When it comes to social media, commit to consistently posting, engaging and providing value, and using the right hashtags BUT don’t get too bogged down by interpreting the results of every single post or engagement on each post especially right away.
Go with your gut on the content you post and then adjust your efforts as part of your overall social strategy.
You have to give each post some time to see if it resonates with your network.
I know it’s hard to be patient when it comes to wanting to see how your posts do with your network, but it’s not that easy. You may see people like your post a week later because of the way that LinkedIn feed works.
And remember, only focus on the social networks where are your clients and prospects are.
It is much better to do two platforms really well than to spread yourself thin on four platforms because you can’t post the same content on each platform in terms of tone, voice and image size.
I know we all operate so quickly, and we want to see ROI as soon as possible, but to measure and achieve real social media success, you just need to give it a bit of time.
Balance your expectations with what you see in your data and engagement.
I know a few business professionals who got nervous that not a lot of people have like their posts within the first few hours of posting the content and so they either edit them furiously or they delete the post entirely. I would really love for you to have more confidence in your posts and stick with them.
You need to give it a little bit of time to see how they do and also if you are not somebody who posts regularly, it will take a little while for your efforts to ramp up.
A lot of this is about personal branding – just done in an online setting. If you post content on social media and expect that you will have great success immediately or a very large following just based on the content alone, you will be in for a surprise.
It took me quite some time to build up a following on LinkedIn and other social media channels, as well as to be in a position where having a blog made sense for me. Having confidence and believing that what you say really does matter is such an important part of social media success. The best part is that anyone can be successful at this!
Especially at the beginning, your social media success will be about trial and error.
Keep doing more of what does well and less of what doesn’t, and try out new things – innovation, repackaging information and uniqueness is key to standing out in a crowded market.
What have you done with your social posts to stand out from your competitors? And on which channels do you focus?