#4 How To Win With Social Media

[alert type=”success”]Win $100 To Sweetwater music at http://freemusicgift.com[/alert] When it comes to social media, you need to set yourself up for a win. I like to say social media is one of two things:

It’s either a black whole of distraction… (or)
It’s an open door to the next opportunity

SO in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to win with social media.

That’s today on TIM Talks, episode 4.

A 4 Step Plan For Winning On Social Media

Here’s a 4 step plan for winning on social media. It’s all about building up a library of content over time that you keep recycling into an automated cue.

This then allows you to actually be social on social media, by being more spontaneous and free to interact with other users. This is the conversational side of social media, and it MUST be separated from the content strategy side of social media.

These 4 steps give you a plan. Which is the key to getting that big win.

As the old saying goes….

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Step 1 – Create Social Media Categories

If you’re using your personal name on social media and building a personal brand as an artist, you’d be wise to intentionally think through the different categories you might have for your updates.

This is good for a few reasons:

It helps you see (in step 4) what kind of content your audience resonates with the most, and it keeps you from doing the same thing all the time.

For example: You’ll want to have a category for your releases and promotions. You might call it “promotions” or something similar.

By listing out a handful of categories it forces you to think through the kind of content you post on social media. If all you can think of is “promotions” that means you have been too heavily promoting yourself, which gets old on social media.

Here are some examples of categories I would recommend:

BLOG POSTS

Link up to your free content as much as possible. Blog posts and valuable content at your website are worth sharing with your audience as much as possible. You’re not selling anything. You’re giving things away in this category.

SHARING

Sharing other people’s content is the currency of social media. This would be a category to include other blog posts and things online that you find valuable and worth sharing.

[alert type=”success”]tip: tag the people in the update so they can see you shared their stuff![/alert]

PERSONAL

Pushing Instagram pictures of your family or sharing other personal updates bring people in to your life a little bit more as an artist. Pull back the curtain some and let them know you’re a human!

Step 2 – Create A Content Spread Sheet

After you’ve selected your various social media categories, start building up a content library in a spreadsheet. You would organize new posts according to their category and the social media platform they would be shared on.

This spreadsheet simply stores your content and you would copy and paste into your cue at buffer…. step 3

Step 3 – Keep A Content “Cue” Filled Up At Buffer

With Buffer, you can predetermine times for automated publishing to all your social media accounts. It simply builds up a cue and they go out at the times you set.

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Simply copy and paste your updates into Buffer and they’re setup in your cue, scheduled to go out when you’ve set them to.

Buffer’s free account allows you to connect up to three different social media accounts. To connect more you pay around $10 a month. With the paid version you can also connect RSS feeds to easily plug in either your blog posts or other people’s content straight from Buffer.

Step 4 – Define Your “Win” And Measure Your Efforts

At the end of the day you have to know what your win is. Ask yourself why you’re using social media in the first place. You may have different seasons where you have different objectives. i.e. Get more followers, drive more traffic to your site, etc.

Knowing what to measure in your analytics is more important than simply looking for big numbers to show up in your stats.

Buffer (and most social media management tools) helps you track activity on every update:

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So this last step should really be a reminder to go back to the beginning and define what a “win” looks like for you. After that measure everything so that you can continue doing what works and stop doing what doesn’t.

Testing, testing, 1,2,3….

Can I Get Your Feedback?

I’d love to get your thoughts on these first 4 episodes of the TIM Talks podcast.

Would you please head over to the show in iTunes and leave a rating and review? It will only take a few minutes of your time….

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Thank you!!