For self-employed professionals, trying to use social media marketing without regularly producing good, original content is a waste of time and money. You’ll find plenty of social media “experts” trying to convince you that anyone can use social media to get clients, regardless of whether you have content of your own to share. But that’s simply not true.

The Purpose of Using Social Media Marketing for Service Professionals

1. Stay visible
2. Build credibility
3. Get prospective clients to feel as if they know, like, and trust you.

A lot of what you’ll hear about using social media relates to #1, but simply staying visible to your desired audience is not enough.

Social media marketing is built around making regular posts that keep you visible to a desired audience. So what do you post? You can make promotional posts that market your services directly. But if that’s all you post, no one will follow you. The majority of the time, you need to post content that is educational, entertaining, or evocative (thought- or emotion-provoking). These are the kinds of posts that keep followers interested and allow you to build and maintain an audience.

Types of Content to Choose From

• Blog posts
• Articles
• Tip sheets
• Infographics
• White papers
• Ebooks
• Slide decks
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Other recorded audio
• Graphic images such as photos and illustrations

All of these are suitable social media fodder, although written content has the edge with search engines.

Where is the Content Supposed to Come From?

Here’s what works for service professionals to gain business via social media:

1. Create your own educational, entertaining, or evocative content on themes relevant to your work that will boost your credibility, and allow prospective clients to know and trust you.
2. Post your original content regularly on the social media network(s) of your choice.
3. Less frequently, share relevant content from others that you think will also interest your audience.
4. Even less frequently, make promotional posts that market your services directly.

When you create your own content in any of the forms listed above, you gain instant credibility with your desired audience. By sharing your content on social media, you make yourself and your work more visible. As you post content regularly, you allow prospective clients to get to know, like, and trust you as a professional and a person. This is the social media formula that results in paying clients.

With original, relevant, quality content — writing a blog, publishing articles, producing a podcast, etc. — social media marketing DOES work for self-employed professionals. Without it, trying to get noticed on social media simply results in more online noise for your audience, and more wasted marketing effort for you.

Savvy Business Gals offers a Savvy Social Media Mastery Program that will walk you through exactly how to get results from social media step by step. Book your FREE strategy session with Rebecca today!

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