The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 302: When to Change Your Social Media Strategy

Today, I am diving into social media strategy. Social media is something that is constantly changing and sometimes it can be hard to keep up. We’ll be chatting all about when you should be updating your strategy in order to get the most out of social media.

WHEN TO CHANGE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

BY: MELISSA LIN

Welcome back to another episode of the Fierce Business Babe Podcast! Today we're going to be talking about something that changes a lot, and that's social media. We are going to talk about whether or not you should be making changes and swapping out your social media strategy in your business. We're gonna get into some really fun stuff in today's episode. We’re going to get into how to approach social media updates, how to determine what strategy works for you and your business, ways that I like to balance social media as it pivots, and so much more. I'm so excited, so let’s dive in!

FACING SOCIAL MEDIA UPDATES

The first thing I really want to get into is how to approach all of these social media updates. Social media is always changing. I typically update my Instagram app weekly these days because of all the changes. There are so many changes that are being made and whenever Instagram makes a new change to their platform, anyone running a business in the online space feels that they may need to drop everything they're doing and change their entire strategy when it comes to social media. I'm going to share my thoughts on that and say don't. Do not change up your entire social media because of some new changes that are happening. Something that I can share from my own experience is that social media is not your entire marketing strategy, it's only a piece.

So yes, if you're running an online business, you get to be online, you get to be social, you get to connect with others. However, it's not a make it or break it. If you don't immediately pivot to a new Instagram change, your business is going to be okay. I promise you, it'll be okay. I'm going to get into a few questions that you can ask yourself to determine what strategy works for you. I get clients who are starting their businesses who have never even touched social media and other clients have been on social media for years and years. There's no right or wrong answer.

DECIDING IF YOUR STRATEGY IS RIGHT

You may hear that you need to go live once or twice a week and post ten reels and five captions every week. To be honest, if you're starting your business and you're also in your 9-5, you do not have the energy to do all of that while still trying to have a healthy and balanced life while growing your business. It's not sustainable and it's not necessary whatsoever. When I first started my business in 2014 I was not posting seven days a week or multiple times a day; I never went live seven days a week. I remember somebody telling me that they were going live every single day and one of their mentors told them to go live every single day. Just the thought of that made me feel so much exhaustion, and it's just not anything that would be sustainable for me. You really have to ask yourself what is sustainable for you right now in this season for you. You're going to have seasons in life and seasons in business. As your business continues to grow, you'll be able to hire team members who can support you so you can push out more content. We push out quite a bit of content these days, and a lot of new content as well. I also have an amazing team behind me that supports me and helps me get all of this content out for you.

What is sustainable for you right now at this moment? I would say get as much done as you're able to, but don't run yourself into the ground and lose out on hours of sleep because of this. If you're able to get three posts out a week, amazing. Let's turn that into something sustainable and easy for you and then add another on top of that four times a week. Also, what type of content do you like to create? What is fun for you? I'm not even mentioning the algorithm right now because we first want to create that baseline for you. So what is sustainable for you and what type of content do you like to create? We thrive in our lives and in our business so much more when we're having fun and doing things we actually enjoy.

I actually had a client who was told before coming to work with me to shut her podcast down because it was not something that was going to help make her money, which I completely disagree with. I absolutely love my podcast. We get so much feedback from our podcast and quite a few conversions from our podcasts as well. The podcast was what this client absolutely loved doing. She loved recording podcast episodes and this was the content she had the most fun with. So, what type of content do you like to create? What is fun for you? Again, we thrive and feel so much better in business when we're doing those things we love, so do some of those things. I promise you that you will be able to stick it out for the long haul in your business when you actually find things that you enjoy and create things in ways that you enjoy. You don't necessarily need to follow those guidelines of what Instagram is telling you to do.

Another thing to keep in mind is to give yourself some time for the strategy to work. I say give any strategy 60 to 90 days before making any tweaks. This is something that I shared in a podcast episode a few weeks ago about how to know if your strategy in your business is working. Also, don't tweak the entire strategy, make minor improvements over time. Then I have a few questions I want you to ask yourself on top of some of those baseline questions. What does your audience share with you? What is the feedback from your audience? If you're wondering what that social media strategy should look like for you, I deeply believe coming from a place of service and adding value daily is important. That's what I go for first. What does my ideal client want? What type of content does my audience like to consume? What do they want more of? If our audience ultimately doesn't want whatever the algorithm is pushing, which is often the case, we can't change our entire strategy because of what whichever social media platform you're on decides to do. The changes they make and the features they added to their platforms are based on tons of surveying and research. It's based on millions and millions of people, not your audience alone.

Following and testing some of those changes will help get you in front of more people, but also zoom out and see what that balance is for you and your business. What type of content makes you sales? For us, Instagram Stories is a huge converting piece. If someone's watching your Instagram stories they're most likely a very warm or hot lead and close to converting. So what makes you sales? What does your audience want? Also, what is Instagram, or whatever platform you're on, prioritizing? You can’t just choose one of those. Don't go all in on what your audience wants, but have a balance of the type of content that makes you sales, a balance of what your audience wants, and also a balance of what Instagram is prioritizing. It's not a one and done, it's a balance. Everyone's going to have their own formula depending on what your audience wants and also what makes you sales based off of past sales. As I had mentioned, my first reel wasn't until our new account and that was to experiment. We don't post too many reels, we post a lot of other content. That's because we have asked our audience these questions. We have that balance, so go and do some of those things.

BALANCING SOCIAL MEDIA

I want to share some ways that I like to balance social media as it pivots.We ask our audience what they love about team Melissa Lin, about my social media platforms, and about the podcast. We ask them what they pay attention to and what type of content keeps them coming back, even when the algorithm isn't necessarily presenting it to them. We get as much market research as we can. We do market research often. We asked our audience, what type of content do you want to hear from us? What type of content do you want to see more of and to see less of from us? How do you like to see our content? We push out a ton of value, lots of teaching content as well. The feedback we received from our audience was that it was through captions, infographics, carousels, and also Instagram stories. We focus on those items, while blending in some reels here and there for that balance. So again, it's about that balance in your social media strategy.

So I gave you lots of questions to ask yourself. I want to make sure you get them written down and ask yourself these questions quarterly or twice per year. Again, what is really sustainable for you? What's feeling good for you? What's my audience wanting? What do they want more of? What do they want less of? These are always great questions to ask your audience. I have another example that I want to share in order to create as much evidence as possible for you. I have a client who has grown her Instagram account to over 200,000 followers. all through infographics and carousels. She uses very few reels, even though Instagram is prioritizing reels. So again, just as the rules in business, there's not one right or wrong way to start and scale your business. It’s the same with social media, there's not one right or wrong way to grow your social media platforms.

I actually had a client ask a question in one of our group calls last week about her social media account. She shared that she was hearing that it was a good idea to start a new account because of all of these changes going on with Instagram. In case this is something you've considered, I want to share my feedback with you. What I want to share with you is that if you're thinking about switching things up in your social media strategy or starting a brand new account, first determine the why behind it. Why are you wanting to start a new account? Why are you wanting to completely switch up your social media strategy? Is it because you're hearing other people are doing it? Is it because that's what Instagram is telling you to do? If you want to start a new account, really ask yourself, what about a new account will actually change the current situation? If you continue to make the same type of content, eventually you'll end up in that same position if your account isn't growing, or whatever the case might be for you. Maybe your messaging is off. Is your content valuable for your ideal clients? Are you nurturing your audience in your Instagram Stories? Are you talking to your people in your audience? Are you being social on social media?

Try something new, have fun, and experiment. Know that social media will always be changing, so experiment with the new changes and test them out, but don't change your entire strategy around it. You don't know how long that update will be around. Things are always being pushed out there and then removed. Put emphasis on your audience, nurturing them and adding value to them. If you have 300 followers, that's an entire auditorium of people listening to you. So yes, growth is important as you scale, but it's not the only thing. Zoom out and ask yourself what's actually happening here. Sometimes this means looking at the numbers and looking at the data. Have fun with the content that you have. What's bringing sales in? What's your audience looking for? What feels good to you? Experiment a bit. It's going to be different for each person. Your ideal client is different from everybody else's, your content is going to be different, your audience is different. You definitely get to determine some of those answers yourself as you do some of this market research and talk to your audience.

We've touched on so much today including how to approach social media updates, how to determine what strategy works for you, ways I like to balance social media as it pivots, and so much more. We're already getting excited for next week's episode and I cannot wait to share it with you. We'll see you next week in another brand new episode of the Fierce Business Babe Podcast bright and early next Monday morning!

Topics we cover include:

Managing algorithm changes
Finding what’s sustainable for you
Balancing your content

And so much more!

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