These top 5 social media tips are proven to benefit the introvert business owner looking to find qualified prospects and harness the busy online marketplace.
Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay. It’s also the best place to market your business when starting out as that is where the greatest number of eyeballs fall.
Social media can be a honey trap, especially as an introvert as it’s very easy to find your energies being drained by constant scrolling and interaction.
While you can build a reputation and network over time, a constant online presence can drain your energy. So you may well be reading this and thinking:
Do I have to do social media, Susanna?
Well, generally, the answer is yes.
If you're working online and serving clients online, then you need to be where your clients are too.
There are 5 benefits of being in the social media space as an introvert:
Staying connected with trends
Showing you are approachable
Sharing your value in social media posts
Being open to new opportunities
Finding new clients
The first 4 benefits will lead to the final benefit of finding clients. You cannot expect to just turn up on one day and go straight to finding clients.
Note: Social media is a medium term marketing strategy.
This means it takes time, focus and consistency. You need to be a regular part of the platform where you wish to find your clients.
Let’s take each of these benefits one step at a time, adding in an actionable tip to put these into practice.
1. Staying connected with trends
You may feel your business is not “trendy” or doesn’t need to follow “trends”. I hear you in the sense that the strategies I share are grounded in hundred year old good business practice.
But to make an impact, stand out and get found, you do also need to embrace the technology that your clients connect on - and show you are connected with them, where they are at, and are part of the conversation.
Most news breaks first on social media now. It used to be TV, but as the internet has taken over, social media especially, this is where you need to be.
SOCIAL MEDIA TIP 1: Take 10 minutes every morning to check in with the trending news stories on social media and ask yourself how you can add to that conversation, then make a post about your point of view, or add to someone else's post on this.
2. Show you are approachable
Business is about people, forging relationships and working together, person to person.
By being active on social, responding to comments, joining in conversations and sharing your expertise with your audience, you will encourage prospects to reach out and talk to you.
SOCIAL MEDIA TIP 2: Having a nice smiling portrait that is up to date is key to being approachable.Don’t be on social media and have a social profile picture of anything other than yourself if you wish to find clients online.
3. Share your value
At the start, many introverted business owners are very worried about “giving away all their secrets” and hold back from sharing the value they hold inside of them.
It’s a common fear, and one that I can assure you is completely ungrounded. To grow a following and find clients online, you need to share your top value points that interest and connect your people to you.
Any published business author will tell you, that although they have given away all their secrets in their book, people will still sign up for their high value coaching programs. Why? Because we all need accountability to get stuff done. You, me, everyone.
SOCIAL MEDIA TIP 3: Share value based posts frequently, 1 micro-tip at a time that shows you as the expert in your area.
4. Be open to new opportunities
This is a huge benefit to social media, as you can connect to anyone, anywhere in the world. The route to conversation is far easier than it ever has been, if you just take that first step and reach out.
If you are wanting to elevate your business online and get speaking gigs on podcasts and talk at online summits (I highly recommend this route), then you start by following, consuming and commenting on the content the hosts are putting out there.
We are all human and want recognition for the time and effort we have placed in creating our content. As coaches, we don’t want to speak into an empty space, we want to create an impact, change and help others achieve.
SOCIAL MEDIA TIP 4: Make sure you describe what you do clearly in your bio on social media, so people can see how you can contribute to the conversation.
5. Finding new clients on social media
Yes, you can find new clients through social media. But to refer to an earlier point, this is a medium term marketing strategy, unless you are going to speed things up by using paid advertising on social media.
By medium term, I mean it will often take 3-6 months of consistent focused posting, sharing your story, your value and you… before you start seeing results.
There are tricks to doing this without feeling your life is being sucked away from you, which brings me neatly onto my next point.
SOCIAL MEDIA TIP 5:
“Use Social Media as a business not a consumer” - Susanna Reay
Far too many business owners spend far too much time on social media!
To have an impact and grow your audience, you do not need to live and breathe every minute of the day on these platforms!
In fact, I’d say that social media really is the introvert’s friend in business. As we no longer have to pick up the phone and do cold calls, or go knocking on doors as the salesmen of old.
Instead, we get to choose very focused communities to engage with, and tag our posts with the interest fields that our people are looking for.
We positively want those not interested to scroll on by. We only want to engage with those who are picking up the value we are sharing or who are genuinely interested in us. This saves A LOT of time and energy, and money, if you are growing your business organically (no paid advertising).
The golden rule to using social media as an introvert:
Choose 1 social media platform to focus all your efforts on for 6 months minimum
Next Steps
To see growth and success for your business on social media, you need to put a strategy in place behind your posts. Every post must be there for a reason, and ideally fall into one the three following groups:
Educate
Entertain
Inspire
Educate and share your value, one easy to digest tip at a time.
Entertain your readers with memes and quotes that they connect with.
Inspire your readers with your story, why you are doing what you are.
Small actions add up over time on social media, so it’s important to set up a posting calendar, and stick to it, especially when you are in the early stages of growing your business.
To help you get started on the social platform of your choice, I have put together a free mini-course “How to Grow Your Social Media Audience in just 5 minutes a day.”
In this mini-course, you will receive one 5 minute action to do each day, over 5 days, that can hugely benefit your business growth, when you do these things every week.
Who doesn’t have 5 minutes to spare every day?
Sign Up here for the free mini-course > https://susannareay.com/5mintasks
If you are active on Facebook, and would prefer to binge through all 5 tasks, I have this training also set up as a free Guide in my Introvert Entrepreneur Powerhouse Facebook Community.
Click this link, request to join, and I will open the doors for you after answering a few questions to check you are human! (I’m not a bot fan!)
