Being an entrepreneur is a great way to make your mark, pave your own path while being your own boss. Especially if you can identify a need in the market for goods or a service that you can provide that others are not providing in the same way or not providing at all.

That being said, in addition to having a great, unique or better service or product, the way in which you market it is also incredibly important.

I see a lot of entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs using social media to promote their services and products without a strategy – a huge mistake.

I’m also seeing individuals and companies take advantage of the pandemic and use this very tough time for so many as an opportunity to make money. It comes off as tone deaf when you do this when others are struggling and are sick.

While you should always step into the shoes of your potential client/customer and fill a need that have, you should also be very careful about how you market yourself taking into consideration current conditions.

Let me give you an example. I have seen some products launched through Instagram related to the pandemic. There are a number of face masks with different features, such as flaps to enable you to drink easily while continuing to wear your mask, masks with decorative straps and fashionable masks in custom patterns.

In terms of marketing, some of these proprietors are posting photos of themselves or videos with their product, laughing and smiling or doing a Boomerang. In my opinion, this is the wrong tone for marketing a face mask during a pandemic.

Instead of taking this lighthearted, silly approach, I would recommend something with more substance and gravitas. Many people have serious health concerns about the pandemic and are germaphobes.

Rather than featuring individuals looking like they’re having the time of their life while a global pandemic ensues, a better marketing approach would be to talk about why wearing a mask is beneficial and what their specific mask offers. Also I would focus on how and why their mask makes it easier to enjoy drinking beverages of all kinds while remaining safe.

I am also noticing some entrepreneurs not using any hashtags or using the wrong hashtags. Using the very popular and overused “#bestoftheday” with each post is not a strategic hashtag. Neither is anything with more than 1 million followers.

Here’s why – if you use those hashtags, your content will be immediately lost in the sea of other posts that also recently used the same hashtag – meaning low to no engagement.

Put another way, using hashtags with too many followers will not enable your content to be found by anyone. Instead use strategic hashtags that directly relate to your product or service with a specific audience in mind is a much stronger hashtag strategy.

The best way to find the right hashtags is to search for them. There’s no quick hashtag tool that is 100% effective.

Another thing to note is that it is never a smart social strategy to pay for followers. People can tell that you have fake followers, and it makes you look inauthentic.

If you really want to grow your business, you need a strong organic following. Remember, social media success is not only about the number of likes, comments or shares you have. It’s about the brand loyalty and engagement of your followers and customers.

It’s much better to have 1000 loyal followers than 7500 random followers that are mostly fake.

If anyone believes that social media success is directly related to the number of followers you have and that’s a good idea to pay for fake follows they are completely misguided.

There is no quick way to build a following overnight. It takes time to build a loyal social media following on each channel. So put in the work to create strong content that directly appeals to your target audience, respond to all comments, use the right hashtags and create visuals that accompany your posts and you will be well on your way to never needing to pay for fake followers.

Finally should go without saying that your social media posts should be error free. They should be proofread closely and free of grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes.

I know that if you are an entrepreneur and you work for yourself, it can be difficult to manage a lot of things at once, or perhaps writing isn’t your strong suit. But you have to make it a priority or enlist a friend or intern to help.

You’d be surprised how many social media accounts that purport to be from successful entrepreneurs are riddled with these kinds of mistakes, which undermine your credibility.

Remember to always check the context of a word and don’t depend on your phone for the right usage. 

When used correctly, social media can be a very strong component to an entrepreneur’s marketing and branding strategy. It’s greatly helped me personally to expand the reach of this blog and my other content.

To learn more about how I’ve used it to grow my business, feel free to reach out to me.