This is the first part of a small series on social media. A lot of people struggle with using Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote themselves and their businesses. This brief look is meant as a starting point to better existing accounts.
Before we start, ask yourself a few questions:
How many areas of social media do you have accounts on?- How many do you visit regularly?
- How many friends or followers do you have, and how many do you regularly interact with?
- Is social media helping your career?
I want to see a resounding yes for number 4, so let’s get started!
- Make yourself easy to find and to follow. Becoming easy to find is simple. All of your screen names should be the same. If you are catluvr267 on Instagram and ihatecatz52 on Twitter you have put an immediate barrier in front of someone looking to follow you on different platforms. Accessibility is everything-if I have to search for something for more than a few minutes I give up and move onto something or, in this case, someone else. Don’t make your profiles private. Having private profiles is only useful if you DON’T want new followers. It is also important to occasionally share things between different areas of social media. Sharing an Instagram photo to Facebook, for example, gives people an easy place to click through and also follow you on Instagram. A large variety of websites allow you to automatically find and follow Facebook friends, so take advantage of that and make sure that your accounts are linked.
- Follow other people. If for some reason you can’t utilize your Facebook friends it is still crucial to get a solid base of followers. When you follow someone typically they will follow you back. Friending or following the people that are already involved with your club on social media is a great start. You already know that they like the business, so by connecting with them you can allow them to get to know YOU better and focus the customers on your shifts. Follow people that like clubs in your area. Follow others in the service industry near you. If you are friends with bartenders at a local spot, utilize that. If you are connected to them a customer that finds them online is that much closer to also being able to find you.
- Curate your friend lists. You’ve followed a bunch of people and received followers in return, but not everyone followed you back. This is where one of my favorite apps, Crowdfire, comes in. In the time since I downloaded it I have probably used it more than any other social media related app. Crowdfire enables an automatic outgoing message to each new follower on Twitter. You can add whatever information you like, but I think a simple list of where else to find you is the most effective. It’s also designed to help analyze followers for both Twitter and Instagram. The app tracks which of your followers are the most engaged, and it enables copying another user’s followers. In addition it shows who you follow that doesn’t follow you back, and who has recently unfollowed you. Unfollowing people that don’t follow you in return streamlines your feed and allows you to spend your time and energy on the users who spend their time interacting with you.
- Do not spam tags and invites. People don’t like to see a constant stream of advertisements. They ALSO don’t like to be constantly tagged in posts or invited to events. A lot of people might allow industry friends but prefer that mention of strip clubs is kept from their personal profiles. In addition, if you see the same thing day after day you no longer pay attention to it. If you invite someone to an event every week, soon they won’t be paying attention to your invites. However, if you have never sent an invite but choose a very specific event that is relevant to their interests you are much more likely to see a positive response. Even though we make events on the club Facebook page for every feature and other special events, the only one I actively invited friends to was the pole competition that we held. I have a number of friends-both from working in other clubs as well as teaching pole professionally-that are involved in the pole fitness community, so many of them came to the event.
- Utilize others’ social capital. Do you have friends that have a large social media presence? Utilize that. If that friend gives you a shout-out you will more than likely end up with a whole lot of new people following you. Take photos with those friends and tag them. Also, It’s beneficial to make deals with friends where you share, like, or comment on each other’s posts. People interacting with your Facebook posts directly correlates to more people seeing the post. Liking or commenting on their posts puts you in front of more new potential friends or followers. Building your own social capital is much easier if you can springboard off of other people that you know, and having that image of a ton of followers and loads of interaction is important-social media is all about appearances, after all.
You can find me @theboothbabe basically everywhere!
Next time:
Personalizing your posting habits, sharing valuable and entertaining content, making your posts more effective with your timing, and utilizing hashtags and images
