Contributed by Melissa Fassel Dunn, founder, Bonita Creative.

8 Steps to get you started with social media marketing

As founder of Milton Neighbors, I get a lot of questions about social media and communications for small businesses and causes. Here are some steps on how to finally get on the social media bandwagon.

It’s unavoidable. You need social media to grow your business.

Do you have a business, but no social media presence? Is it an afterthought? Do you post once every other month and that’s it? The bad news is, people are paying attention. We live in a social media world and your customers will notice if you don’t have a presence. The good news is, you can get started today! You need a plan, a mission and a schedule. Don’t be scared – just go for it! You can always reevaluate and change the plan. And you can always hire a consultant or a part-time social media manager to help you out.

Here are eight steps to get you started.

1. Goal-set. Create a mission statement.

“What makes you weird, makes you unique and therefore makes you stand out.” – Dan Schawbel

This will help prevent overwhelm. What makes your business unique? What do you want to get out of your digital marketing participation? The mission should also reflect your brand identity – if you are traditional in your branding, keep your social media more conservative. If you’re company reflects a modern, funky vibe, relay that in your social media. Keep in mind your ideal customer (sex, age, education level, income level, etc.) when trying to create this statement.

An example mission statement for a restaurant might be “to use social media to educate current and potential customers about our restaurant’s offerings, events, menu items, etc.” Once you have this statement in place, it will make it simple for you to decide what to create and share with your audience.

2. Evaluate your resources.

Who is going to create your content? Who is going to maintain your social media accounts? Who is going to respond to questions and be the face of your business online? Do you have the technical know-how in-house to join the online conversation or do you need help from an outside source? I always advise writing the social media management duties directly into a job description. Don’t forget to be realistic about the hours. If the same person is creating content (photos, graphics, etc.), posting the content, and then managing responses to the content, it’s not going to be 10 minutes a day…

3. Know your peeps.

Where does your target audience spend time online? Facebook pages? Facebook groups? Instagram? Twitter? What kind of conversations, images, and stories do your audience members get most excited about? If you’d never heard of your business, what questions would you have about your business? Find out what your target audience wants and needs, so you can provide the kind of content they find useful and compelling.

4. Create incredible content.

Here are a few examples of content you might create:

• Images
• Reviews
• Quotes from related sources
• Videos
• Blog posts
• Company news
• Infographics
• eBooks
• Interviews, of clients as well as employees

Focus on forms of content that align with your mission statement and your resources and skill sets. Don’t post distorted photos and handmade images if they look like kindergarten work (or hire somebody to do this for you). Content is what fuels social media, so with a little trial and error, you can figure out what your audience likes best. Is it live video? Photos? Links to interesting news? Once you know where your audience spends time and what kind of content they prefer, give them more!

Don’t forget to try new content.

Don’t get totally stuck in your ways. Throw a curveball out here and there because you never know what new content will grab your audience!

6. Create a schedule.

I strongly recommend that you create a schedule. For example, on Mondays, you might post a review. On Tuesdays, a blog post. Wednesdays? You might use the #WednesdayWisdom hashtag and post advice about something related to your business. Thursdays, it’s fun to do #TBTs to past projects. Fridays, you might post something fun and light… you get the idea! You can use a scheduler to schedule posts ahead of time if you don’t have time to do it daily.

7. Adopt a 70-30 rule.

Always spend at least 70% of your time on social media content that is not self-promotional and no more than 30% or less of your time on self-promotional content. If you are constantly selling, selling, selling, your audience will tune out.

8. Focus on quality.

It can be easy to get a little obsessed with the numbers, but don’t become a slave to followers and subscribers. It’s better to have 100 highly engaged, loyal followers than 10,000 followers who never acknowledge you after sign up.

Have more questions? Need some help?

Not enough time to manage your website and social media?

Milton-owned Bonita Creative offers highly customized digital marketing and strategy services that help businesses with their ongoing social media and web marketing needs. Giving you our full personal attention, we can create an affordable web and social media marketing plan that begins with us learning your business and ends with your satisfaction with a consistent look and feel, strong web presence and social growth of your business.

Our services include:

• Digital marketing strategy
• Social media management
• Email newsletter management
• Web design

Learn more at bonitacreative.com/.