 1,000 times.

I simply knew what my audience wanted and gave them more of it.

While I enjoyed seeing the success of my Twitter related blog posts, I knew that there was more to me than Twitter. I didn’t want this blog to turn exclusively into a Twitter blog. I also wanted to write blog posts about Facebook, Pinterest, productivity, and other business-related topics.

I decided to write blog posts about a greater variety of topics and share them to my social media audience. I saw how my audience engaged with the content I posted and then drew conclusions. My blog posts about Pinterest and blogging received more attention. Then, my productivity blog posts started to pick up engagement.

But inevitably, some blog posts stood out from the others.

I analyzed every blog post I wrote to see which ones got the most social shares. It wasn’t enough for me to know that blog posts geared towards productivity got more social shares. I needed to know specific information (i.e. do more people in my audience engage with my time management blog post or my goal achievement blog post?).

I am not trying to limit the topics I can write about. Rather, I am identifying the most desirable topics. That allows me to know what topics to focus on but also which topics I can incorporate into my other blog posts.

When I write a blog post about Twitter, should I incorporate goal achievement or should I incorporate finding the time to make it happen? If I incorporate both of them, which one do I focus on more? Answering these challenging questions allows you to write better content that your social media audience will love.

Quick Summary Of Categories

Here are some of the categories that my followers are in (it is possible for certain followers to be in more than one category):

Twitter advice

Social media advice

Pinterest advice

Blogging advice

Productivity

With this list, I know which blog posts I should write. I can also think of ways to combine certain topics together so I can appeal to a larger percentage of my social media audience.

Observe How Your Social Media Audience Engages With You

The larger your social media audience becomes, the more you can rely on the notifications tab to understand your audience. I look at the notifications tab to see what people say about my content. I see what people like (and dislike).

Checking every day allows me to see certain patterns develop. This is how I identify which of my blog posts are outperforming most of my other blog posts. This identification is critical for getting more blog traffic from Twitter.

In the beginning, I could tweet more frequently and automatically double my daily visitors from Twitter. Now I tweet once every 15 minutes. I don’t envision myself tweeting once every 7.5 minutes anytime soon. That’s too much even for me.

I get more traffic from Twitter by tweeting my most popular content more often. If this popular content continues to gain popularity, then I know this is a topic my social media audience is interested in. At that point, I begin to create a training course all about that topic.

That’s why Twitter Domination was the first training course I ever published on Udemy. At the time, people recognized me as a Twitter expert more than anything else.

Once you serve your audience and see how they respond, you get to know your audience. Then, you can create products based on what you know about your audience. This cycle ultimately results in you constantly serving your audience and providing them with more value as the days go by.

In Conclusion

Social media is the best platform to grow an audience without paying a penny. I had over 100,000 followers spread across my social networks before I started investing in tools and ads that I now use to exponentially grow my audience.

Regardless of your audience’s size and growth rate, you must learn more about the individuals within your audience. What type of content do they want to read? What do they need that you can provide? Answering these two questions will let you know how you can serve your audience better.

Serving your audience better allows you to know the people in your audience better. Once you serve your audience with free content that you know they like, you can then serve them with products related to those same topics.

How do you engage with your social media audience? What tips do you have for us so we can better serve our audiences? Do you know what your social media audience wants? Sound off in the comments section below.