I have had a lot of people come to me over the past couple of weeks and say to me like: “How the heck did you build this huge social media following? How did you do it? Did you have education? Did you have class? What did you do?” I made a lot of mistakes. I learned in the hard way. I have no social media experience. I don’t have a degree in social media. I don’t know a lot about marketing or advertising. I don’t have big budgets for that kind of stuff. So, instead of telling you everything I did do, I am gonna tell you the 4 ways that I failed forward and helped learned what I shouldn’t do.
1) Not being patient
So the first thing I am gonna tell you is: Don’t expect. The number 1 mistake people make is that they expect immediate gratification. It takes a long time to build up an audience. It takes a long time of people following you and believing you and trusting you to want join you on whatever journey you are on. So it is really really really important that you are patient. That you understand that things are gonna take a little bit of time as you start to build your business. So that is my first mistake that people is: not being patient. That is a huge mistake that people make when they are growing their business online. And what goes along with that is mistake number 2.
2)?Not being consistent
Mistake number 2 is not being consistent. ?Like I said, I have no social media background, I knew nothing about this but I know that when you disappear, your whole audience is gonna disappear too. So, if you are sporadically throwing up post, and you are sporadically giving advice and helping your audience, it should be engaging, and inspiring, funny and something like that, then your audience is sporadically gonna show up. But if you are consistent and you show up everyday, your audience is gonna show up with you every single day which is so so so important, right? Because that inconsistency leads to distrust and I don’t really know what he or she is doing and do I really want to enjoying them if they are not showing up for this every single day, right?
3)?Trying to learn too much at once
The 3rd mistake is trying to learn two much at once. So if you don’t know anything about social media ?don’t try to learn the Twitter, Instagram, and Periscope, and Facebook, and YouTube, and Pinterest all that at once. Learn a platform maybe 2 so have 1 main platform and then a backup platform. And once you are getting consistent leads and working with people on those platofrms consistently, you can move on to platforms 3 and 4. If you are insistent?on being on all of those different platforms get an assistant. If you are being insistent, get an assistant who can help you, you know, kind have changed your maybe Facebook stuff so that it works really well for YouTube or something like that. But don’t put it all on you to learn this stuff all the time.
I personally use a service called IFTTT (If This Then That) and it automatically puts my information out there so while I have main platforms Facebook and Instagram, to help build my business those are mine like bread and butter. That’s where I do my posting. My IFTTT automatically puts my stuff into other platforms for me. So it might not be the best post in those platforms but it is there. So if you want that do something like that but don’t spend your time trying to learn all these platforms when you really need to be concentrating on one or two that ight actually help you grow your business.
4)?Give people a call to action
You need to be giving people a call to action. If you are adding value consistently, if you are getting to know people for working really hard and putting out great content every single day, people are gonna wanna know what it is they can do to join you. Give them an opportunity to sign up for your email list. Give them an opportunity to join you for something free or complementary or take a sneak peak is to what it is that you do. Give them a call to action, right? I am not saying like throw your link up there all the time and say, “Join me for this. Join me for that”. But eventually people… If you are adding good value, adding your content, people are gonna wanna know what you are doing and they are gonna wanna join you.
So, your 4 mistakes to avoid on social media are:
- Not being consistent
- Using too many different platforms at once
- Not being patient
- And not giving your audience a call to action
So I hope that those are helpful for you guys. You can checkout at www.jilliankaplan.com?for more ideas and how to run your online business.
You have to step on some stones sometimes to get to the top!