How to Start Social Media Marketing (4 ESSENTIAL Tips for Beginners)
– You know you need to be on social media. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Some of the most popular
sites out there on the web. Even Snapchat, even though
Instagram is crushing it, it's still doing really well. They have over a hundred
million active users daily. But as a beginner all of this is overwhelming and complicated. So how do you start? Hey everyone I'm Neil Patel, and today I'm gonna share
with you how to get started with social media as a beginner. (gentle music) The first thing you need to do is pick the right social network. Yes there's a lot of them. Whether it's Facebook,
whether it's LinkedIn, whether it's Twitter, it's up to you on which network you want to be on. You could be on all of them
but if you're in all of them you're not gonna spend enough time to make these profiles amazing. You don't want half-assing. In other words you don't
want to be on LinkedIn and do a mediocre job. You don't wanna be on Facebook
and do a mediocre job. It's better to not be on them than it is to do a mediocre job.
Because doing a mediocre
job will get you no reach, I kid you not. Social media five, six years
ago was way easier to leverage to get traffic from. Nowadays their algorithms are so strict because there's so much competition they're looking for the cream of the crop. In other words if you're
not the best of the best you're not gonna do well. So you need to pick the
right social network. And what's right for me
may not be right for you. So the way you pick the social network is look up what space you're in. If you're in B2B the chances are LinkedIn is gonna be the best
social network for you. Twitter is also another
good social network for B2B but LinkedIn typically is better. If you're in B2C,
Facebook does really well, Instagram does really well,
YouTube does really well. Funny enough YouTube works
for both B2B and B2C. Now here's the thing
you also have to look at what content type do you like creating. Are you someone who's
really good with videos. If so you probably want to
start with YouTube or LinkedIn.
Facebook is much more competitive. YouTube you can get the longevity, even if you don't have an audience you don't have a subscriber pool, you can get more traffic over time. Because Facebook people
don't really search on there. YouTube people perform searches
all day long for videos. And your videos can continually get views if you rank higher. If you're going after older demographic, Facebook is amazing. If you're going after younger demographic Instagram and Snapchat are amazing. So now that you have a rough idea of which social network to go after and if you're still unsure
just leave a comment below tell me your business and I'll help answer the question for you.
So that way you're using the right social network from day one. But now that you have a right one, the second thing you need to
do is start creating content. Yes you're like hey I have no
friends, I have no following. It doesn't matter no one's gonna follow if you don't have any content. So start creating content. That starts off with
completing your profile. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
all of them they have profiles. You need to complete
everything from a username to your email address to a
really proper nice image, to a description of who
you are or your company. If you don't complete your profile you're not giving people
a reason to follow. And when you're completing your profile talk about the benefits that people are gonna experience from following you or subscribing to your page.
But as I mentioned it's
all about creating content. So it starts with the profile
and then it gets to content. If you're not sure what content to create, you need to check out your competition. You all have competitors. Even if you're in a new space
like let's say you're Uber and you're revolutionizing
the taxi industry where your competition
would be the taxi industry. So you look at what is my
competition doing on social media. Now I know Uber is already around, they're a multi-billion dollar company. But give me example on
if I was creating uber from day one that would be my competition. You look at your closest competitors. It could be in direct competition but still your closest competitors. You wanna see what content
is doing for well for them, and what contents not. That'll give you idea of
what you should do more of and what you shouldn't is much of. If you don't know how to create content, it could be as simple as status updates, you pulling out your phone
recording a video of you.
Sharing some links. And if you're not sure what links to share you can go to buzzsumo.com. Type in any keywords from your industry it'll show you all the popular articles. That shows you what
people like on Facebook, Twitter all the social
sites which will then give you an idea of what kind of content will resonate with that social
network and what doesn't. Now that you're creating content, the next thing you need to
do is build a connection. And you need to build a
connection with people, it's a social network. Just because you're on a computer doesn't mean you're not
connecting with humans. So make sure you're
friending all the people that you know, following them. You're engaging, right
you're building connections. So if it's your friend already, like there's someone
that you know in person, you can just invite them
to friend you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. If it's someone you don't
know you're gonna have to work more to build that connection. And here's how you do this.
You go and look for all
the people in your space who are putting status updates post. If they have questions respond
to them, help them out. If they have articles
feel free and share them if you think they're valuable, right? You can repost, re-share,
whatever it may be. If there's other people on
these channels, fan pages that are related to your industry even it's your competitors
and they're asking questions you can respond to them, help them out. That's how you build a connection. Even when you're posting on your own page, when someone responds with
a question or a comment, you should acknowledge that they're there. Thank them for leaving a comment.
Respond when they have a question. That's how you engage. And what I found is
over time as you engage what you'll see is a lot of people will come back over to your
site, they'll follow you. You'll engage deeply with them and they'll become a
loyal diehard follower. It's not just about growing your number and having 1,000 followers
or 10,000 followers. Which then gets me into my last tip. And the last tip is don't
go for follower count. It's all about having valuable
connections, personal ones. Because if your first
100 fans or followers aren't that engaged with you, all these social networks
have it in their algorithms where they're looking at a percentage.
So if you have a million
fans but only 1,000 engage they're like whoa this is
a terrible engagement rate. We shouldn't show your content to anyone 'cause no one likes it. But if you had a hundred followers and every single one liked it, shared it and commented, they did
all three of those things, social networks like
Facebook are gonna be like, this content is amazing
it needs to go viral because everyone loves it.
So it's not about having
the most amount of fans, it's about having the most
amount of engage fans. If someone's not gonna
engage you don't want them. Don't just pay models to talk about you so you can get more followers. It's about having the most
relevant diehard fans. And I know as I said that
was maybe the last tip, but here's one more bonus tip for you. Don't push people to your
business from day one. Within three months or
six months by all means you can start talking about your business, slowly mentioning it. Try to get people over to
your site and us customers. You can do simple things
like just sharing a link. But you don't wanna do that from day one. Why would you wanna promote your business when no one's following
you, they're not engaged. If you walked up to a random
stranger on the street and you said, "Hey my name is John.
"I know that you buy toilet paper "because everyone uses toilet paper. "Would you like to buy my toilet paper?" They're gonna be like,
"You're crazy, who are you? "We don't want to buy anything for you." You need to build a connection. No one's gonna buy from you until you build that relationship.
So don't promote your business
until three to six months. I'm to the extreme in which I like waiting nine months to a year. But again you can do it
within three to six months. If you're doing advertising from day one, you can promote your business instantly. But if you're trying to build
up everything organically. You can't promote your
business from day one. So that's it if you're still confused on how to get started with social media, leave a comment below I'll
answer, I'll help you out.
If there's anything I can do to help you just let me know. I truly am here to help you succeed. Thank you for watching. Please comment, share, like, and tell other people about this video..
