Social media can be a giant time suck if you’re not careful, but it can be a good tool for building awareness about your services. But you have to know why you’re using each platform and the goal you have for it.
Note – in this series I’m only talking about getting clients, not students. There is a clear line between those that have the agency model and education model.
I have both and each social media platform serve different purposes for different sides of my business. It’s important that you distinguish which ones you’re using for which purpose.
Social Media platforms to Get Clients
So let’s talk about the social media platform options and the purpose for each:
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Google Web Stories
We have Facebook – this can be a page or a group. A page gets hardly any interaction and you’re only going to use this for ads, if that’s part of your strategy. You can keep up a presence by cross posting your IG content over here as well.
Facebook has lost so many users over the last 2 years that you’ll have to really drill down to ask the question as to if your avatar is here and they are using the platform. They might.
Facebook groups – now this is a great strategy that worked a few years ago. It was a great awareness builder. We grew our simple pin strategy group to over 20K and closed it. First, it was too much time to manage and we had some great systems. Second, we had such good engagement that it lead to more moderation needs – people dropping links, getting snarky and mean, etc. My team has never felt more relief the moment we closed it.
We have since moved to using Facebook groups for our free workshops and challenges but those are quickly closed. And it’s solely for the education side of our business not services.
We also host a paid group associated with our membership. Can you see the thread….it’s all education based.
Now, here’s what I’ll say if you know your avatar is on Facebook – really be clear about what you want them to do once they get to your site and the type of content they are engaging in.
We have found through our data that this audience is a lot like Instagram, maybe just a bit older. They want free content, may purchase a product later but very rarely does it lead quickly to services.
Instagram – the great time suck for me. If you look at my data time tracking on my phone it’s most IG. I have a personal account and a business account. I spend a lot of time on my personal account.
We see IG as an awareness and authority builder. 5 years ago someone would have gone to Facebook to check out your business. Now they go to IG.
We use it for reels, lives, and posts as well as stories. We like the DM’s for connecting with people but have found it’s mostly for our product and membership purposes. Not so much for service based leads.
It’s super fun to use the platform and show my personality but that’s pretty much it.
Note about these two above – I have turned off all notifications for both of these. I have also used Kill News Feed for Facebook on my desktop and have for years. I get in and out without being noticed.
Pinterest – this is a lead generator for our products. We take our content (blog posts) and share that on Pinterest so people will sign up for our email list, buy our small products or join our membership. I have a team member manage this for me.
We also use Pinterest as a testing ground for theories we hear. It’s fun to see if they work on my account or not.
We also leverage Pinterest Ads to our freebies. This leads to purchases of our membership.
Twitter – well….this is what I like to call the vitriol of society so I prefer not to play in this space. Pinterest has more users than Twitter and only 2% of the US population uses it. Plus, they are really mean. I’ll stay away. You may feel differently but it’s not my jam. I have an account set up there, check it 1x per month but that’s it. We tested marketing over there and it didn’t result in much.
LinkedIn – this is where I know magic happens with clients. I haven’t even remotely mastered it yet but here’s what I see on the surface.
DM’s are slimy but I have come across legit stuff and connections. These are business builders who are looking for other service providers to help them. I know that you have to get your voice over there.
I would say this has the most potential for getting clients. It’s where CEO’s, CMO’s or higher social media team members are hanging out. Put this app on your phone and don’t turn the notifications on but definitely check it.
TikTok – I don’t see this as a client generator but an awareness builder. I don’t have any intention of dancing or teaching on this platform right now. I know people who do and it leads to students but haven’t yet heard of any people of get clients off this. But it’s so new and maybe I haven’t heard of their stories. If that’s you and you love TikTok for getting clients I’d love to hear your story. DM me on Instagram @kateahlshow
Right now it’s not on our list but have grabbed the user name.
YouTube – Guess who owns this…Google! If SEO is part of your content strategy then you want to start thinking about YouTube. We are using it right now for our educational products but supporting our efforts on Google with the added boost to content.
Google Web Stories – I don’t know anything about these except they are a beast to figure out. If it supports the SEO game and that’s where clients are coming in then it’s worth the investment. I just haven’t added them to our suite of options.
The Bike Wheel
Okay, now that we have the players in the social media game it’s time to decide which one you’re going to use.
Think of a bike wheel. There’s lot of different spokes and they all serve a supporting purpose but in this case, you don’t have to use them all at the same time.
I’ll tell you how I started and built out from there.
First, I started with Pinterest. I had no content but it’s when you could pin other people’s stuff and it helped you grow. Plus, I wanted to have a Pinterest account so clients could see that i was active there.
Second, I used Facebook when people could still see my Facebook content. I did lives and then a year later I inherited the Facebook group we grew to 20K. I used the group for a data sourcing purpose. I was seeing certain things in my data and wanted to see the data of what other people were doing. Did it line up or was I way off base?
That took a lot out of me. Not only to really guide and curate the culture but because I had some really mean interactions. In fact, as I was writing this out I remember some people sending me the nastiest DM’s when we would call them out for complaining and being so negative about Pinterest. It’s no wonder we were all relieved when we closed it.
Then Instagram in 2017. We leaned into this but didn’t really have the right content at first. We were showcasing our clients content but realized that’s not what people wanted. We made the decision to lean into this for our product sales and awareness. It’s worked great! We made a push to get to 10K followers to get the link and then right before we got there we got the link. We had to reset our goals and it became an education tool.
Since then I’ve really had to decide how much time I want to spend on it due to the time needs. And sometimes it’s really exhausting.
I do love stories and connecting with my audience so I actually think I’m going to spend more of my time there going forward. Plus, we also use it for ads.
Now I’m working on business development and awareness so I’m going to spend more time on LinkedIn. I’ve gathered resources and that will be my investment for the last half of 2022 to see what the results are. I’m following companies I want to work with and will potentially pitch them in DM’s but we will see.
Creating your social media marketing plan
- Pick what platform you want to invest in
- Set up your strategy and tactics
- Pick your KPI’s
- Set a time frame for when you want to hit those KPI’s and evaluate
That’s it – what social media platform do you use to market your agency? DM me on IG, I’d love to learn more about what’s working and not working.
