Up Your Social Media Game
If you want to up your social media engagement game, and have more people notice you for all the right reasons, here are some ways to stand out in all the right ways, and not only have people notice you, but want to work with you:
1. Share useful information with your prospects.
What do your prospects need to know, that will have them consume your content and follow you? What unique methodologies do you teach, that will help them understand more about how you can possibly help them with a solution to their problem? If people don’t know what you do, or the kinds of people you work with, they won’t buy from you. Period.
Are you educating your customers and prospects on all the offerings you may have?
I have a printer that everyone knows he is a printer but he also does signs for businesses, yard signs banners and even can wrap your car with your marketing message. Once he started promoting these other services, his business has grown by 22% this year. This is useful information.
For a real estate agent to grab more attention, give them tips about getting their house ready to sell or tips on buying a house, getting the right mortgage or questions they should ask a prospective agent so they don’t get the wrong agent for them.
2. Add value in discussions and groups.
Do your research and find groups where your ideal prospects are hanging out. Join in discussions and add value to the conversation, but it’s important to note that adding value does not mean that you’re directly putting out a link for someone to join your program. Some Facebook groups utilize daily hashtags, and this is a great way to seed your expertise with interesting and valuable content.
3. Reply to comments.
It doesn’t matter which social media platform you are on, you should always respond to every comment. 
If someone has taken the time to leave you a comment or ask a question, value their time and respond. Imagine if you were at a party and someone spoke to you – would you answer them or would you ignore them? It’s called social media, not ME media for a reason.
4. Embrace and share your unique-ness.
You don’t want to be posting about business all the time. People do business with people they know, like and trust, so share who you really are? Do you like cats or dogs? Do you like morning runs or sunset yoga sessions? Do you prefer summer or winter? How can you infuse your personality and values into interesting conversation openers?
I have found hobbies are great connectors. A mortgage person I help with his social media picked up over 100 new followers on Instagram by telling his audience that he was a “Jeeper” (loves going roam the backcountry in his jeep and finds places to crawl and climb – as a jeeper, you would know what those mean). Use photos and share your loves in life (including some on your family).
5. Use video.
While this video isn’t me, Todd Gross does a great job of explaining why video is so important. Want to see a video of me? Go to my front page and you’ll find two videos that I created for social media and for my web page the explain my why and the four points to a great post.
People want to see who you truly are, and video is a great way for people to connect with you. According to Wordstream, one third of online activity is spent watching video, and marketers who use video grow their revenue 49% faster than non-video users. These statistics are staggering, and show how much people want video. The only next question is are you going to embrace video, or allow your competitors have the advantage?
6. Share others content.
Share the content of others, which will add value to your target market. This not only means you have access to a larger pool of people seeing your content, are offering more value to your audience than you can personally offer, but who doesn’t love having their content shared? This is a great way to have people notice you, and above all it’s a nice thing to do!
7. Ask questions.
Think about your social media platforms as a way to connect, and think about how you’d do that in an in-person scenario. Do you want people to feel like they’re in an awkward meeting room where no one is speaking and just sitting around scrolling on their phones? Or do you want your social accounts to be a place where people congregate, have fun and full of interesting conversations? Asking questions is a great way to open conversations, but don’t make the questions so deep that people don’t want to answer them. People don’t want to be super vulnerable and have the eyes of Facebook judging them, and they won’t step into conversations that make them feel afraid to have a chat. If you wouldn’t ask the question in person in a group situation because it’s a little weird, don’t ask it on social media unless you want to hear crickets.
What about asking about their favorite book (business, mystery, horror, scifi, etc)? Who inspires them? What one thing makes them smile every day? You get the picture,
8. Post frequently.
If you don’t post regularly, your prospects aren’t sitting around wondering where you went. They’ve plain out just forgotten you exist! Post interesting content frequently, and make it your unique mix of entertaining and educational so that people want to engage. How often is too often? It depends.
I use a formula for business posting:
-4 educational posts (tips, helpful information, info to know what more you offer – just no offers)
-1 article post from others that will help the prospect or customer – give them the opportunity to see that you trust other people’s opinion.
-2 personal informational posts (can be introducing the team, telling about hobbies, goals, fun things, awards you or your company has received, etc)
-1 offering post that gives a dead line or a reason to buy today. This can also be inviting them to a seminar or webinar.
If you’re feeling like the world’s best kept secret, it’s time to stop acting like it.
Get out there and share your message in a bigger way. Connect with new people. Open conversations with them. Take your connection offline, and really get to know people.