Sometimes social media feels elusive. Like, it’s there, but I’m not sure why or what I’m supposed to do with it other than endless scrolling. (I know you know!) Or worse, when you’re starting at 0 followers, everything can just feel hard.
When you’re trying to use social media as a method to grow your business, it’s totally different. It’s not just cute photos of your cat. It’s supposed to be strategic and valuable and consistent.
I always see the people with the little-blue-checkmark talk about how “we all start at 0.” Sure, we all start our social media profiles and don’t have anyone following us, but when you’re famous (online or not), your follower number grows by the thousands each day.
Well, that’s not true for me. And, I’m willing to bet that’s not true for you either.
I started my business in December 2020, and as of today (about 14 months later), my social following is pretty low.
Why?
Because growing and maintaining a social media presence is hard work.
Like, real hard.
Figuring out what to post about.
Drafting the post.
Finding a suitable image.
Scheduling the post.
Making sure it actually posted.
Engaging with commenters.
Every.Damn.Day.
It’s time-consuming and monotonous and overwhelming. That’s why most people either don’t post on social media at all or they pay someone a pretty penny to do it.
Also, the social media experts are well worth their fees. (Hi, Chelsea – the amazing lady behind my social media.) It’s not just about posting, there’s the strategy that goes into each image, all of the text, the hashtags, and every call-to-action. It’s a full-time job, and they deserve every penny you spend!
Before Chelsea joined me at the beginning of 2021,I set up an experiment to grow my social media presence over time.
THE EXPERIMENT
I was basically started at 0 followers, I invested in two tools: Social Curator and Planoly.
Social Curator is a done-for-you planning tool created by Jasmine Star. This $50/monthly investment gives you access to fill-in-the-blank social media copy to use on any platform you desire. PLUS, Social Curator has a huge library of beautiful images to add to that copy for a full repertoire of social posts at your fingertips.
Planoly is a social media scheduling platform. You add your copy, image, and hashtags to the platform and choose when you want to post.
BOOM! Social media is easily scheduled.
Well, you have to manually go in and do all of this, but these tools take (1) the guesswork out of it and (2) drastically reduce the time you have to spend on scheduling your social media posts.
THE ACTION
As a part of Social Curator, there is a 1-month challenge to inspire you to post daily. I printed out a “30 Days of Taking Action” calendar with pre-filled topics to help me figure out what to post each day.
Each Friday, I sat down with this calendar and choose a theme or action (based on the calendar), and choose a post. I edited the copy to suit my business and my voice. Then, I chose an image. Sometimes, the image was a headshot or one I already had on my phone. Other times, I tapped into the Social Curator library to find the perfect image for my post.
Then, I went to Planoly to add in the copy and the image. I scheduled the post – mornings seemed to have better engagement.
THE RESULTS
Like I said, each Friday, I scheduled my posts for the week. This planning time took about an hour, so I only worked a week at a time. I only missed three days on this schedule too, which isn’t too dang bad!
Here’s how my social media presence grew from using Social Curator + Planoly:
Starting Instagram followers: 50
Instagram followers 30 days later: 92
84 % growth
Starting Facebook Business Page likes: 82
Facebook Business Page likes 30 days later: 157
91 % growth
THIS IS HUGE GROWTH.
I know my following isn’t huge (YET!), but taking real action every.damn.day gives you real results. These percentage growths are incredible and not to be taken lightly.
Will I do another 30-day challenge in the future? Probably! I do love a challenge. But, for now, I happily pay Chelsea to handle this part of my business so I can work on other things.
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Important: This page contains affiliate links, which means that I may receive a small commission when you use one of these links to purchase the product I suggested. There’s no extra charge to you either! YAY. You Need An Amber only recommends products that we have used and loved in our business.
