Social Media 101  –   Hold Some Strain – Social Media is a Long Game

You know what would be real nice? If as a business owner, you could post on social media, have that post quickly go viral and the followers just start rolling in.

Reality usually isn’t quite so nice, though.

Of course, virality isn’t impossible. There are many stories of TikTok videos, Facebook and Instagram posts, and of course, tweets that go viral, translating to more customers and revenue for the companies involved.

For most of us, however, it’s a long and steady road to build a viable social media presence. It’s easy to look at your smallish following and wonder whether it is worth it to keep up the effort of making and posting social media content.

To address that concern, let’s look at a few questions you may want to ask yourself:

1) Are my posts getting a reasonable amount of engagement? “Likes” (in their many incarnations), comments, and shares are what help your social media account grow organically. If your still-small following is giving you some engagement, there is good hope for growth. Taking time to go through your analytics would be a good way to check for reasonable engagement.

2) Am I creating effective content? As we’ve discussed in previous articles, creating effective content means content that informs, entertains, inspires, and most importantly, fosters connection. It is a good idea to look back on the content you create and see whether it falls under one or more of these categories.

3) Am I able to consistently create content? For many social media platforms, it isn’t necessary to post every day. However, it is essential to post with regularity. 🕰️ If posting regularly proves challenging, it may be a good idea to hire a part-time (or full-time) social media manager.

4) Is the quality of my content getting better and better? Creating content should be a learning (and hopefully enjoyable) experience, with the quality of content improving with time. However, creating content isn’t for everyone. What you post should ideally be part of a well-thought-out campaign that provides something useful to your audience and presents your business in the best light.  If creating content takes valuable time away from working on the rest of your business and yet you struggle to come up with new and valuable posts, hiring a part-time social media manager or virtual assistant may be a good investment as they can help manage the quality of your social media output.

Keeping track of your engagement is key. Learn more here about assessing your social media ROI, or learn a bit about social media metrics.

An important thing to keep in mind is that while it can take a while to grow on social media, posting effective content consistently all but guarantees growth over time. It’s just a matter of patience and perseverance. 💪🏽