What businesses get wrong on social.

The more businesses I talk to lately, the more I hear how social is not working for them and my question to them is what are you sharing? and 90% of the time they are trying to sell.

Yes, I know the goal of any business is sales because without sales we can’t grow our business but on social we need to think differently about our approach, let me ask you some questions.

How do you feel when you cold-called by an insurance company?

If you don’t like those call, tell me why?

You most likely answered because you know that they are going to sell to you, correct?

It’s amazing how we can forget how we feel when other businesses are pushing us for sales but yet we feel that we need to push our sales constantly onto people through social media, let me ask you some other more question.

Other than business what are you on social media for?

You most likely said to keep up with friends or to connect with friends, so why is your business trying to sell instead of trying to connect with potential clients?

You see we live in a world where most of us are searching for a connection, we are trying to find our tribe, to know that we are not alone which is why community is so important and should be your true goal on social.

Why you should build a community:

Building community builds trust, loyalty and ultimately lead to people telling their friends about your business, it called building brand which is priceless and will last a lot longer than your sales campaign.
Why do you think people have debates over Apple or Android? because those companies have built a community for their brand, these communities are loyal to those respective brands and guess what those people do? they tell their friends about those brands.

So what makes more sense to be doing on social media? selling or building community? in saying that it not that you can’t sell on Social you can but first focus on your community.

How to build community:

To build your community, you need to share content as content gives people something that they can read, relate, learn or inspire them if you make a constant effort to share with your community on social media eventually your community will grow and engage with your business more.

Types of content you can share

  • Quotes
  • Memes
  • Blog post
  • Link (other sites content)
  • tips & advice
  • Video

There are many different types of content that your business can share but the easiest one to share is links, links refer to articles you find interesting from sites that you follow, as long as to some degree it relates to your business and industry, it’s a great way to get started with building your community.

This page is a good example of sharing links, also shares some memes  Sean Clarence – Financial Planner

The best content to create would be a blog post because it will firstly help to establish you and your business as an expert in your industry, especially if you are giving away free advice or tips.

I know to give away free advice for the whole internet to take can be scary but here the thing there are millions of people on the internet, some might take action on your advice most don’t have time to do it themselves and because they like your advice, they might reach out to you so that they can hire you to do it for them, as Gary Vaynerchuk says “jab, jab and hook” which basically means give, give then ask.

At the end of the day if you are sharing content online your community and your business will grow, it’s not going to happen overnight but once you’ve built your biggest business asset (your community) nothing can stop you.

In closing, I just want to say I’m not against selling online just don’t make it your primary focus, sell in a unique and authentic way.

Have you grown a community for your business online? tell us in the comments.

James Fosker

James Fosker

James is the Founder of Fosker Media and Divi Stride, when he not busy working with clients or building tools for the Divi Community he likes to travel and see the world.
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