Social media marketing has changed dramatically in recent years. The online landscape is different, and what worked for you once likely won’t work now! Having a strong brand and attracting customers is critical to your business, and simply having a lead magnet and a Facebook page you use once a week is not going to be enough. You need to become the most relevant, top-of-mind option in your space, and I’ve listed 6 things you need to know if you want to win on social media in today's world. 

1. Relevance is the secret weapon.

Once upon a time you stuffed your website with keywords and ranked on the Google’s first page.

A few years ago you had a lead magnet and an email automation and that handled your lead gen issue. In 2018/2019 and beyond, this isn’t enough.

To today’s social media world, you need to be the most relevant option to your customer and create intimacy. It’s not just about getting leads.

It’s about adding value, creating and controlling the conversation, and providing the right solution to the right people at the right time. 

2. Attention = money.

If you’re not attracting and leveraging (the right) attention, you’re not going to be able to compete with everyone else in your space (unless you have a sh*tload of marketing money that you don’t particularly care about that much).

Social media is getting noisier and attention is getting increasingly expensive as more businesses jump on the social media train. Attention is now more important valuable than ever.

Your customers are overwhelmed with more information than they can handle, and as a result they are starting to find information a lot less useful.

This is your opportunity to add raw value with content they actually care about to create loyalty. 

3. Big fish, small pond.

When social media ‘experts’ preach the insane size of platforms like Facebook by saying “there’s 2 billion users on Facebook!” they give the impression that you want to reach as many people online as possible.

This isn’t true - you don’t need to be everywhere to everyone, because that’s expensive and pointless.

You want to be everywhere for the right people. That might only be a few hundred or a few thousand - and that’s all you need to build a wildly successful business!

This combination of being relevant and being everywhere will make your audience know, like and trust you. That’s how you win.  

4. Create more quality content.

If you want to attract attention, you have to understand your audience and then give them what they want. You also have to give it to them natively - what works on Facebook doesn’t always work on Instagram.

What works on Instagram doesn’t always work on YouTube. What works on… you get the point.

It used to be expensive and time consuming to create lots of content, but it’s not incredibly easy and fast take a single video and turn that into a blog article, podcast episode, video snippets, Instagram quotes, you name it…

As a result, you can spend a few minutes shooting a video and create 10+ piece of valuable content.

Read 'How to Turn 1 Piece of Content Into 10+ Epic Posts'. 

5. Your funnel needs to improve.

Having an average lead magnet with 5 emails off the back of it isn’t enough. Think of all the information people get these days. Would you buy from you based on that?

Tying in with attention and valuable content, you need a marketing funnel that stands out and takes your customers on a journey.

It needs to be an experience, a natural ascension from a strange, to a paying customer. Scarcity and countdown timers don’t work anymore.

Give your audience the right content at the right time, based on their mindset and level of engagement. This is how you build trust, and trust is how you build your business. 

6. Play the long game and the real ROI.

In the past you could simply see how much you spent, and how much you made. Whilst this may still work in some scenarios, you need to focus on the invisible, long-term ROI.

That comes from brand awareness and relevance. Of course you still want to generate leads - but you need to spend time and money nurturing them not just selling to them.

I can tell you - not everyone is ready to buy right now.

But when they are, if you have a strong brand they will come to you and not someone else if you’ve been the most relevant, valuable and consistent resource for the past 6 - 12 months.

It takes time to build trust, and you need to become the ‘go-to’ person they need.

If you just focus on leads and immediate ROI, you can’t win in today’s social media landscape.

If you play the long game and appreciate the real value of a brand, you will win and you will crush everyone else who’s too short sighted. Want more on This? Read 21 Actionable Social Media Strategies That Work

If you implement these 6 things into your marketing, you will be ahead of the pack! Remember to add value, be consistent and play the long game. If you want a hand with your social media marketing, click the button below to learn more about our social media services. Until next time!

Mitch Hills @masteredmarketing