What are your reasons for posting on social media?

We live in a world of endless content. Social media and news feeds refresh continually, multiple emails ping into our inboxes every day and the amount of websites available to browse is unfathomable. As small businesses, we often end up doing our fair share of churning out content, posting to social media several times a week, sending out newsletters, and maybe sharing blog posts. But sometimes we get so caught up in this treadmill of never ending information that we forget to step back and think what we’re doing it for.

The social media content we put out should have a tangible reason, or goal, something we want it to accomplish. This will help us be much more structured and intentional about our marketing efforts and help make sure that we actually achieve something with our time. If you regularly do organic social media posts ‘just to keep the page active’ with the vague idea of building an audience, it could be time to re-evaluate your social media content goal.

In the ‘golden age’ of social media, posts didn’t have to be anything special. You could put up a picture of your lunch on Instagram and all your followers would see it. You could put a link to a product on Facebook and actually get clicks. Your casual, non-political musings on Twitter would get seen. And so on. All you had to do to get results was build an audience by posting regularly. But that’s not the case now.

Focusing only on building an audience on your social media platforms no longer gets the same results. Firstly, it’s really hard to do that organically. Secondly, even if you do have a decent audience, not all of them will see your posts—particularly any that focus on selling—or do anything about them if they do. There’s a lot working against this strategy. So what alternative goal could you have?

Rather than the somewhat fuzzy goal of ‘build an audience’, we suggest the alternative ‘get newsletter sign ups.’ Using your social media posts to funnel your audience into signing up for your newsletter, and then using your newsletter to actually make sales, means you have a clear destination for potential customers—definite steps to get them over the line from casually liking any of your posts that come their way, to really appreciating what you can do for them. From your newsletter you can direct to your online store, physical premises, next event, or latest blog post. You cal also offer exclusive content, competitions or early access to make subscribers feel special (because they are).

This doesn’t mean that every post on social media has to be about signing up for your newsletter. But instead of worrying about the amount of followers you have or likes you get, you can concentrate on building an engaged community that will want to hear more from you. Stop trying to sell and start showing how you can add value. Don’t post just to keep the platform active, post to remind people what they love about you. And talk about all the great benefits of hearing from you through their inbox.

Hopefully this short article has made you think about what your organic social media goal is. Even if you decide the newsletter sign ups isn’t the right goal for you, having a definite, well thought out destination with structured customer steps will help you get much more out of your marketing content. Get in touch if you need help getting it in place.