If you know how to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress you can use these tools to build your social media business. You need to show your potential clients you know what you’re doing and the best way to do that is to do things for other people like your friends and family that you would do for a client.

Get Started by Helping Individuals

People who are passionate about something are the best people to work with and social media is a great way for them to be part of a community.

• Help some friends get connected and start talking to other people about topics they’re interested in. Foodies, sports etc.
• Do it for free because you’re practising and you’ll be working with them not for them so there will be no expectation on their behalf. You’ll get use to doing something for someone else with their goals in mind.
• Keep track of the time it takes to do each of the tasks so you know what you’ll need to do for clients
• Make a note of the key steps and tasks you do, you’ll need to do this often and for everyone
• Do this for as many people as possible

Help someone who owns a business

• You should do this for free because you’re still learning so let them know you’ve never done this professionally and that you’re keen to understand what is important in their business.
• Keep a journal about the differences between how social media is used personally versus for business marketing.
• Keep track of the time you spend and what takes the most time

Understand the Business and Personal Needs

• You won’t know what the path or strategy is until you get to know the business needs and goals and how people respond to the business, keep writing in your journal so you discover the strategy and can map out a strategy for future clients.
• Focus on discovering the customer funnel and how do they go from prospect to lead to Customer
  Understand the customer need and what they’re looking for – education, how services are delivered, detailed quotes etc
• Prepare some strategy ideas and make a note of client objections to these ideas – it’s probably new to them and you shouldn’t take it personally so learn to let your ideas go – you can always try a modified version on another client

Focus on Communication and Agreement

• It’s very easy to be a bit wishy washy when you first start out so try to focus on being clear and concise at every step
• If you have questions for your client phrase them simply using short sentences where possible to make it easy to answer
• Get your answers in email so you and your client are very clear on the work to be done
• Get new content, strategies and artwork approved BEFORE publishing
• Ask lots of questions and answer them in as much detail as possible

Track your Time

• Discover how long tasks take you so you can perform them at the right prices and estimate the correct timeframes (will be more important when you’ve got more clients)
• Identify any tasks that take a long time (like training on how to use software or progress meetings
• Remember just like an employee you need to justify to the client how long things take or how much work was done
• Search for software or apps  that make it easy and convenient to keep a timesheet and enable you to invoice clients

Journal for Yourself and Your Clients

Keeping a journal is something performed by accountants, lawyers and many other professionals, particularly if they charge for their time. You’ll benefit these ways:

• Make a note of strategies that work and how well they work as well as what doesn’t work and why – this is for your own education.
• Write out the processes and steps you take to complete all tasks – helps in quoting, time management and most importantly when you pay someone else to do the work for YOU.
• Write down tasks that are hard for the business to do or require more of the clients attention –  Writing Blog Posts and responding to Facebook comments
• Use the journal to plan your weeks, months and quarters to keep you on track and focused for your clients and yourself

Measure and Mention your Metrics

Digital marketing and Social Media marketing campaigns provide a lot of analytics information and metrics and it’s one reason it has proven so popular with businesses. Identify the metrics that you find most interesting but be aware of the metrics that your clients are looking for. Think about:

• Visitor traffic, page visits, Bounce Rate and time on site are good examples of visitor information
• Activity Ratio, shares, likes and comments show brand loyalty and community interaction
• Leads and lead source, Conversions, subscriptions and quote requests are actions that are at the end of the sales and marketing funnel that demonstrate the Return of Investment (ROI) for the client
• Match the visitor and engagement metrics to the ROI metrics to demonstrate how you’re helping
• If your working doesn’t result in ROI your clients will question the value or worth of the work, so be ready with comparable marketing methods like DL letter box drops, pay per client advertising, cold calling and networking meetings.
• Explain how your work is nurturing brand awareness, loyalty and referrals for future sales.
• Demonstrate how your work improves Customer Service or helps in the selling process by reducing “explanation time”

Monitoring and Reporting

• Develop a system to track and showcase results
• Setup a dashboard for yourself and a template for a Word document where you can share your results at regular intervals (monthly, quarterly) depending on the amount or work performed
• Demonstrate diligence and create goals by highlighting areas you will explore in the next month/quarter

Share News and Standout Results

Clients are happy to pay if they are getting results and you’ll always get results so share your insights.

• Showcase the results regularly and ideally just before scheduled, it will show you are keen to show the results and not concerned if there is no immediate ROI
• Announce spikes or notable observations as they occur, like something causing a lot of traffic or interest.
• If you see a common and sold statistic schedule a meeting and reveal it to your client as soon as possible. They don’t watch the stats like you do but it will always be at the back of their mind so any major discovery would be welcomed.
• If you’re excited about something that is happening share it with your client so they too can get excited about it

Systemise, Demonstration and Case Studies

If you’re going to spend time and money to learn when you start you should be doing the same as your business continues. The information you learn from every client and each activity can be added to a case study that demonstrates your work and showcases what you can do for new clients.

• Create a Case Studies to showcase your results to prospective clients who are prepared to pay you
• You’ve systemised your work now set realistic prices ideally in packages where you are not paid for your time – After doing the work for free you understand the value so don’t do the work for cheap just because a client doesn’t understand or value it.
• If you give someone a free trial you are seen as generous so state a realistic price but be willing to offer a generous free trial – you will come across as generous.

Start your Business Website and Social Media campaign

After doing all of this work you have something to write about and your notes, comments and blogs will come from an authority mindset.

• Review your journal entries and write about the best bits
• Give away the knowledge you’ve learned and be willing to teach others how to do what you’re doing, after all clients will only pay you once they understand what you do and if they don’t want to do it themselves.
• Focus on finding clients who are willing to pay you what you’re worth, not clients who paying you ONLY because they don’t know how to do it themselves
• Refine your packages by choosing a dollar amount you want to make each month and dividing it by the hours you work

Develop a Sphere of great Social Media Consultants

Even after free trials, paying clients and campaign success you’ll have lots to learn. Technology and algorithms change, new software comes to market and consumers social media appetite changes so you’ll want to keep up-to-date and connected.

• Get to know other social marketing consultants because you can learn from each others experiences and can justify what you’re doing
• Most businesses are scared of competition but your clients like you because of YOU. Other Social Media Consultants can be your friends and possibly work together in a think tank, joint venture or joint marketing.
• Find referral partners you can refer business to when you are not comfortable taking on a particular client.
• Go to Social Media meetups and try to meet your contacts in real life.

Make it Great

If you want to earn the ‘big bucks’ you’ll need to know what you’re doing and be very confident with it but your best advocates will be those you helped when you started out so make sure you ask for referals and testimonials. Teaching clients about what you do makes you even more valuable because you help them make a move into an area they may have been scared about but knew they needed. In the end every business needs to do marketing to generate sales and if you help make the process easier they’ll love you for it.

Remember that you don’t loose anything if you give away great information to those who genuinely seek it. Those clients may remain with you for a long time and understand and value the work you do so you can earn a good income.

Social Media and Digital Marketing Course

Whether you know how to use Facebook, Twitter, WordPress or other social media services or you are just starting out our Social Media Course will reveal some of the techniques used to help real estate agents stand out and stay front of mind. You’ll also learn how to use other people’s content by curating it and how to lower the cost of generating new content by licencing it. Interested? Check out the Social Media Marketing Course..