Social Media has been a game changer for many people who want to work at home. From networking for a job or freelance gig, connecting with your ideal home business market, to publicity opportunities, social media is a must-do for anyone looking to build a home based career.
This week, our experts share how they use social media to grow their businesses and work from home. From tips on how to engage potential customers, to keeping your content fresh; these tips will guide you to gaining the most from social media.
Dmitriy Shibarshin
West Coast Shipping
@wcshipping
The most important piece of advise is to have a plan. It can be something as simple as gain X amount of followers this month, or post 1 new piece of content every day.
It’s also a great idea to remain consistent with the types of photos you post and the filters you use. It will give you a unique style which your brand will be associated with.
Abby Sanders
Stone Interiors
@ComeSummertime
1) To make your social media feed stand out, keep your photos visually consistent with similar color schemes and filters. While lack of variety may seem counter-intuitive, a stream of photos that are all visually cohesive and on-brand are much more likely to get a Follow than a series of patchwork shots.
2) Don’t incorporate text on your images. However tempting it is to add your brand name or friendly catchphrase, it cheapens the look of the image itself and actually makes your post look less personal.
Holly Knoll
www.hollyknoll.com
Instagram: @Holly Knoll
1) ENGAGE! This is one super easy way to stand out. Social media is well, social! Think of it as an online cocktail party. I can’t tell you how many influencers and business owners lose out on opportunities to build relationships with their audiences because they do not engage. Lost opportunities mean lost sales and fewer ways to grow your business. Bottom line, write back to each and every comment (troll/negative comments require no response unless you really want to respond) – show your audience that you appreciate them for taking the time to ask you a question or write a thoughtful comment on your post.
2) Post photos of you. Hands down, photos of me receive the highest engagement (likes, comments, shares) from my audience. Does it sometimes feel awkward to post photos of just me? Yes! But, in order to achieve my goals I choose to post what my audience wants.
So many people go the easy route posting photos of things and places. This is fine every once in a while, however, if you want to truly stand out post photos of you – this is your MOST unique competitive advantage!
Get comfortable with posting photos of yourself, especially if you are a personal brand. Maybe even invest in hiring a photographer to photograph you in your element. Your audience really does want to see the face behind your brand, you in action, working behind the scenes, enjoying your life, etc!
3) Relevant and thoughtful content that does any or all of the following: inspires, educates or entertains your audience. Providing value is key to building trust with your audience and will build engagement – which will, in turn, increase your search ranking and have your post seen by more people! Use the captions to establish you as an expert or authority in your space. Your audience will notice that you have gone the extra mile to provide them VALUE and in turn, this will drive more engagement, loyalty, and sales/collaborations/partnerships.
4) Have a plan and work it. Be intentional with your social media plan. I love using CoSchedule to plan my social media posts – this tool allows you to plan across different platforms, write your content, and add your photos. So easy! I’ve found it easy to use a repeating pattern of 4-5 post categories – assigning 1 category per post. For example – travel, tips and
tricks, personal story, behind the scenes. Spreading each of these categories across the month will give you a solid starting point for topics to discuss.
5) Be consistent. Show up daily. No posting and ghosting – it’s that simple. Show up every day on your preferred social media channels to respond to comments, remain top of mind to your audience, and to increase your exposure to more people.
Teddy Burriss
Burriss Consulting, Inc.
@TLBurriss
1) Get Focused. Don’t let your Profile Bio(s) get out of date. Make sure they all support who you are and what you do today. And don’t share or post content to your social media accounts that will disrespect your personal/professional brand.
2) Invest time to update your profiles with relevant information. Especially on LinkedIn and Facebook where you have numerous text boxes to tell your story. Make sure your current experience section, summary sections and other areas of LinkedIn tell your viewer who you are and what you do relevant to how you want to be known/discovered. Modify your past experience sections to tell about what you did in the past relevant to who you are today.
3) Positivity and keep your distance from Chaos/Conflicts/Condemnations – Negativity and all that ugly stuff will diminish if not destroy your personal/professional brand. Stand out from everyone else by never touching that type of social media content.
Note from Leslie
To be honest, I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I really enjoy it when I’m engaged with people, but it can be a huge time suck. And since there’s a lot of noise to compete with if you’re trying to use social media to make money, or stand out in business or a job search, it’s very difficult. With that said, here are my tips for making the most of social media.
- Have a plan. A plan will save you time and make social media easier. Your plan should include what you intend to post as well as when you’ll engage with others by responding to those who comment or by reaching out and commenting on other people’s posts.
- Have a goal. Posting what you had for breakfast is all fine and good, but how will it help you get a job or attract customers (unless your business is breakfast food)? While you can be social and fun on social media, if your goal is to use it to build your work-at-home career, your posts should have a purpose.
- Use each platform in the way it’s supposed to be used. While tools allow you to post 1 piece of content to all your social media sites, not all social media is the same. For one, they all have different optimal graphic sizes. Two, while some simply require posting (i.e. Pinterest), other require more engagement such as a Facebook group. Some can take a lot of posts in a day (i.e. Twitter) where others you’ll be considered obnoxious for posting more than 2 or 3 times (i.e. LinkedIn).
- Analyze what works and tweak or stop what doesn’t. Pinterest is WAHS number one source of traffic…across the board, not just social media. So I focus a lot on that. Most social networks and tools offer analytics so you can see not only how much traffic and results they bring, but what content you share is the most popular.
Do you have tips on how to best maximize social media to build your work-at-home career? Let us know in the comments below:
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Work-at-home experts share their tips for making the most of social media to find a job, build a business, and more. @wcshipping @ComeSummertime @TLBurriss #workathome #socialmediatips” quote=”Work-at-home experts share their tips for making the most of social media to find a job, build a business, and more. @wcshipping @ComeSummertime @TLBurriss #workathome #socialmediatips”]
We do agree that social media plays a great role in promoting one’s brand. We really like the idea that Dmitriy and Abby have discussed here the tip of being consistent while posting types of photos and using filters on social media. At TCI, we often try to use the orange and green background which is our theme color and feel that it really helps in building a unique style associated with our brand.