When I was running a digital marketing agency back in 2015, I primarily helped B2B tech brands grow their online following and increase engagement across platforms.
But the truth was that while these companies were getting googly-eyed over vanity metrics and acting as if they’d won the Grammy’s after receiving 50 likes on a Facebook post, they completely lost sight of the numbers that meant the most - their related income figures.
And as predicted, their revenue didn’t budge.
This is when I decided to step away from B2B and instead begin consulting coaches, consultants and service-providers on their marketing strategy. Why? Tons of reasons - there’s way less politics than dealing with big, old-school corporations, they’re more flexible and open-minded to various marketing approaches, they’re actually fun to work with - and most importantly, it’s easy to skyrocket their income before their eyes.
Since I began working with coaches and consultants, I’ve helped multiple clients hit 7-figures in revenue, get featured in the largest media outlets in the world, land international speaking opportunities, and become the go-to choice in their industry.
Here are the best tips I can share for any coach or consultant looking to boost their income, influence and impact on social media this year:
1. Leverage the power of ad platforms
Probably 8 out of every 10 coaches I know hide in fear of the Facebook Ads platform. And to be honest, I can’t blame them - the algorithm's constantly changing, the interface looks different every other day, there are always new features being added, and the rules are more complicated than AP Chemistry.
However, the alternative is to continue dedicating all of your time to content creation, frantically sharing it across social media platforms without a strategy, and praying to the marketing gods that it’ll drive enough organic traffic to land you a few leads this month.
If no one has told you this yet, I’ll be the one to break the news - organic engagement on social media doesn't exist anymore. If you’re relying on organic content to grow your business, you’re wasting huge amounts of time, and holding yourself back from achieving your true potential.
Having multiple ads running on autopilot across social platforms will dramatically increase your online visibility, build your email list and grow your social following - while still giving you the time to manage and scale other aspects of your business.
Ultimately, it boils down to a simple idea - unsuccessful business owners are obsessed with “hustle”, always running around and hoping that the immense effort they’re putting in will pay off.
Successful business owners have leverage, enabling them to focus on what they do best (coaching, speaking, whatever) and letting the lead generation happen without lifting a finger.
This is how you move your business forward.
2. Commit yourself to a content creation schedule
Once you have your ads running, your audience across platforms will naturally begin to grow, giving you an opportunity to now nurture these new leads through high-impact content.
But this time, you can create content with purpose - no random blog posts or live streams here. When you take a strategic and systematized approach, new subscribers will go from being virtual strangers to die-hard brand advocates in an accelerated amount of time.
Here are my simplified steps to creating a content calendar in a clear, organized, impactful way:
- Step 1: Identify what your brand pillars or values are. What do you stand for? What are the core topics that you regularly speak about? Once you’ve identified those central touchpoints, create a Google Sheet and write those touchpoints at the top to create columns.
- Step 2: Without overthinking it, write down content ideas which fall into each category. A great way to think of new ideas is by thinking of questions that previous clients have asked you, using tools like BuzzSumo, or scrolling an industry-relevant publication. For example, if you’re a consultant for emerging authors, under the 'Writing Process' column, maybe you would write in “5 Tips For Overcoming Writer’s Block” and “How To Come Up WIth A Killer Opening Chapter Title”. Essentially, the point of this step is to build up a ton of ideas, so that when it comes time to sit down and create content, you don’t get away with the excuse of feeling “uninspired” or “just not creative” that day. You have tons of killer, on-brand content ideas ready to go, so put them into your content calendar.
- Step 3: Now it’s time to build your content calendar. This can be as easy as opening up another Google Sheet and building out your column titles: 'Day', 'Date', 'Content category', 'Title of content', etc. All you have to do is now take the content ideas that you had in your previous Google Sheet and start building it out, going pillar by pillar. This will enable you to ensure that you're hitting every single brand value consistently, sharing high-value and high-impact information on a regular basis, and that each piece of content has a clear goal. No randomness, no fluff, no off-brand anything. How easy was that? You can now build out your calendar two weeks in advance, have consistent content to share with your growing audience, and convert those followers into clients in a fraction of the time.
3. Consider outsourcing social media tasks
There’s nothing that screams “I’m being productive” like sitting on Hootsuite for three hours scheduling a month’s worth of Tweets. And much like this mundane, yet essential, task, most things you’re doing on social media can probably be outsourced, freeing up time for you to focus on what you do best, and therefore moving your business forward.
Write out everything that you do on social media on a daily basis - managing your Facebook group, following and engaging with important industry influencers on Instagram, sharing recent blog posts on LinkedIn, and writing extensive answers to people’s Quora posts might be some examples.
Now, put a checkmark next to those that only you, with your unique skills, can do. You probably can’t identify a single one.
It could be well worth your time and money to find a virtual assistant, or someone who can take over as your social media manager, so that you can focus on optimizing your social ads, coaching or consulting at the highest level, and creating the most thoughtful and valuable content for your audience.
Remember, you're only as good as your last piece of content - so why are you jeopardizing its quality with tasks that anyone else can be doing for you?
The good news is that you don’t have to be a social media marketing genius in order to have a huge impact and skyrocket your visibility online - but it is going to require you to step up your game by implementing some simple, strategic systems to get you sharing with true purpose.
Hopefully these tips get you thinking on how you can make best use of your valuable time.