Rebekah Radice has been in marketing for 20 years. She started back in the days of traditional marketing and is now practically the Queen of Social Media.
When she began blogging back in 2004, it wasn’t long before she realized it was a powerful tool. It was then that she begun to harness it, both for her own business and for those she was working with.
Rebekah assists many businesses as they evolve from using traditional marketing to going onto the World Wide Web. She has helped and still helps many businesses to strategize, build and scale their online presence.
Click here to grab the Rebekah Radice interview transcript >>>
It’s got her every word
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She’s always present on social media. It’s a wonder how she manages to it, whilst running her own successful businesses and helping others to grow theirs.
Find out the secrets to her success so you can realize your full potential on social media. Here are Rebekah’s 7 strategies for social media success.
7 Strategies for Social Media Success
#1 Don’t Dive Into Social Media
People often think that social media is easy. As a result, they jump straight in, head first, without any preparation.
And businesses believe that because they have success in the physical world that it will just follow them online. But that just isn’t the case.
It takes time, patience and a lot of blood, sweat and tears.
Rebekah has spent 7 years building her Twitter presence
If they couldn’t build Rome in a day, you can’t expect to master all the social media networks at once. In such case then, you need to start controlling your territory on just the one. From there, you can start to build your empire.
So if you’re only going to pick one, you need to know where your customers are online.
Let’s say that your potential customers spend most of their time on Facebook. Guess what? That’s exactly where you need to be. You need to go to them, rather than expecting them to follow you like a dog on a leash.
But before you just start spouting content, you need to decide what you want to achieve and how. Otherwise, you’ll just end up scattered with a hit-and-miss strategy.
You want everything you post to delivery results, so you can’t afford any misses. So have a plan in place.
#2 Set Specific Goals
There is also a misconception that because social media is free, there isn’t the need for a plan. When you start out, you need to first answer one question: What is it you’re hoping to achieve?
Is it exposure? More leads? People coming into your shop? Traffic to your website? Getting an audience to your blog and other content?
Then once you’ve made a decision, break it down into specific goals you can achieve. And you need to start managing your time wisely.
The key is to be consistent with the content you put out there, so how often can you produce it? And what type of content are your audience going to want?
Rebekah shares social media tips consistently on Instagram
From there, you can start building your social media presence one network at a time.
Think of each different outlet as a different pillar which your online business can stand on. The more of these platforms you build up, the stronger you become.
And using the right tools for the job will help to make the process easier. Sprout Social, TweetDeck and Hootsuite are great tools for monitoring your accounts and audience in one place.
Rebekah’s Post Planner will also help you to produce content which will be a hit with your fans and followers. It’s hard to know what to produce sometimes, and this tool will help you to target your efforts.
#3 Establish A Voice
Before you can start work on developing a persona, you need to know who you want your audience to be. That will help you to tailor everything to exactly what they want.
Click here to grab the Rebekah Radice interview transcript >>>
It’s got her every word
Rebekah’s early experience on morning radio helped her hone the skills which you need to be popular online. It’s the ability to entertain, communicate with, and reach an audience.
Talking on the radio is very much like social media, and it’s more difficult than you might expect. You need to develop a rapport with your audience without looking them in the eye.
And although you’re broadcasting to lots of people, you still need to make every single person think you’re only talking to them.
And to do that, you need to understand the person and take the time to learn who your audience are.
They will want blogs which are comfortable and relaxed to read. Teach people something new without it feeling like they’re back at school. You need to consider your audience and context, but don’t let it restrict you either. You will want your tone to be fresh and lively. This is key to getting people to keep back. They will enjoy being in your company. Everything from your blogs to your status updates needs to be interesting and engaging. But you also need to understand what the limits are. Where is the boundary of appropriateness? The key is to avoid the trivial. Don’t run your business accounts like you might your personal social media profiles. Are your customers really going to want to see a picture of your breakfast? As a result, you need to learn control. When presenting a radio show, you don’t to turn your audience off. It’s a skill to let your persona shine through without unleashing the trivial. This is what has helped Rebekah become a popular online personality.
#4 Always Add Value
When you’re struggling with engagement rates on social media, many people think the answer is to say more. However, this isn’t the solution, and you may end up putting people off. You need to find the right type of content. It’s quality, not quantity.
Best Ways to Grow Your #SmallBusiness Blog (the Right Way) – https://t.co/9aQwc1feJG #smallbiz pic.twitter.com/ld1Guk5phd — Rebekah Radice (@RebekahRadice) February 9, 2016
Having a social media strategy in place will allow you to regulate yourself. Everything you post needs to align with the overall purpose of what you’re hoping to achieve.
You need to start promoting your business in the right way, and what you post will add value to your brand.
Have a think about how you want your audience to perceive you. You should start considering this when developing your social media marketing strategy.
Then, every so often, reflect on how you’re coming across. What are people thinking of you as a result of what you’re posting?
And is that in line with what you’re aiming to achieve with your social media accounts? If not, then you need to address this issue.
It’s also easy to just imitate your competition online; especially if they have already found success. But that’s not adding any value either. You’re just repeating them, and ultimately, that’s pointless.
Your fans and followers might as well just go and follow them.
To get people coming back time and time again, you need to put yourself in a unique position. And if they’re enjoying your content, they’ll start sharing your posts with their like-minded friends.
And that adds value.
#5 Make Full Use Of The Visuals
There are many reasons why you should be using graphics in your social media updates. This will help you to build a solid visual brand for your company.
Having a consistent color scheme and design makes your company easily identifiable. It will begin to represent you, and your audience will immediately recognize a post from you.
Our color scheme is this beautiful bright orange
When they’re scrolling down their feed, your image or graphics will grab their attention. And if you’re producing content of value, they stop scrolling and start to engage with anything you post.
A standard message could very well just get lost in the waterfall of text people see on their phones and tablets.
So by not using visual branding, you really are missing a trick. It helps your content to stand out and differentiate itself from everything else.
And it boosts your engagements levels. Humans are visual learners, so it’s no real surprise that this has taken off.
You can create an image out of anything. It could be a quote or handy tip your audience can make use of. Or if you’re posting a link to your new blog post, add an image you’ve used or create an image for your blog title.
These aren’t hard to create. And they haven’t got to cost anything either.
Of course, you could use Photoshop to create a stunning image, if you know how. But free online software, like Canva, makes the process easy. And it still creates great-looking visuals people will still click on.
This graphic was created using Canva’s premade free quote graphics
Other tools, such as Post Planner, will add the image automatically to your Tweet as well. It takes the hassle away and allows you to relax in the knowledge it’s done properly.
#6 Engage With Your Customers
Social media used to all be about conversations. Graphics have changed that, but using it to converse with your customers is a good way of building rapport and trust with them.
In the real world, customer service is of high importance. That shouldn’t be any different on the internet either.
It’s important to listen and monitor what your customers are saying about you online. It enables you to build a community.
You can even apply these steps to the Super Bowl!
But it also gives you the opportunity to right the wrongs they may be complaining about.
Or you might notice that users of your service have discovered a problem, or are asking for something new.
Social media lets you listen to their concerns. You can then use that information to develop in the future.
Tools allow you to do this easily. You can use Sprout Social, TweetDeck and Hootsuite to search for any communication which mentions your business name.
Or even specific keywords and #Hashtags. Over time, it allows you to build a clear idea of who your customers are and know them intimately.
But don’t get put off by having a smaller number of fans or followers than your competitors. As I said earlier: quality, not quantity.
It’s better to have fewer people who engage with you, rather than lots who don’t know who you are and ignore you.
So don’t let those statistics put you off.
#7 Take A Step Back To Move Forward
Rather than just carrying on and doing the same thing over and over again, taking a step back allows you assess what you do.
You want your posts to be leaving an indelible mark in the mind of your customers. But are they?
Make sure you’re only posting those things which are of value. And check that you are coming across as you aim to.
If something isn’t working, by taking a step back to get a clear viewpoint, you can discover what needs fixing. Then you can make the necessary changes.
Click here to grab the Rebekah Radice interview transcript >>>
It’s got her every word
Don’t get complacent. Ensure you’re always evaluating your processes to enable you to grow in exactly the way you intend.
And Finally…
Go and connect with Rebekah on social media and her blog. That way, you can see the master at work and get her tips delivered straight to you.
You can also learn lots of practical advice on her blog of all the different strategies you can put in place to grow your business. She tells you everything you could possibly need to know.
If you really want to get a jumpstart on social media, be sure to download Rebekah’s Ebook — 10 Ways to Use Social Media to Virtually Crush the Competition. You can find the optin at the bottom of this post. Once you fill that out, Rebekah will send you that book for free!
And if you’re stuck on ideas for what content you should start producing, check out Post Planner. They will help you to generate new content ideas for your business which guarantee to drive more engagement.
