Check Your Social Media Hustle: Would you follow you?

Social media is THE channel where most direct sales representatives should be putting their marketing efforts. Consider your local advertising, purchase the promotional items that make you happy, but social media and the reach of an enormous audience is where you will find your sales success.

Plus, it's mostly free.

BUT (there's always that but)... you really, truly, absolutely need to hustle it. The Social Media Hustle is very real. You can't just BE on social media, you have to live and breathe social media. You have to work social media. And you have to make social media consumers want to engage with you.

Previous resources I have shared about social media content:

• Social Media Network Marketing, Simplified offers a run down of social media tools and Four Key Social Media Network Marketing Activities: Content, Listening, Relationships, Linking.
• In Create and Share Content on Social Media, I reiterate that you have to have to have to create content, and frequently.
• In Selling With Social Media: Creating and Pushing Content, I offer even more resources to get that content train chugging.

Putting this social media train into practice requires planning, scheduling and implementing.

PLAN

Create valuable content. Consumers of social media content do not want to keep seeing the same content; they are looking for the newest, freshest, most interesting content. Make sure you know your products very well, you know the needs of the consumers that use your products, and that you actively seek the newest information within your product niche. What does that mean? Consider what products you sell: you should know the benefits of your products, and be able to speak to those benefits easily. You should also know about similar products in the industry, and what is currently awesome. Remember, would you follow you?

Example: If I sell lipstick, I'm going to know my lipsticks inside out and upside down. I'm also going to know about other lipsticks: what is available, what colors were just released, benefits of other brands, where you can purchase those lipsticks and how much they cost. Why do I need to know? Because my customers know. And I need to have the same information my customers have, or more.

Create content in many different forms:

• Photographs (Flat Lay, Behind the Scenes, Organic/Natural/Not Posed, etc.)
• Videos
• Infographics
• Blog Posts
• Tweets
• Quotes
• Conversations about products
• Links to industry news, research and events
• Sharing similar content created by others (Retweets)

Adapt your content to fit each social media channel; you will not want to share identical content on all channels every time. This takes some work, but you have very different audiences on each social media channel, and they expect to see the type of content that is suited for that channel.

SCHEDULE

You need an editorial calendar. Every single week, share the same type of content on specific days, make it consistent and stick to it. Every. Single. Week.

Skincare Sunday, Makeup Monday, Throwback Thursday. You've seen these, right? Get on this hashtag content train. Tag your original content and visually appealing images with known hashtags for more exposure, but do it carefully, thoughtfully and on a consistent editorial schedule.

Followers want to see a reliable amount of quality content, but they do not want to be inundated with too much invaluable content. There's a sweet spot, and this chart actually provides soem posting guidelines about how frequently to post for each channel. When scheduling your content, ask yourself, would you follow you?

Channel	Minimum	Maximum
Facebook	3x per week	10x per week
Twitter	5x per day	none
Pinterest	5x per day	10x per day
Instagram	3x per week	10x per week
Google+	5x per week	10x per week
LinkedIn	2x per week	5x per week
YouTube	1x per week	5x per week

IMPLEMENT

Push content our to social media channels. Push current content first, and make it a focus. But don't be afraid to push related content, similar products, and older content that you want to reintroduce into the feed.

Connect with other people to form relationships, grow your network and hopefully, reach your sales goals through volume. Follow for follow, like for like. Comment, interact, engage with other people, and you will begin to see the same engagement with you.

Action, Action, We Want Action. A-C-T-I-O-N! Use a Call To Action (CTA). In every content post, have a call to action. Join. Click. Shop. Save. Login. Follow. Find out more. Subscribe. Download. Email. Snag this. Get it now. You get the idea: Use an action verb that drives visitor traffic to engage with you. If you were a social media consumer, would you engage with your own call to action? Would you follow you?

Visit my beYOUtiful business blog to read more articles about social media and direct sales!