You have a love-hate relationship with social media, but the bottom line is: Does social media marketing really work? Is it worth the hard work and endless effort you invest in it?
Social media is an absolute drain. If you allow it to, it can completely consume your day. With the launch of my new site this September I decided to revamp my social media pages and show more of my day-to-day but also my business coaching and writing services sides. This brought me to the question of does social media marketing really work in 2021? You spend hours writing content and then show up, only to be hit with algorithm issues, running the risk of being hacked, or overshadowed by larger accounts.
The simple truth is: Yes, social media marketing does still work but only with much applied effort and strategy. We constantly spend a lot of time trying to get more followers, when in reality more followers doesn’t equal more sales. I mean I get it, having a large number of followers means that you can pitch to big-box brands and sell yourself that way. But if you have a large number of followers and little to no engagement then it won’t matter.
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The question you must ask yourself is: Do you want to put in the work for social media marketing?
Here is what I have learned by revamping my Instagram account. A slow and steady pace wins the race. Meaning you don’t have to rush to build a large Instagram account to get big-box brands to pay for your services. And you don’t want to have 10,000 followers and are unable to sell even 100 products. Take your time to build your account with genuine followers. You want to build a community of followers that will invest in you through engagement and shares outside of buying your products/services.
Think about what your goals are for social media and create action plans on how to accomplish them. Ask yourself: Are you using social media for brand awareness, to increase sales, to drive traffic to your website? This will help you create a plan to decrease the amount of time you spend on SM marketing.
Social media marketing is great with a plan. Choose two to three platforms you can manage and stick with them as they grow. Remember, your goals are to build a community and brand awareness, not just rack up followers. Clubhouse, a new social platform, is a great way to show up for your business to build brand awareness and a community in a fun and casual way.
So, here are my final thoughts on whether social media marketing really works.
To me, I look at social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter as renting an apartment. You spend years building it up and making it look nice, but you never will own it no matter how much work you put into it. Now, having your own website is yours—you bought it, and no one can take it away. As long as you pay your taxes (hosting), it is your home forever; whereas social media platforms on any given day can lock you out of your account, can change the rules, or just decide they want to change the direction the company is going. How many times is Instagram going to switch it up on us?!
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Why invest so much into building someone else’s business only for it to possibly become obsolete one day?!
Don’t! . . .
While social media is a great marketing tool, don’t let it be your only source of marketing. Drive people to YOUR website. Content writing through a blog and newsletters can help with this. Yes, Facebook and Instagram have access to well over 1 billion potential customers, but hello! have you ever met this company called Google?
Google beats social media any day. Getting organic searches from Google directly to your website is a gold mine. Remember, if a customer is looking up a product or service through Google, your Instagram or Twitter account is not going to pop up in the search; a blog or website with the top rankings will. Therefore, you are missing out on a large market by not having or utilizing your website/blog as an additional marketing tool.
By now, I hope you have an understanding that social media marketing does work with the proper time investment and strategy planning, but its hard work and requires dedication. And don’t get me wrong—the results (in the end) are totally worth it.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue building your own home and applying yourself to growing your email list.
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