Social Media for Business: NEWBIE Starter Guide

 Can you relate to any of these statements?

You feel like you’re too busy working on your business, to focus on Social Media…

You lack the time to get started, or you’ve tried some things but have hit a dead-end when it comes to gaining traction…

You worry that things aren’t going to work out and that you may have to return to the dreaded day job to make ends meet…

If you answered YES to any of these, you’re not alone! In this digital age, these are the common problems we face as business owners.

Here’s the truth: Social Media is by far the CHEAPEST and most SCALABLE way to promote your products and services online – and the businesses that figure this stuff out get the lion’s share of the sales in the modern marketplace.

Word-of-mouth leads can be unpredictable, but a rock-solid Social Media presence can give you a dependable stream of income every month – without the need to fight, battle, and scrape for every sale.

What you need is a rock-solid Social Media marketing plan, so you can live a carefree life on your own terms. Beautiful.

I’ve built and sold 6 figure businesses with free tools and zero ads, and in this video, I’m going to reveal the absolute BASICS for getting your business up and running on Social Media…

…but before we get rockin’, there’s TWO things you need to understand:

The purpose of our work today is to BUILD TRUST, and RAISE AWARENESS.

That’s the name of the game.

This isn’t about chasing fame or popularity, ‘Likes’ don’t pay the bills, and we’re not in this to make Zuckerberg RICHER.

Your mission is to BUILD TRUST with your customers (so they feel comfortable doing business with you), and to RAISE AWARENESS (so your customers know our product or offering exists.)

That’s it. Nice and Simple. Newbie friendly.

So you’re starting from ZERO, what do you need to do first?

The next step I’m going to give you may seem PAINFULLY obvious, but hang in there, I promise there’s a method to the madness…

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so you first need to choose a platform to promote on and fill in all the basic info.

For the demo here I’m using a Facebook Profile. You’ll want to ensure you’ve filled out every field including Email Address, Website, and Intro.

Nice and easy, 5-minute job.

Add your branded logo graphics to the Profile Picture and Cover Photo to the profile – this is the first major step in BUILDING TRUST on Social Media.

If your business is new and you don’t have a logo, I can highly recommend 99 Designs – we’ve been using it a lot for logo work over the past 6 months and have had a lot of success. 

I’ve put a link for that down in the description. You’re looking at $250 US dollars for a very decent logo design that you can use for your Social Media branding – including Profile Pictures and Banners.

Not sponsored at all, it’s just a great resource we use and trust.

At this stage It’s really important to look at BIGGER companies in your niche, to see how your profile holds up against your competitors.

Does your profile look ‘tacky’, dated, or cheap in comparison? If so, work on your presentation, so your profile looks AS GOOD AS, if not BETTER than your competitors.

These are important questions to ask, as every customer will subconsciously be thinking these things when viewing your profile (and making these judgements.)

The customer is deciding whether they can TRUST you based on the presentation of your profile.

It may seem trivial right now, but these simple elements can make or break your marketing efforts. Don’t worry about having no ‘Likes’, all you gotta do at this stage is ‘look good’.

The Facebook profile for my Jagged Social business is brand new, and has next to zero ‘Likes’...  but that doesn’t matter at this stage – all we’re doing is laying down the groundwork.

Most low-end scammers and fly-by-nights put very little attention into their presentation (the kind of people customers want to avoid), so it’s a fast and effective way to instantly stand above the scammers – and build trust in your brand.

Lookin’ good is one thing, but that’s not the full story… we need to add CONTENT to the equation, to RAISE AWARENESS.

What if I told you there was a way to spend LESS TIME posting to Social Media, but gain MORE sales, reach, and engagement than you had before?

Free scheduling tools such as Meta’s Business Suite allow you to do exactly that, but the majority of the business owners I’ve worked with over the past 12 months had no idea it existed…

I want to make sure you don’t miss a trick here and want you to get on board with these amazing tools. Here’s why:

With a scheduler you can spend LESS TIME working on Social Media, it’s as simple as that.

With just 90 minutes, you can schedule out a month's worth of weekly posts, in a single session. You can set the date and times your posts go out and choose what platforms they’re posted to.

Set and forget. Amazing.

This is particularly useful if you’re going to be offline for an extended period, go on holiday, or like most – just can’t be bothered to post at certain times of the day, every day.

Your Scheduler will keep chugging away on auto-pilot, regardless of what you’re doing… 

 This is very powerful because Social Media platforms reward consistency, and this approach will allow you to release content on a consistent schedule.

If you’re posting to Facebook or Instagram for your business, you can go to business.facebook.com in your browser to access Meta’s scheduling tools.

Alternatively, there’s an app available where you can use the Business Suite scheduler on your phone.

There’s tons of tools and features within the Meta Business Suite, but for now, I’d just like you to get familiar with the PLANNER tool.

Pre-scheduling your content with the PLANNER tool will result in more consistent posts on your profile, which in turn will increase your engagement – building TRUST and AWARENESS in the process.

We used Meta for the example here, but you should be able to find scheduling tools for whatever platform you use.

Now the big question everyone asks at this point is ‘What do I post?’

In the spirit of keeping things simple I’m going to give you the best hack I know for increasing reach and engagement on social media – and that’s HUMAN FACES.

Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type (Source: Oberlo), and the best-performing type of visual content is usually HUMAN FACES and PEOPLE.

Let’s break down how posting images of people and faces will expand your reach and the additional benefits you can gain from ‘humanising’ your brand.

First and foremost, as humans, we’re hardwired to recognise and respond to other people more so than any other items or objects.

Social living is part of our survival mechanism, it’s who we are as a species.

Photos or Videos of PEOPLE perform better on social media. I’ve seen the stats on my socials, and the majority of marketers out there report the same.

There’s more to this than a simple biological function though… content featuring human faces has many other benefits, which include creating a sense of identity for your brand, being more memorable overall, and also evoking emotion.

As the old saying goes: PEOPLE BUY FROM PEOPLE, and the mission right now is to BUILD TRUST in the brand.

This is all well and good… but what if you run a BORING business where content ideas aren’t exactly obvious?

I’ll give you some quick examples of how you can use human content to promote your business online:

1. Feature customer testimonials (with a photo of the happy clients.)
2. Post a ‘Founder Story’ featuring a photo of you and a write-up of how you started the business.
3. Share pictures from a convention you’ve attended.
4. Showcase your employees and celebrate their work.
5. Share behind-the-scenes work-in-progress posts (with selfies.)
6.  Or company updates, where you talk directly to the camera.

Visual content could include a single image, a carousel gallery, short-form or long-form video – whatever works best for you, the platform, and the message you want to share.

Social Media, however, isn’t a one-way street…

When you make these posts you’ll (hopefully) get some engagement, and it’s IMPERATIVE that you REPLY TO ALL COMMENTS.

First off, it’s just the decent thing to do.

You don’t want to leave your well-wishers or customers hanging.

Second, your replies increase engagement of the post, thus pushing it to a wider audience.

Third (and most importantly) a responsive business BUILDS TRUST and results in a more engaged and loyal audience.

It’s a no-brainer, reply to EVERYTHING.

So you have a method of posting with the PLANNER, you’re tooled up with some content ideas, and you know to reply to everything – the question now is ‘How often should I be posting?’

I’m not going to recommend going from 0-100 instantly, it will break you, so I’d recommend doing this instead:

If you’re currently posting NOTHING, up your content to once a week.

If you’re currently posting around once a week, up that to 3 times per week.

If you’re currently posting around 3 times per week, up that to 5.

And so on…

Increase your posting frequency to a manageable level, that won’t disrupt or disturb your day-to-day operations.

I’ve looked at my own analytics and there’s a direct correlation between sales volume and posting frequency.

When more posts were made, sales volume was higher, the stats are there in black and white.

Some may worry about ‘overdoing it’ or posting too much, but it’s not something I’ve ever worried about personally…

With the limited reach on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, only a small percentage of your content is getting through anyway!

In marketing, there’s a concept called ‘LAW OF 29’ and the basic premise is that companies must expose consumers to their offering at least 29 times if they wish to win them over.

Social Media is a repetition and volume game, the results you want won’t come in a day, but over time (and repeated exposures) you’ll incrementally build the TRUST and AWARENESS of your brand.

I fully understand how overwhelming this can be if you’re new to marketing. Paralysis by analysis is a real thing, and it can be hard to know where to start, or what to do first.

I feel the same trying to get the camera and mic working for this YouTube channel! Not my strong suit, but I muddle through regardless!

If you still feel stuck and want some guidance, I can help you get the ball rolling. The first few steps are always the most difficult, and its often helpful to have someone to cut through the noise and map out a plan.

Hit the link in the first comment to schedule a chat, I look forward to hearing from you!

So this is the first video in my own marketing adventure, and if you’re still with me here at the end of the video – you’re exactly the kind of viewer I want to share my journey with.Thankyou!

On this channel we drop new Social Media and Marketing tips every week. Zero nonsense, simplified for business owners. If you want to support us, you know what to do.

Appreciate you tuning in, catch you on the next one 👊