Social Brilliant

Laura Roeder
Founder, MeetEdgar.com

 Table of Contents

Introduction ...................................................................................................3

Chapter 1: Brilliant Blog Posts, Powerful Podcasts, and Vivid Video............ 6

Chapter 2: Shareworthy Strategic Blogging ................................................17

Chapter 3: Brilliant Social Media Posts ........................................................27

Chapter 4: Strategic Social Planning ...........................................................38

Chapter 5: Growing Your Reach ..................................................................54

Chapter 6: The Social Brilliant Master Plan .................................................67

INTRO Are you ready to become

socially brilliant?

I created this resource to help you develop a clear, confident understanding of

social media marketing strategy, but also to provide the tools you need to actually
start putting your own strategy into practice. Too many entrepreneurs spend all
their time reading about tips and tricks and tactics, and they never develop that
fundamental, strategic understanding of how all the pieces come together — but
that’s not going to be you.

Over the course of this ebook, you’re going to learn how to develop, implement,
and maintain your own social media strategy — a plan that fits you and your
business. A plan that helps you see more leads and sales from social media, and
track exactly where they’re coming from.

It all comes together when you follow the six core modules of Social Brilliant,
which we tackle over the following six chapters.

 You’ll learn:

how to write brilliant blog posts,

and why they matter so darn much

the importance of shareworthy,

strategic blogging (and how to do it)

what makes a brilliant social media post

and how you can write your own

the strategic science of long-term

social media planning

how to leverage social media to grow

your reach and build your audience

how to bring all the pieces together

in your own Social Brilliant Master Plan

Just remember, though — the success of your business depends not on what you
know but on what you do. I know how easy it is when you get a resource like this to
get excited, dig in, learn the concepts, pore over it for hours, and then...not
change at all. So as you make your way through the six core modules, we’ll take
periodic action breaks, so you can start getting the wheels in motion and be

ready to rock out your own socially brilliant strategy before you hit the final page!
Don’t think of this course in terms of what you’re learning — think of it in terms of
what you’re going to do differently.

So, do you want to go from no leads on social media to getting leads all the time?
From spending hours a day on your social accounts to having it all automated and
ready to go? You’ve got the tools you need right in front of you — so let’s get
started!

Laura Roeder

Founder of MeetEdgar.com

 Chapter
Brilliant Blog Posts
One

I know what you’re thinking. This is supposed to be a social media book... right?
Why are we starting out by talking about blog posts, exactly?

Easy. A successful social media strategy starts with a blog — and that’s where a lot
of entrepreneurs make their first mistake. One of the biggest reasons that a lot of
people don’t “get” social media is that they’re bypassing the blog — and if you try
to dive right into the social networking part without building a blog first, you’re not
giving yourself the foundation you need.

People don’t share links to great websites — they share links to great
content. If you want to use social media to drive traffic to your business, you
need to regularly produce blog content — this includes videos, podcasts, info
graphics, text articles…whatever type of content you want to create — which you
and the people in your audience can share. Think someone is going to share the
link to your about page or your contact page, just because they love you so
much? It’s not likely — but give them interesting blog content, and they’ll link to
you over and over again.

WHAT DO I MEAN BY A “BLOG”?

You’re smart — you know what a blog is. But right now, the word “blog” doesn’t
completely encompass all of the different types of content that are out there. There

are videos, podcasts, infographics — the list goes on! There are a lot of different
types of content, and all of them can live on your site’s blog. Whether you prefer
writing text-based articles or creating vlogs, throughout Social Brilliant we’re
going to call it part of your blog, which is a part of your website (as opposed to an
external site, like Blogger).

BLOG

Videos Infographics Podcasts Text

So why bother putting all of this stuff on your blog, and putting your blog on your
website? Why not just have a YouTube account for videos, or an iTunes profile for
podcasts? Because you want to drive people toward your website — after all,
that’s where they buy from you! Too often, people send their audiences to
YouTube, or to file hosting sites where they can access an infographic or a
podcast, instead of embedding that content on their own blog. When you do that,
you’re sending people away from your website — the exact opposite of your end
goal. Even if your content is hosted somewhere else, don’t send your audience
there — embed it in your blog, because that’s where the commerce happens.
Check out this handy dandy chart to see what I mean:

That big Death Star-looking thing on the left? That’s your website. It’s got your
blog in it, as well as other pages, like your purchase page, your contact page,
your offerings, and so on. And over on the right are your social media posts. They
should be driving people toward your blog. From the blog, visitors make their way
further into your website — they’re checking out your products, reading about your
business, subscribing to the email list, and generally making themselves right at
home. None of that magic can happen if you’re sending someone to YouTube
instead of your blog. That’s why you always want to plop your own content into
your blog, and to link to it there.

Of course, if you’ve never blogged before, this all probably leaves one big
question: “What the heck am I going to do with a blog?”

WHAT THE HECK YOU’RE GOING TO DO WITH A BLOG

First off, let’s address what you’re going to blog about — because if you’re new to
this whole thing, you might be drawing a bit of a blank. Fortunately, you’ve got
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plenty of options. Your blog expresses the point of view, the values, the
personality, and the philosophy of your business. People get to know you through
your blog. It’s the place where people find out what you’re all about, so make sure
that it shows who you are, and that it appeals to your customers!

Did you catch that last part? I said, customers. Not “other people in your
industry.” Not “peers,” or “competitors,” or “your mom who is oh so proud.” Because
this isn’t social media for fun we're talking here. It’s social media for business, and
all of the strategy you’re going to learn here is designed to drive sales and
engagement and leads toward your business. So when you’re brainstorming
ideas for your blog, think about what your customers would enjoy. What would
they want to read about? What’s going to bring them closer to a sale? It doesn’t
matter if you’re an e-commerce site where the sale begins and ends in the same
place or if you’re just trying to get signups for your mailing list — the purpose of
blogging is driving traffic toward your site.

THIS ISN'T SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FUN

THIS IS SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS

Which brings us back to that initial question — what you’re going to blog about.
This is the gazillion-dollar question, and while the Blog Topic Planner included with
Social Brilliant has a handy little cheat sheet, let’s start by going over your talking
points one-by-one, so you can get the full picture.

Your philosophy

Why do you do what you do? What matters to you? Why do you offer what you
offer, or make the decisions you make? One of the keys to really connecting with
your audience is the “know, like, and trust” factor — and sharing your philosophy
is one of those “know, like, and trust” type of topics that helps people get to know
you, get to like you, and get down to business with you! When they see your
personality, you earn their trust, and you get closer to earning their business, too.

Behind the scenes

Our businesses can seem pretty mundane to us, because we live with them day in,
day out — but they can be surprisingly interesting to other people! Audiences love
behind-the-scenes content from the businesses they’re interested in, and that
includes yours — this is how someone in your audience gets to know, like, and
trust you. Sharing little pictures from your office or inside peeks at how you make
your products may seem a bit silly at first, but it can make a big impact! So don’t
be camera shy — showing off your human side is the perfect way to help your
audience form an emotional connection with your business.

Stuff that shows off your expertise

Your blog should demonstrate that you’re the top dog in your industry. It’s okay —
you don’t have to feel like a showoff for doing it!


I wrote a blog post about receiving a "top 100

entrepreneur under 30" award, and the lessons that I
learned in building a million-dollar business (cont.)

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 (cont.) in my twenties. It helped show me off as a

leading expert in my industry, and it helped people
get to know me a little better, too! So, if you're
making waves in your industry, feel free to talk about
it on your blog — after all, how else are people going
to find out how amazing you are?

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also just post things that you think
your customers will be interested in reading!

Don’t assume that your business is too boring to sustain a blog, or that your
customers don’t want to hear about you or what you do. Just remember that no
matter what you’re blogging about, the big capital-p Purpose of your blog is to
drive social media links back to your website. So anything that your customers
are going to be interested in clicking on and sharing on social media is great
fodder for your blog!

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W h a t

What would you blog about if you worked with your

hands for a living? That's the question answered by
this online metalworker and handmade jewelry artisan.
Beth Cyr maintains an active social media presence,
and she's not just posting pictures of her products —
she's posting pictures of herself actually doing
things like melting the gold, shaping the rings, and
making the magic happen on a daily basis. And while
that sort of everyday stuff probably seems pretty
boring to her — after all, she's doing it all day,
every day — to me and the other people in her
audience, it’s really cool! We get to see how the
jewelry that we love is made and see her expertise
and genuine love of her work in action. It makes the
audience feel a real connection not just to the
product but to the person behind it and her business.
That affinity — which comes from the real human
moment that we share — is exactly what people are
looking for before they commit to buying. And that’s
what your blog can achieve on a regular basis.

would you blog about if you worked with your hands for a living? That’s the question
So you may be starting to think of a few ideas for blog posts, but that leaves one
big question unanswered: how often should you be posting these things?
Ultimately, the answer depends on one simple thing: quality over quantity. I’m
going to repeat that, just for extra emphasis. Quality. Over. Quantity! Because
most new bloggers post either way too often or not at all, and surprisingly, one of
those actually leads to the other.
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 POSTING TOO OFTEN

CAN LEAD TO
NOT POSTING AT ALL
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You start a blog for the first time. You’re pumped!
You’re committed! You’re so jazzed about it that you’re posting every day. Good
for you, right? Except that sooner or later, you get burned out. You get busy. You
run out of ideas. That daily blog goes from being exciting to being a chore, and
you’re falling behind in your business because you’ve been so focused on it. So
you write less. And less. And less. And then you just sort of stop altogether.

This is where a lot of businesses get tripped up. The solution? Stick with a
sustainable schedule — one that you can actually maintain over the long haul.
You’re much better off writing one amazing post that takes three times as long as
three mediocre ones. As you read on, you’ll see that you don’t need a ton of blog
posts in order to have a really active social media presence and to drive a lot of
traffic back to your site. Putting a new post up on your blog is not your only
reason for posting on social media (but we’ll get to that later).

Start out simple, with one post per week. Can you manage that? If not, one or
two a month is totally acceptable. Again, you’re better off hunkering down and
making something that you’re really proud of once a month than you are churning
out mediocre post after mediocre post. Because no matter how many crummy
posts you publish, people aren’t going to link to them just because they’re there.
People link to content they actually like. If you need to, ask someone you trust to
read your posts before you publish them, and get their feedback — you might be
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surprised how much a fresh set of eyes can help!

Of course, just wanting to blog on a consistent basis isn’t going to help you make
any progress (because you know where the pathway paved with good intentions
leads). If you aren’t developing an actual, concrete plan for the future, you’re
planning for failure. An editorial calendar is the best way to make sure that you’re
setting yourself up for success — that’s why I included one with Social Brilliant!

When it comes to marketing tasks like writing blog posts, so many of us go into
panic mode. We decide on a schedule — maybe we’re going to write every
Monday — but we procrastinate, and when Monday arrives, we have no idea what
to write about, and it doesn’t get done.

Don’t let that be you! You know that you’re going to have to update your blog,
right? A magazine editor knows what articles they’re going to run for the next
issue. A TV news producer knows what stories they’re going to film and broadcast
for the next week. And you need to know what you’re going to write about before
the day you publish it on the web.

That’s where the editorial calendar that came with Social Brilliant comes in. This
calendar is just a fancy way of making a plan — it allows you to plot out your blog
posts ahead of time and stay organized, so you always know what’s coming.
Think of it this way: if you’re blogging once a week, and you sit down and come up
with 12 blog topics and plot them out on your calendar, you’ve just set yourself up
for the next three months. All you need to do is come up with 12 ideas for things
your customers might want to read about — doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

The most important part, though, isn’t just filling in the calendar — it’s actually
using it. Plan it out quarter by quarter, and four times a year, take a good, hard

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look at it. Ask yourself, “Do I think my audience is going to dig what I’m writing
about?” Once you feel good about your topics, actually writing about them is way
easier — even if you’re sitting down and writing the post on the day it goes live,
the hardest part is already taken care of before you even sit down at your
keyboard.

Publishing blog posts is only one part of the Social Brilliant plan to pull traffic into
your site, though. Once you write a post, you can log into your social media
accounts and actually start promoting it.

HOW TO PROMOTE A BLOG POST

Once you’ve written an amazing blog post (or recorded an awesome video or
podcast, etc.—remember, it’s all kinds of content!), you probably just want to log
into your social media accounts, put out the link once, and move on with your life,
right? Wrong!

WRITE ONCE. PROMOTE TWICE.

(and MORE!)

One of the worst things you can do with a blog post is to under-promote it —
because you absolutely do not need a new blog post to justify a social media
post. When you’ve created a blog post, you’ve created a leverage-able piece of
content that you can share over and over again. That’s why writing high-quality
content is so important! If you write a post that isn’t very good — and you know it
15

isn’t very good — the last thing you’re going to want to do is promote it for the
world to see. If you write something that you’re proud of, though, and that you
think your audience will love, you’ll be more inclined to share it again and again.
You’ve heard the phrase “measure twice, cut once,” right? Well, when you’re just
starting out with blog posts, you should write once, promote twice. As time goes
on and you build up a bigger library of posts, you’ll be able to revisit older ones and
promote them again for a new audience — but we’ll get to that later, in Chapter
Four.

For now, take a look at the Brilliant Blog Post Breakdown worksheet that came
with Social Brilliant, and you’ll see how you can integrate social media right into
the blog writing process. When you do, you’ll be ready to promote long before the
time comes when you have actually have to publish a post on Facebook or
Twitter — and you’ll have options, so you don’t have to worry about repeating
yourself.


You made it! You survived Chapter One! Now it’s time
to put what you’ve learned into practice. Before you
go on reading, take a look at the Blog Post Breakdown
and the Editorial Calendar worksheets that came with
Social Brilliant. Come up with two or three ideas for
blog posts and start filling in those worksheets to
see how it feels. The sooner you get in the habit of
filling out your schedule, the better, so don't tell
yourself you’ll get to it later — give it a look
right now, and then you’ll be ready for Chapter Two!

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 Chapter
Share-worthy Strategic
Two Blogging

We’ve covered what to write about, as well as how to plan out your schedule in
advance and avoid any panic situations down the road. Now it’s time to take your
blogging knowledge to the next level. This chapter will show you how to really
focus on each individual blog post, looking at what makes a great post that’s
bound to get shared over and over on social media.

First of all though, let’s get one common question out of the way: why are shares
so important? Easy — it’s free advertising. When other people share your content,
it’s like you have your own private street team across the globe, broadcasting
links to your website and telling people how awesome it is at the same time, all
because they just plain want to. It’s like a free, automated marketing machine
that works 24/7. Because face it — you’re busy.

To paraphrase the immortal words of rap superstar Big Daddy Kane, being an
entrepreneur ain’t easy. You don’t have time to be on social media for hours a day,
looking for new opportunities to promote your own content — you need other
people to share your stuff for you. That’s how you market your business without
spending a single second of your own time, and that’s why it’s so important that
you write the type of quality posts that get shared. Just look at these examples:

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These are real tweets from real people, and they all point to articles that we
wrote. These posts aren’t saying that we're having a big sale, or otherwise
directly promoting what we sell — they’re indirectly promoting it. They’re
increasing that know, like, and trust factor, which helps move people along the
path that ends with a purchase. They even help establish us as an industry
expert! But even if they weren’t doing any of those things, they’re still sending
traffic back to our website.

That’s the power of a share. The more people in your audience who feel
compelled to share what you’re doing with their own followers, the better your
publicity. And this chapter is going to show you how to encourage them to do it.

WRITING KILLER HEADLINES

An article’s headline isn’t just the first thing that its readers notice — sometimes,
it’s the only thing. Statistics have actually shown that people don’t always read
an article before they share it on social media, because the headline alone is
enough to convince them. I’ll admit that I’ve done it myself — when a headline is
18

compelling enough, your readers can feel confident sharing it before they even
take the time to read the rest!

PEOPLE DON’T ALWAYS READ AN ARTICLE

BEFORE SHARING IT ON SOCIAL MEDIA
This is why becoming a master headline writer is one of the smartest ways to
spend your free time in your business. Writing a great headline is part of being a
great copywriter, and being a great copywriter is being a great communicator,
marketer, and salesperson. The bottom line? The better you are at writing killer
headlines, the more results you can expect for your business.

Having trouble channeling your inner Shakespeare? That’s okay, because when
it comes to headlines, nobody is born knowing what to do — and practice makes
perfect. The best way to hone your headline-writing skills is to write a lot of them,
and to do it for every single blog post. When we write blog posts at my own
company, we think of at least 10 headlines for every single one — and we’ve
been at this for years! Some are bound to be better than others, of course, but the
more you force yourself to think of new ways to convey your message, the more
creative — and effective — you become.

Your ongoing homework assignment is going to be not only writing more

headlines than you need, but also paying close attention to the headlines that you
click and share. Really focus on your own online behavior — what piques your
interest? What do you notice headlines doing to grab your attention? The ones

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that really attract clicks and shares are the ones that make us curious — whether
you’re reading serious business articles or just lazy afternoon time-wasters,
determine what the headlines you love are doing to make you curious and
influence your behavior.

CRAFTING SHARE-WORTHY CONTENT

In Chapter One, we started to focus on what type of content should go on your

blog — now, we’re going to take a closer look at how to create posts that really
resonate with your audience and encourage them to share.

Length

Don’t get hung up on things like word count when you’re writing a blog. The perfect
length for a blog post is like the perfect length for a piece of string: as long as it
needs to be. Generally, the more in-depth, the better, but that doesn’t mean you
should use 1,000 words to answer a question when 100 words will do — it
depends on the context. A brilliant blog post could be three sentences long, and a
terrible one could be three pages long — and vice versa. Pick your topic, answer
the question thoroughly, and call it a day. That goes for video and podcast, too —
quick and informative is way better than rambling on just for those extra minutes.

How do you pick your topic? Start by thinking of what your customers are asking
you. What are the questions they have about you, your products, your services?
Do you run a photography studio, and people like to ask what the average day at
work is like for you? Do you sell custom artwork, and people ask about your
process or your equipment? Do you create online courses, and people want to
know how you record your video content? When you tackle a topic like this, ask
yourself at the end, “Have I answered the question completely?”

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Emotion

A post that evokes a strong emotion like awe, sympathy, or anger is perfect for
share-ability — but it may not be perfect for you. You have to put it in the context
of your business and the context of your reputation. I, for one, don’t like to write
posts that inspire that type of emotion — it doesn’t fit my business model, and it
isn’t my style. If you’re raising awareness for a cause, however, or challenging
your readers to think of something in a way that they maybe haven’t considered
before, then evoking an emotional response can be just the ticket.

Usefulness

There’s a lot to be said for good-old-fashioned practicality! Information that’s

useful gets shared, period. Remember that what seems like everyday common
knowledge to you or someone in your industry may come as a shock to your
followers — you’re creating content for your customers, not other people with your
background! Giving them an expert’s guidance can seriously increase your
share-ability.

Your Reader’s Image

There’s a performative aspect to social media — it’s how we carve out our
identities online. That in mind, think about how your post would reflect on the
reader who’s sharing it. Sure, we may not always like to admit it, but most of us do
care at least a little what others think of us — and we all like to be the type of
person who’s known for sharing cool, interesting things.

It may not be part of a conscious plan to present ourselves in a certain way, but we
nonetheless make little micro decisions throughout the day based on what we
think is worthwhile — and how we expect others to interpret what we share. So
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 as you’re creating content, think, how would it make someone feel to share it? And
how would it make them look to their followers?

Visuals

Visuals are another critical aspect of any content piece, especially when you want
to make it share-worthy. Visuals catch the eye and keep people engaged, and
they give your readers more to see and share. Look at a site like Buzzfeed, or a
social network like Pinterest — they rely heavily on visuals, and they’re heavily
trafficked for it. Follow their lead and illustrate your points with visuals whenever
possible.

Make a graphic to go with a headline, or use a stock image — legally, please! —

to accompany your post. Make graphics out of key quotes from your article, or that
visualize the things you’re talking about. Writing about wiener dogs? Show us wiener
dogs! Writing about headlines? Take some screen-caps of your favorites. Blog posts
are a place for show and tell, so don’t be shy with visuals.

Pull Quotes

Pull quotes are perfect for increasing share-ability and readability. Here’s an
example of what I mean:

“PULL QUOTES BREAK UP YOUR TEXT AND

HIGHLIGHT YOUR MOST IMPORTANT POINTS.”
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See? All it takes is a nugget of wisdom or inspiration that makes sense out of
context — basically, something that people can pass along and imparts some of
the information you’re sharing. Visually, it breaks up the text of the post, too —
experiment with highlighting a pull quote with a stylized font or a bold color, or
even turning it into a graphic.

Becoming a Social Butterfly

The final piece of the puzzle when you’re optimizing for share-worthiness? Social
integration. Social sharing buttons on your blog are an absolute must — that’s just
blogging 101. Without those little buttons on the side or the bottom of every single
post, you’re not maximizing your potential, plain and simple!

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

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Somebody clicks on that Twitter logo at the left, and they get the pop-up box in
the middle of the screen with the headline, a link to the article, and even a link to
our Twitter profile. This helps us not only drive traffic back to the blog post, but also
gain more Twitter followers — not bad for one little button, right?

You can also take a more proactive approach to encouraging social shares by
contacting anyone that you mention in your blog post. If you write about a
particular person or company, let them know they’ve made an appearance on your
blog — they’re likely to share it! After all, wouldn’t you share a link to a blog post
that mentioned your business? Reach out on social or even via email to let others
know you mentioned them.

You can even send links to your work directly to the people you think will be most
interested, whether they follow you or not. Maybe you know someone— or know of
someone — who has a demonstrable interest in a certain topic that you’ve
created content about. Feel free to send that person a message directing them
toward your post! Say, “Hey, I know that you’re really into this topic — did you see
my latest post about it? I think you’ll like it!”

If you’re going to reach out to people like this, though, you have to be genuine. If you
send the same blanket message to hundreds or thousands of people with no
apparent interest in what you wrote about, you know what that’s called?
Spamming. And nobody’s gonna love you for it.

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This can all seem like a lot to tackle at once.

“I don’t have time to do all this myself,” you may be

thinking. “I’m busy, yo!”

I get it. I really do! And that’s why I want you to

understand right now that you do NOT have to do all
of this on your own. (Thank goodness, right?) But
what can you realistically outsource? What are your
limits? Just because you’re writing posts on your own
doesn’t mean you need them to be a bigger time suck
than they have to be. Some things are easy and cheap
to outsource, so I say, if you can do it, do it.

Take graphics, for example. Remember how we mentioned

how important they are? Well, it can be pretty time-
consuming to dig through stock image libraries or
creative commons collections looking for the right
images. But, if you know what types of images you’ll
need for certain posts, an intern or a freelancer can
find them for you. The same goes for graphic design —
a freelance pro can whip something up way faster than
you can, and it will have the professional touch that
not just anyone can emulate. (cont.)

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(cont.)
You can consider outsourcing the nuts-and-bolts
stuff, too, because that takes time and a certain
level of expertise. Implementing and coding social
sharing buttons, uploading and optimizing blog posts,
and other important tasks are serial time-wasters if
you’re just starting to figure things out — but you
can easily find someone to help you out and make
everything look and function its best.

Now that you’ve learned some of the secrets of share-

worthy blog posts, it’s time to practice making your
own ideas even more likely to be shared. Choose one
of the blog posts from your editorial calendar and
write 10 different potential headlines. Don’t have
any ideas? Choose a blog post from another website
that you’ve recently read, and brainstorm alternative
headlines the author could have chosen. What are the
different ways that these headlines appeal to a
reader? Which one is your favorite, and why?
Remember: practice makes perfect.

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 Chapter
Brilliant Social Content
Three

By now, you should be feeling a lot more confident in your blogging — or

vlogging or podcasting — abilities. So let’s really get down to business, shall we?
This chapter is going to be all about social media posts.

Social media posts are all a little bit different from platform to platform (Facebook
displays things just a bit differently from LinkedIn or Twitter), but they’re the same
fundamental idea. No matter the site, here’s the problem most people have when
they’re getting ready to start with a social network — they never stop getting ready
to start! Your blog is the home of your online content, and social media posts are
how you push that content out into the world so they can be seen and shared.
The way your account is set up matters way less than the way you use your
account. So stop messing with your avatar or your background image and start
focusing on your social media posts

Yes, I know, you want everything to be perfect before you start. And I don’t blame
you! But too many people get stuck moving in the wrong direction on social
media because they won’t stop tinkering with how their accounts are set up.
Instead of spending time focusing on a strategy, people spend hours trying to
think of a snappy Twitter handle, or fiddling with the cover image on their
Facebook page. And while those are factors in the social media universe, it’s
time to refocus our direction. Forget about those details, because they really,
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really don’t matter as much. You can keep tweaking them down the line, but your
strategy is infinitely more important. So let’s focus on that, starting now!

WHAT CAN YOU ACHIEVE WITH GREAT SOCIAL MEDIA

CONTENT?

You already know from the previous two chapters that a social media post can
drive traffic to your site. Remember this diagram, and how it demonstrates that
social media posts funnel traffic to your site through your blog?

Well, this is what happens when your social media posts get shares: Now you
have more and more roads leading to your site — cool, right?

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While you learned in the last two chapters that you have to write high-quality blog
posts to get shares, that isn’t the only thing you have to do. No matter how brilliant
your blog content, if the social media post linking to it is totally blah, nobody’s
going to feel compelled to pay attention, or to share it. Sharing is key to both
driving traffic and building your audience, and writing brilliant social media posts
is a huge part of the equation.

I’ve mentioned a few times already that linking to new blog content shouldn’t be
your only reason for posting on social. Depending on your business, social media
posts could also mean linking to new product pages, or announcements. Maybe
you’re telling your audience about a sale, or a new team member, or a new
location for your business. This is where you can share anything you want with
the people who will care the most!

Think of it as relationship-building on a large scale — a way of interacting with

hundreds or thousands of people at once. At the same time, though, you can give
someone one-on-one attention — when a follower comments on a post that was
seen by thousands of people, you can quickly, easily, and seamlessly reply
directly to that one person.

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Social media posts are amazing tools because they can drive tons of traffic to
your site, expose you to new customers, and increase that know, like, and trust
(KLT) factor we’ve focused on a few times already. With a single post, you can
have people loving your business, clicking on your link, and sharing that content to
expand your audience.

This is why you can’t listen to the voices that say that social media is a waste of
time, or that it’s just something for messing around with. That couldn’t be further
from the truth! No other marketing, promotional, or advertising platform allows
you to achieve all of these things for free in front of such a huge audience. If you
can write 280 characters, you can earn serious bank for your business.

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So what are the best social media posts? The ones that help people fall in love
with you and your business, that send people back to your website so they can
engage or buy, that make people share, that educate your audience — essentially,
KLT is the key to moving people through the buying process. Now, I’m not saying
that a single social media post has to do all of those things — if it does any of
them, you’re on the right track!

KLT
(KNOW + LIKE + TRUST)

Ultimately though, on social media, it isn’t just what you say that matters — it’s
how you say it. People use networks like Facebook and Twitter to have fun — not
to read up on corporate bulletins and press releases. So a conversational tone
and even a bit of cheeky humor generally go a long way. Out of everything you
write for your business, your social media posts should be the least formal — try
to sound less like a business, and more like a person talking about a business.

Because hey, that’s what you actually are! When you write a social media post,
try reading it out loud afterward. Does it sound like something you would say on
the phone, or to a friend? If not, you may need to rethink your tone, or that post
may not reach its full potential.

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WRITING FOR YOUR GOALS

When it comes to your social media posts, I want you to think backwards — start
with the end result in mind. What do you want your post to achieve? A post about
a particular product, for example, might exist to drive traffic to that product, or to
educate your audience about it, or to promote an offer. Alternatively, if you’re
sharing a post that’s simply a few words of wisdom — something that you consider
a part of your philosophy — you could be encouraging shares or even just
building up your KLT.

So how do you write a really, really click-worthy social media post? What’s the
secret? Well, remember what we learned about headline writing in the last
chapter. When you’re trying to drive traffic, all of those same lessons apply to
your social media posts, too — in fact, sometimes a killer headline and a link are
all it takes to drive visits and shares!

Your goal should always be to arouse curiosity, because that’s what encourages
shares and brings in the traffic you’re looking for. Just like your content, you want
your social media posts themselves to get shared — whether it’s a Facebook post,
a retweet, a repin, etc. It doesn’t have to have a link in it to get shares — in fact,
some of the most shareable posts are those that simply impart some wisdom.
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Statistically, audiences tend to gravitate toward the inspirational and the funny.
While you may feel like sharing a goofy video, a funny article, or an inspirational
quote is irrelevant to your business, and it can get a ton of shares — the trick is
not to overdo it. Because if you only ever share the funny stuff, for example, the
people in your audience who care about your business may stop paying attention
— and the people who do pay attention may not care about your business. While
you can make it part of the mix, don’t get carried away.

If you’re going to post something funny and irreverent, your next post should
always be a link back to your blog. This ensures that after you get yourself in
front of that bigger audience, you get back on message. It also helps weed out
the followers who aren’t going to benefit your business — you’ll drive relevant
traffic to your site, and any followers you lose probably wouldn’t have benefited
you that much anyhow.

WHY BAD SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS HAPPEN TO GOOD

PEOPLE

When you draft a social media post, do you hesitate to click on that "publish”
button? Don’t be afraid! Just remember, the worst post is no post. This is the
number one reason that people struggle to make social media work for their
businesses! They publish too seldom, or not at all, and that’s one of the worst sins
you can commit with your social profiles. Sure, you’re logging onto Twitter every
day, but are you posting there? Or just consuming? Are you using social media,
or are you actually active on it?

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 REMEMBER:
THE WORST POST
IS NO POST
Don’t convince yourself that everything you publish has to be brilliant. Yes, I know
the book is called Social Brilliant, but bear with me, okay? Not every single post
that you send has to reveal some profound new truth about the universe.

It’s okay to make small talk. In fact, that’s often what works the best — sometimes
a simple question like “What city do you live in?” can get a big response!
Something a little deeper, like “What are your feelings about string theory and the
multi-verse?” Well...that's a little bit harder to answer on social media. Don’t fret
about making it too deep — just make it you.

And don’t forget to mix it up, either! I see a lot of accounts — and maybe you’re
guilty of this — that only have links to their blogs. They use their social media to
push out new blog posts whenever they have them, and that’s great, but that’s all
they ever do. And that’s boring.

Your audience doesn’t want that! Similarly, too many companies are either all
business or no business when it comes to their social media — do you know
which one you might be, or which one you risk becoming?

Some businesses are overwhelmingly self-promotional — if a company only ever

posted about itself, you’d have to be a pretty devoted fan to want to follow it on
social. On the other hand, if you’re so afraid of sounding sales-y that you rarely or
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never self-promote, your audience isn’t getting the info about your company that it
needs — or the links that lead them back to your website!

HAVING FUN WITH IT

Some of the most important advice for using social media effectively boils down
to three words:

DON’T BE BORING
Almost any social media post can be made more interesting. As an exercise, let’s
take a remarkably boring post and see how we can improve it, one revision at a
time.

These are all potential social media posts for the same exact content. The first

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one probably won’t get many shares — or even many clicks — but the last one?
That’s got the curiosity factor. (Get it? Curiosity, cats? Ah, never-mind!)

Who can resist sharing that? Who can resist clicking that link? Who the heck
adopted 22 tabbies at once?

When you spend a little extra time making your social media posts more
interesting, that’s every bit as valuable as the time you spend making the blog
post itself more interesting. If you’re going to take the time to create stellar
content, you may as well take the time to make your social media posts effectively
promote it, and get shares, clicks, and engagement. You want to be a star on the
social media playground? Try different things, and remember — it’s supposed to
be fun!

Every audience is different, of course — including yours — so experiment and

learn what works best for you. Write and use different social media posts for a
single blog post, and see which one gets the best reaction. Embed images and
video in your posts — all it takes is a little copy/paste! And check those statistics
on the reg, so you know how people are responding. Does your audience love
video embeds or ignore them? Do you get more shares when you include an
image? It’s virtually impossible to predict, so don’t stress out now about what may
or may not work, or what might be best for the ever-changing algorithms used by
sites like Facebook — just try different things and record your results, because
you and your audience are one of a kind.


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So you’re seeing now how driving traffic, encouraging

shares, and increasing that know, like, and trust
factor are all connected — and what a big part your
social media posts play in that equation. Before you
move on to the next chapter, choose a blog post from
your editorial calendar and practice writing at least
five different social media posts promoting it.
Remember — be creative, appeal to your audience’s
curiosity, and sound like a human!

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 Chapter
Strategic Social Planning
Four

Now that you know a little more about what goes into a stellar social media post,
we’re going to get into the nitty gritty details of actually making your social
profiles work for you. It all starts with a social media calendar — check out the
Social Brilliant Spreadsheet as you get started. Because just like you filled out
that editorial calendar for your blog posts, you need to do the same for your social
media posts — and actually writing those and publishing them takes time, and
can seem overwhelming. The trick to handling it all without losing your mind?
Automation. Don’t let that psych you out, though — automation is the
cornerstone of Social Brilliant, and you’re about to see just how amazing it can
be.

HOW EXACTLY DOES THIS AUTOMATION THING WORK?

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: automation does not mean that your
social media is in anyone’s hands but your own. It doesn’t mean that a robot in a
warehouse somewhere is writing and publishing your content, or that you’re
outsourcing your work to someone halfway around the world, or that things are
getting posted without you knowing and approving first. Automation tools simply
allow you to upload your social media content in advance, set the times that
they’re going to publish, and move on with your life. But what are the even bigger
advantages of automation?

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It makes sure things get DONE.

We’re all super busy entrepreneurs, and a lot of us are the ones wearing pretty
much every hat when it comes to running the business. We have a lot to do! And
that means that a lot of the time, we have big plans for our social media and our
marketing that just never get done. We forget. We don’t have the hours. Plugging in
and publishing new social media posts all the time throws off our groove. When
you automate your social media, you can pretty much set it and forget it — that
way, wherever you are and whatever else you’re busy with, you can rest assured
that your social media post are actually being taken care of.

You can review your content before it gets published.

When you publish to all of your social networks on the fly, things slip through the
cracks. Typos. Bad links. You don’t really get to go back and edit, and
strategically, you may not be able to see how every post fits in the Big Picture —
its tone, its purpose, its message. Sometimes, you may even post things that you
regret later on, like a joke you realize was insensitive, or a criticism you wish
you’d kept to yourself after you cooled off. When you schedule things in advance,
you buy yourself the time you need to do it right.

You can see what works — and repeat your successes.

Many scheduling tools give you access to data that social networks themselves
don’t — information about clickthroughs, for example. When you utilize those
features, you can get a clear picture of what works and what doesn’t, so you can
repeat your successes again and again. Along the same lines, a scheduling tool
also gives you the freedom to do what you need to do, when you need to do it.
For example, you may live across the globe from most of the people in your
audience. It may not be 9 AM where they live until it’s 5 PM where you live —
and that means you’d be burning the midnight oil on a daily basis if you were

39

publishing posts in real time. No matter where you and your audience are, you
won’t always be at a computer during peak posting hours for your business —
with an automated scheduling tool, you can make sure your posts go up anyway.

ARE YOU SURE AUTOMATION IS OKAY?

The idea of social media automation can sound pretty scary, and even a little
reckless — like putting the car on cruise control and taking a nap! There are even
some social media experts out there who say you shouldn’t automate at all — that
social media is all about the immediate, authentic human connection, and that
automation makes you lose that.

I’m here to tell you that this isn’t true.

Like I mentioned before, when you automate your social media, you still have
complete control over everything. That means extremely high-quality social media
content that you’re writing and scheduling ahead of time, and nothing more. The
only thing being automated is the delivery method, and there’s nothing
inauthentic about that.

The reason that automation sometimes gets a bad rap? People often try to over
automate. Instead of just automating their social media posts, for example, they
automate their interactions, too — and that’s when things get weird. The same
automated reply goes out to everyone who mentions your company name on
Twitter. Someone on your team posts messages and replies under your name
without you knowing. Inauthenticity starts to creep in, and when it does, people
notice — and it doesn’t look great. You can automate how the message gets
delivered, but when it comes to the message itself, you should always have a
direct hand in it, whether you’re reviewing a post that someone else wrote or you’re
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responding one-on-one to a customer.

This is one of the first questions a lot of people

ask, and one of the simplest to answer: do not have
more than one Facebook page. Don’t have more than one
Twitter account. Don’t have more than one LinkedIn,
Instagram, or Pinterest account! Accounts across
multiple networks are great, but multiple accounts on
any given network? Nuh- uh. And I know what you may be
thinking, because it’s the same thing a lot of people
think: “I know you said that, but my situation is
different! I have multiple projects, and multiple
sides to my business!”

I’ll get real with you here — every time someone says
that, about a year later, that same person is in a
panic, because they’ve gotten in over their head. They
made it too complicated right at the start, and now
they’re stuck, because their audience is segmented and
spread out all over the place — they have to keep up
with every account, because if they don’t, they’re
losing a huge chunk of their followers. One of the
most common examples of this is when someone has a
Twitter account under their own name and another under
their company’s name. Makes sense, right? You’re you,
and your business is your business. Two Twitter
accounts, and people can follow whoever they (cont.)

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 (cont.) want. But here’s the problem: for every single

social media post, you don’t know which account to
post it under. Because a lot of things could go either
way! Should that inspirational quote be posted by you
personally or by your business? What about the new
blog link? You end up having to choose arbitrarily one
or the other, which means planning and writing double
the amount of social media posts — that, or you post
the same content to both accounts, which will annoy
the heck out of anyone following both. They’ll
unfollow one — or both— and then your audience is
split up all over the place.

So please, trust me when I say to make only one

account per network. Think of it like this: if things
really take off, and you have so much to share that
you really need multiple accounts on one network, you
can always add them down the line. But if you start
more accounts than you need right now, you’re forcing
yourself into a corner that you can’t easily get out
of later on.

EATING THE ELEPHANT

Feeling a little better about the idea of automation? Good — now let’s get back to
the idea of the social media calendar. How do you go about filling it up so that you
have really high-quality social media posts publishing several times a day, every
day? Well, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

That’s how you’re going to fill up your social calendar — by breaking down your
content into bite-sized, manageable categories. This is the bazillion-dollar strategy

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that makes Social Brilliant (and MeetEdgar!) work for anyone, and it’s about to
make your life a lot easier.

These are what I think of as the core social media categories. Now, there are
broad categories, and you’re almost certainly going to tweak them a little depending
on things like your business, the social network you’re using, and so on — but
they’re a great framework for getting started.

Blog Posts

This is the obvious one, especially because you’ve already learned so much about
creating and promoting blog content. You need to be regularly publishing posts
back to your own blog content — do not get shy about self-promotion!

Announcements and Promotions

These two are equally valuable parts of your social media mix. You don’t want
your feed to be strictly promotional, but these types of posts are critical for
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drumming up interest and sales — and we’ll address how to strike the right
balance of the categories later in this chapter.

Just like with your blog content, you shouldn’t be shy! Plenty of people get scared,
at first, when it comes to promoting themselves on social media. “I don’t want to
annoy my followers,” they say. “I don’t want to be spammy.” This chapter is going
to help you avoid doing any of that, so for right now, consider promo posts fair
game. Just take a look at these examples.

The first one is an announcement — we’re just mentioning a Twitter chat that
we're hosting, reminding people to join us. We're promoting our event, but not
actually selling anything. The second one is a sale — we know that our followers
are people who are interested in our product, so if we're offering a discount,
they’re the exact people who would want to know!

General Posts, Quotes, and bits of Wisdom

Who doesn’t love to be inspired, to inspire others, or to learn a new random

factoid about the universe? If you want something share-worthy, this is it. Post a
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news article that’s maybe not directly related to your business or industry but is
genuinely interesting and valuable. Post a quote from an expert in your field (or
your own bit of advice—remember, you ARE the expert!). Post a meme that
cracked you up or a gif you really enjoyed.

Now, a lot of people find inspirational quotes or memes cheesy and insincere, or
they don’t think that they’re relevant to their business. That’s okay! You should
only share inspirations if they’re true to you and your business. But if you feel so
inclined as to share them, the words of great minds and insightful innovators have
a real way of inspiring people on social media — and they get shared like crazy.
And shares get your social media profiles in front of new potential followers.

You can also ask your followers a question to boost engagement and have a
chance to interact directly with them. Questions are a way of sparking a
conversation, because remember — conversations are important in social media!
It’s a way for people to form a relationship with you, and to nurture that KLT.
Sparking questions gets you answers, which allow you to engage in a
conversation with your audience.

Recommended Reads

Sharing other people’s content (OPC) is last, but not least, because this is one of
the most important categories of social media posts. This is when you link to
content that isn’t yours, whether it’s someone else’s blog post, a video, a news
article — whatever! It can be useful. It can be funny. It’s whatever you think your
audience will appreciate and want to share.

Like we talked about with your blog and your website, people probably aren’t
going to share your self-promotional content all that often — but they will share the

45

ones that they think are funny or interesting, and that’s how you increase your
audience for everything else. Got it? Great.

And when you share OPC, don’t forget to let the author know or tag them in your
social posts. Not only does OPC help you build relationships with others on
social media, but it gets you and your business in front of new eyes.

Bonus! Your Unique Categories

Every business is different, so leave yourself some space for posts that don’t fit
within the other categories. This is the grab bag, where you can toss in anything
else you want to post. It might be content pulled from your newsletter, or regular
updates about product availability. Maybe you want to throw in quotes from client
testimonials and reviews, or photos of people using your product. Maybe you have
seasonal content that you want to keep separate for those specific times of year.
Don’t assume that you’ll remember in the moment, or that you’ll post it on the fly!
Categorize everything. You’ll thank yourself later.

DOING THE MATH

You probably didn’t think you’d have to math in this book. Sorry about that. I
promise you, though, once you sit down and actually do it, this will feel way easier.
Get a pen and paper, or your calculator because it’s time to get your math on.

Say you’re going to do six social media posts a day, five days a week. And for the
record, that’s a ton — you almost definitely don’t need to post that frequently. But
if you were, that would add up to 30 posts a week. With four weeks in a month,
that adds up to 120 total posts per month. And because you have four
categories, you only need 30 posts per category, per month — 30 General posts,

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30 Recommended Reads, and so on. Because…

6 x 5 = 30 posts/week
30 x 4 weeks/month = 120 posts/month
120 / 4 categories = 30 posts/category

Doesn’t sound so tough, does it? Just think — if you posted three times a day,
you’d only need 15 social media posts per category, per month! And if you add in
a few of your own custom categories, it’s even fewer posts per category. You can
easily sit down for an hour or two once a month and write those out in advance.
And that’s before we talk about repeating your content (which you should
absolutely do!).

Of course, that’s assuming you’re going with an even split between your
categories — and for the record, I highly recommend starting out that way, just
because it’s the easiest. Over time, it will become more and more apparent which
types of posts resonate the most with your specific audience, and you can make
adjustments, but for now, just wait and watch what happens.

For example, you may start out with an even split, but you realize over time that
while your engagement questions aren’t getting much response, your links to your
blog are — and posting questions less often so you can post links to your blog more
often is just what works for you. When you start to get really micro, you may
even find that certain types of posts within a certain category perform better
than others — for example, you may find that links to instructional blog posts
perform better than links to tool review blog posts.

Starting to look a little more intimidating? I promise, it isn’t. Over time, you’ll see
what your audience likes the best, and you can adjust your strategy as you go.

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The important thing is to start keeping track of those things now, so you can make
those adjustments whenever you need to. And using categories makes it easier
to break these things down into manageable chunks.

Remember, when you’re playing the percentages game, you’re figuring things out
on a monthly basis, not a daily one! If you’re publishing three posts a day, and a
certain type of post ten percent of the time, that doesn’t mean you’re publishing
that post .30 times a day — that doesn’t make sense! Posting it six times a
month, though — well, that’s a lot simpler, isn’t it?

The other bit of good news is that you don’t necessarily have to write unique social
media content for every single social media network — otherwise, you’d be
writing hundreds of posts every month! Many automated scheduling tools allow
you to cross-post your content across different networks automatically — you can
even program it so that your posts appear at pre-scheduled times and in
randomized order, so your followers aren’t inundated with the same message on
multiple networks all at once.

Finally, some people feel compelled to leave empty spots in their social media
calendar, for the unpredictable, spur-of-the-moment things that they may want to
share later on. My advice, though, is to not bother. Go ahead and fill up your
calendar, and if something comes up later that you feel compelled to jump on and
share, just do it! You can always bump a pre-scheduled post to a later time, or
even just publish a spontaneous post in addition to the ones you have scheduled.
Nobody’s going to penalize you for publishing an extra post every now and then!

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 When you’re writing social media posts that will be

published on different social networks, make sure they
make sense wherever they go!

You can’t use the same @tags on Twitter that you do on

Instagram. So, pay attention to the vernacular of the
networks you post on. And remember that those things
change, too! Hashtags used to be exclusive to Twitter,
but now you can use them on most social networks. You
may be surprised at how the language of social
networks becomes more and more universal over time.

REPEATING YOUR CONTENT

You know that recycling is good for the environment — well, it’s good for your
social media strategy, too! You can actually reuse your social media content
as time goes on, making it significantly easier to maintain a consistent social
presence. Heck, that’s one of the reasons that you should be using the Social
Brilliant Spreadsheet (and MeetEdgar!) to map things out in advance — when you
have your content categorized and documented this way, you can cycle through
your posts on a regular basis and repeat them as needed.

“But...but what if someone sees something that I’ve already

posted in the past?”

Well, here’s what happens: nothing. Absolutely nothing! We get really, really
worried about insignificant things like this, like posting the same inspirational
49

quote that we posted three months ago, and somebody seeing it for the second
time. But what do you expect to happen? That this person will somehow be
offended, or think less of you and your business? Not likely!

You post the things you post because they mean something to you, and that
makes them worth repeating from time to time. And remember, you see every
single post that gets published, but your audience definitely doesn’t. Most people
sign on to social media and see what’s in their newsfeed at that time — they aren’t
digging through your archives and poring over every last post. Only a small
percentage of your audience sees any given post because only a small
percentage is online at any given time. That’s what makes consistent publishing
and repeating your content SO important!

The odds that someone will notice a repeat, then, are pretty slim — and if they do
notice, they aren’t likely to care. (Unless you’re posting the same thing five times a
week, because that would be pretty darn annoying.)

So how soon is too soon to repeat a post? I would say you probably don’t want to
publish the exact same schedule more than once every three months or so. That
depends on you and your style, though, too — there are some people who post the
same morning affirmation every day, or the same sign-off every Friday afternoon,
and it works quite well for them. Trial and error is going to be your new best
friend when it comes to things like that, but in general, three months gives you
enough time so that people in your audience don’t feel like they’re seeing the same
thing time and again.

Still feel a little nervous about repeating content? That’s why I recommend using
variations! A variation is just a differently worded version of your post that links to the
same content. Remember those extra headlines we had you write? Or those pull-

50

quotes we told you to grab? Those are all variations that link back to the same
content on your website.

If you’re not sure where to start, simply try rewording some of your existing posts to
freshen them up! (Remember that example with all the cats from Chapter 3?
Follow that process.) Using different variations allows you to more easily
repurpose your content on Twitter, where posting exact duplicates is a big no-no.

Getting into the habit of creating variations also helps your content attract more
clicks and engagement. A follower who wasn’t compelled to action (a click or
share) by one of your posts may very well be convinced by a different variation
you publish. Since both versions link to the exact same content on your website,
this will also give you insight into what type of posts resonate best with your
audience.

To get the most out of your content, you should make sure that your posts are as
“evergreen” as possible. That means they should ring true at any time of day, any
time of year — otherwise, you’re going to have to pretty rigidly police your
schedule and make sure that things aren’t getting posted at inappropriate times.
That goes for subtle things, too. For example, you could write a social media post
that says, “Today is the best day of the year,” but what if it gets posted on the day
of a natural disaster or an assassination? You probably wouldn’t find anyone
agreeing with you.

And yes, there’s definitely a place for seasonal and time-constrained posts, but
those should supplement a core body of evergreen content that you can lean on,
month in and month out.

Of course, you can’t predict everything. You can’t know when a tsunami is going

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to strike. So while you should be aware of possibilities like that — however

remote they may be — don’t stress about them. Instead, ask yourself, “Would this
content make sense at any time on any day?”

Automation becomes inauthentic when you pretend to be somewhere you’re not,

so don’t write a post like, “I’m finishing up my latest blog post right now” unless that’s
what you’re actually doing and you’re publishing that post in real time. Imagine
forgetting that you scheduled that post, and then updating live from your vacation
immediately after! Slip-ups like that are why people get anxious about automating
their own accounts, and why you need to stick with content that always make
sense — and is always the truth.

Want to recycle social media posts efficiently? Keep

track of the posts that perform the best, and compile
them into a “greatest hits” list. That way, you can
spend more time repeating your past successes and less
time repeating the duds!

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It’s time to put all that information about categories

to good use. Determine how often you want to post on
social media and which categories you plan to use.
Then, figure out how many social media posts you need
to write for each category over the course of a month.
Sound like a realistic number? Then go ahead and start
filling out the Social Brilliant Spreadsheet or
loading them up in your Edgar account!

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 Chapter Growing Your Reach

Five

So far we’ve covered creating killer blog content, leveraging that content on
social media to drive traffic to your site, and scheduling your social posts — but
wait — how do you get that big ol’ audience so you have someone to actually read
all this stuff?

We’ve focused on it a little already, but this chapter’s going to go in-depth into
actually getting you more followers. Everything you’ve learned up until now is going
to come in handy when you’re expanding your search, so if you’ve been skipping
chapters — for shame! — it’s time to double back and get caught up.

Two of the big keys to getting more followers on social media are linkability
and likeability. But what do those mean, exactly?

HOW TO BE LINKABLE

Linkability is how you get found on social media — because if you want to grow
your following, you can’t do it alone. This part of the equation comes down to a
few key factors.

Share Your Links

First of all, you have to link to your own content. A lot. A lot a lot. I’ve told you
before, and I’ll tell you again — you can’t afford to be shy when it comes to talking
about yourself and your business! It’s one of the biggest mistakes that people
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make on social media, and it’s one that everyone has been guilty of at one time
or another. You send out that one link to your Facebook page when you first
create it, and then...nothing! That’s it! You send out one little message to alert your
email list that you’ve got a shiny new social media account, and then you never,
ever mention it again.

Well, there’s a reason that doesn’t work. You have to link to your stuff over and
over again! You should have links on your contact page. Your about page. Your
blog.

Believe it or not, people are curious and driven enough to want to see if you’re on
social media — if you’re not making that link readily available on a consistent basis,
they’re going to miss out, and so are you. Do you have links to your social media
profiles in your email signature? Are they going out in every single newsletter and
promotional email that you send? Because they should be — these are all ways
to drive people toward your profiles, so they can stay in touch with you and you can
grow your audience. Every follower has the potential to attract exponentially more
— when you follow the Social Brilliant plan, that is!

Become Easier to Find

When you’re on different social networks, consistency is key to getting found.

People can’t follow you if they can’t find you! You’ll notice, for example, that our
screen names across different networks all include Edgar or MeetEdgar— that’s
because those are the terms people search for when they’re looking for us. Can
you say the same? If someone searches on Google for the name of your
business and “Twitter,” will they find you? Or did you choose a snappy screen
name that isn’t directly related to the name of your business? If you’re not
showing up in those kinds of searches, you may need to rethink your screen

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name, URL, and other factors that impact rankings.

Along those same lines, using consistent imagery makes it significantly easier for
your audience to pick out your profile — I recommend choosing one solid profile
image and using it consistently across all of your social networks. Is it a teensy bit
boring? Maybe — but just like a company logo, it creates a stronger brand for you,
and an image that someone can casually glance at and instantly know that
they’re in the right place.

Building up your follower count on one social network,

but not another? Make sure you’re regularly posting
with links that create pathways between your accounts.
A Facebook post like “Check out more exclusive insights
on my Pinterest page,” for example, can direct valuable
traffic between networks. The trick to making it
actually work? Give your audience unique incentives for
each network — just telling them that you have other
accounts isn’t necessarily going to make them click,
but if those accounts offer something they can’t get
elsewhere, you have a better shot. Once you figure out
those incentives, you can easily, continually connect
your social accounts across networks!

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And of course, just like I told you in Chapter Four, you should use only one
account per social network. If you have multiple Twitter or Facebook accounts,
for example, someone who searches for you won’t have any idea which one to
engage with, and you’ve made their lives more difficult — and that’s the opposite of
what any business should be doing. If they don’t see a clear path, they won’t do
anything at all, so keep it good and simple.

HOW TO BE LIKEABLE

Imagine you want to sell a book. You can have all the clever marketing
promotions in the world, but if you sell a copy and it’s no good, you’re going to get
bad reviews, and nobody will tell their friends to buy it. On the other hand, if you
have a really great book, you can do less promotion, because people will like it
and recommend it to one another. Social media operates the same way — being
well-liked can go a long way!

Show Your Human Side

Remember that humans prefer connecting with humans, and in the struggle
between showing your humanity and acting like an emotionless robot, humanity
always wins (just like in the “Terminator” movies). That’s why I recommend you
err on the side of being yourself on social media, rather than being your business.

People develop a strong personal connection when they know the face behind
the brand, whether they founded one of the most innovative technology
companies of all time or they’re the CEO of a fast food chain. The latter example
goes to show that this strategy predates social media by a while — Dave
Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, appeared in their commercials quite frequently.

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Some people may worry that putting themselves front and center will make their
business look too “mom and pop,” but seeing that familiar and trustworthy face
can make a big difference for consumers. That’s why being yourself on social
media accounts can be so valuable — to forge and maintain a human connection,
you need two humans!

If you’re going to talk to someone on social media, then, just think of it like talking
to someone in real life. Forget about “being your business” and just be yourself!
Social media vernacular is short, casual, and informal, so don’t be afraid to be
conversational when you’re engaging a follower.

You can keep it short and sweet, so long as you’re responding to what people
have written to you, comments they’ve left, and more. Sometimes, it’s as simple
as saying, “Thanks a lot!” or “Nicely done!” in reply to a tweet or a comment.
Sometimes it’s making small talk — if someone mentions their recent vacation,
ask them how it was! Social media is a bit like a cocktail party — it’s okay to talk
business, but it’s also okay to just chat it up with people. (On social media, though,
you can do it from the comfort of your sweatpants.)

Actively Interact

While other chapters have focused more on things like automation and
scheduling, those are more on the media side of social media. Engagement, on the
other hand, is on the social side — and if you’re not engaging, you’ll have a hard
time growing your audience.

The cardinal rule of using your social media time effectively is to leave behind
plenty of evidence. I know that years of watching “Law & Order” reruns have
taught you otherwise, but you need to leave behind as much evidence as

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possible if you want to succeed. Reading blogs or looking at your Facebook

page for two hours a day doesn’t get you anywhere — that’s social media for
fun, not social media for business. Why?

Because it doesn’t leave any evidence. Nobody knows that you’ve read their post
or their comment unless you visibly engage! We’re all guilty of a little Facebook
stalking in our personal lives — scrolling through an old friend’s pictures, or
reading posts from a faraway relative without leaving behind any evidence we
were there. When it comes to your business, though, you need to leave behind
that evidence — otherwise, neither you nor your audience have anything to gain
from the time you spent. Make your live time on social media count by doing
something that leaves traces — even if it’s just clicking that “like” button.
Engagement drives reach!

Thanking people on social media is a quick and easy

way to visibly engage. If someone follows you,
retweets one of your posts, or publishes a link to
your blog, it’s nice to reach out with a quick thank
you. If you do, personalize the message to make the
human connection stronger. Say, “Thanks for following
us, Steve,” or “Glad you like the blog, Natasha!” It
only takes a few seconds, and that one-on-one
interaction is more valuable than any you could
automate. (Still feel kind of weird thanking
followers? Liking or retweeting their comments or
mentions of you shows that you notice and appreciate
them, without saying a word.)

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GETTING HELP FROM YOUR FANS

Remember, you can’t grow your following all by yourself. You need to leverage
the followers you do have in order to attract more, and shares are the best way to
do it. Now, a share isn’t always a “share” — it just means that people on a given
social network are sharing your content. On Facebook, they actually call it a
share. On Twitter, a retweet. On Pinterest, a repin or saved pin — and so on. This
is how you get the best exposure possible, because it puts you in front of new
people, and it’s an implicit endorsement to anyone following the sharer.

SHARES, RETWEETS, AND REPINS

PUT YOU IN FRONT OF NEW PEOPLE

This is why in the last chapter, I emphasized the potential for certain content
categories to drive shares. If one of your Facebook fans shares something you
posted, they’re putting that link in front of every person they’re friends with and
effectively saying that it was valuable enough to share. It’s like a free
advertisement — a virtual endorsement from a trusted friend — and that’s
extremely valuable for your business. That’s why you want to focus on content that
will get shared, like the funny and inspirational messages that make up such a
huge chunk of online traffic.

When you’re consistent with engaging your audience and encouraging shares, it
creates a snowball effect — and this is one of my favorite things about social

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media. Social Brilliant is designed to facilitate this snowball effect, which makes
your reach grow exponentially over time. Every single follower can be a multiplier,
so even if you only have 10 followers, if one of them has 10,000 of their own and
they share your stuff, you just multiplied the size of your audience by 1,000. How
many of those 10,000 people might start following you? Or join your email list, or
buy your products? The more you actively grow your audience by pursuing
opportunities to get shares, the better your chances.

KEEP UP YOUR MOMENTUM

TO CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA
SNOWBALL EFFECT
Even if you feel like things are moving slowly at first, then, it’s your responsibility
to keep your momentum up and get that snowball rolling — because the more
you do, the easier it gets over time! Keep following the Social Brilliant strategy of
creating high-quality content for your blog and social media posts, stay on that
consistent, automated schedule, and engage with your followers. By engineering
a strategy that keeps more eyeballs on your content, you grow your reach —
period.

HOW TO MAKE THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS

When you write out your social media posts in blocks and automate them in
advance, you save tons of time on your daily schedule — and that time can be
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really, really valuable. Imagine if you spent an hour on social media every day, but
you weren’t researching blog content, writing posts, or any of that stuff that feels
like work. Imagine you were just talking to people. You could probably connect
with hundreds of people in that amount of time, right?

That’s why this section is going to focus on connecting — specifically, connecting

with the leaders and influencers who can make it way easier to grow your
following quickly. Because when someone with a huge following of their own
follows you and shares your stuff, their large audience becomes your large
audience. It’s the same idea as guest posting on someone else’s site — you take
advantage of the audience they’ve already built.

Finding New Friends

If you want to connect with impressive, influential business owners who can help
you grow your reach, the best strategy is to have no strategy. Seriously, you’re
much better off pursuing relationships with people you actually like, and actually
have a connection with. You see, chances are, there are some real movers and
shakers in your industry — people with huge followings and proven success —
and you won’t necessarily mesh with all of them.

TRUE RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

IS NOT A STRATEGY GAME
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If you don’t like them, or they don’t really resonate with you, or you’re just not that
into what they’re saying and doing, it doesn’t matter how big their audience is —
because they’re probably going to feel the same way about you. No one is going
to share your stuff if they don’t like you. And that’s okay — I’m sure there are
people out there who aren’t super crazy about me, either, but it hasn’t stopped
my business from growing!

That’s because I’ve found that the best thing you can do is look for the people
that actually interest you. Don’t try to be “strategic” about building relationships,
because if you think that someone is in a position to help your career but the two
of you just don’t click, nothing is going to happen. Someone in a less
advantageous position, though — who you really like and respect, and who likes
and respects you — is going to be way more valuable, just because you two have a
genuine relationship. You may be looking at the leaders in a certain space and
find that you only really like and agree with 2 out of 10 — you like their attitude,
you like their content. Those two people are the ones worth reaching out to, and
reaching out means taking the next step.

Getting Connected

Since connecting with someone on social media is usually step one, step two is
connecting with someone off social media — sending an email, scheduling a call,
even proposing a meetup. Yes, social media is a great way of catching someone’s
attention, but to hold that attention over time and develop a real (and really
valuable) relationship, you need a little something more. You need your name to
stand out, and for someone to form a strong association with that name — and
connecting off social media is huge for that. So go to conferences, workshops,
and meetups whenever you can. Even if it’s just a small meetup at a local bar, you
can forge a connection that makes an enormous difference over the long haul!

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 HAVING A LOT OF HAVING A LOT OF

FRIENDS FOLLOWERS
Because while having a lot of followers is great, having a lot of friends is even
better. Friends have connections. They give feedback. They do favors. (And of
course, you do all the same in return!) If a friend reaches out to me and asks me
to send a message about her new book to my followers, I’ll do it — not just
because the book is great, but because she’s my friend, and I want her to
succeed. Don’t let the world convince you that favors like this — whether you’re
seeking them out or granting them — are in any way sneaky or underhanded. We
do favors for our friends because we like to help people, and if we’re going to help
anyone, it may as well be a friend!



Not sure which social networks are the best for

finding people to connect with? Stick to hotspots
like Facebook and Twitter — those are where the
people are. A lot of entrepreneurs stress out about
jumping on board with new social networks (cont.)

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(cont.) before they get huge, but remember: when it

comes to promoting your business, being mainstream is
a good thing! You’re better off promoting yourself
wherever you know your audience is — not out in the
wild, braving the digital frontier. When you’re the
first person to a party, there’s no one to talk to,
and you’re wasting your time — it’s better to be
fashionably late.

Thinking about trying something new? Give it a little

time to build up an active user base first. Once the
party actually has some people there, it’s time for
you to arrive.

Ready to practice what we’re preachin’? It’s time to

get used to leaving behind evidence of your social
activity. The next time you’re on Twitter or Facebook
— even if you're just messing around in a non-
professional capacity — we want you to leave behind
evidence wherever your go. Looking at an album of
photos from your cousin’s Bar Mitzvah? Leave a
comment. Really appreciated a link to an article
someone tweeted? Retweet it! Get in the habit of
actually engaging with the content people share on
social — not just consuming it.

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Content graveyards are one of the biggest possible

threats to your social momentum. These are abandoned
profiles and pages — the lasting evidence of an
entrepreneur biting off more than they could chew.
They’re the boarded-up storefronts of the Internet,
and you do not want to have any to your name. If you
spread yourself too thin with different social
networks and start abandoning them, the graveyards
you leave behind are terrible for your image. And
they can confuse and frustrate your audience. Start
with the most important social networks, and see how
much you can comfortably manage before you go signing
up for different ones all willy-nilly.

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 Chapter The Social Brilliant

Six Master Plan

We’re here! The grand finale! The Social Brilliant Master Plan. We’ve covered a lot
of ground so far, so before I send you off into the world to kick booty and take names
with your own social media marketing, we’re going to tie it all together and leave
you with a killer, concise plan for total social media domination.

So, how’s a super busy entrepreneur supposed to actually do all this stuff? Let’s
focus on some of the most common roadblocks people run into.

ROADBLOCK #1: “THIS IS GONNA TAKE WAY TOO MUCH

TIME!”

I’ve heard this a million times. “I just don’t have time for social media.” Well, if you
have time to mess around on social media at all, personally or professionally, you
have time to do this — and to do it right.

Let’s get real for a second. If you’re telling me that you don’t have time for social
media marketing, but you have time to publish to your Facebook profile about the
weather or to watch a funny cat video, you have time for social media marketing.

Don’t believe me? Go on and download a free time tracker app for your computer
or phone. It’ll track exactly how much time you spend on all of your daily tasks —
and you may be surprised at how much free time you actually have. So if you
think you’re going to ditch the Social Brilliant methodology and just sort of wing it,
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you deserve to know now: doing it right is a lot easier and even a lot faster than
doing it wrong.

REMEMBER: WE ALL
START FROM SCRATCH
Just start with what you can comfortably do, and add in more over time. A
schedule of one blog post per month and one social media post per day is infinitely
better than no schedule at all — it really, truly is. Just a little bit of consistency
goes SO far!

The reason more people don’t succeed with their social media marketing is that
too many of them are so certain they’ll fail that they never even try. They say, “I
want to blog, but I’m sure I don’t have the time right now...so maybe I’ll give it a shot
next year.”

No. No, no, no! Start right now. Start today, with whatever you have, no matter
how little that is. Nobody starts with a huge audience. Nobody starts with a
backlog of hundreds of articles. Everybody starts from scratch, with an empty
editorial calendar and zero followers on social. And you’ll get there, but only if you
start. That’s why Social Brilliant and MeetEdgar come with all those tools — so
you can spend less time planning and more time doing!

Just remember that social media marketing is a genuine marketing strategy —

not a diversion, or an optional side project. If you have time for any marketing

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efforts, whether they’re designing a brochure or writing an email newsletter, you

have time for this, and it deserves your time — however much or as little as you
have.

ROADBLOCK #2: “I’M NOT A WRITER!”

Social media is largely about written communication, whether you’re crafting
teeny tiny tweets, perfecting a caption for Instagram, or elbows deep into your
most epic blog post ever. You have to write, and there’s no sense in dancing
around that. Even video or audio content needs a headline (or 10!) to attract
attention on social media.

But even if you’re starting from scratch now, you’re not going to be starting from

YOU WON’T ALWAYS BE

scratch every single time — and it’s going to keep getting easier and easier as
you go.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

Once you start writing, you can pull and recycle content from what you’ve already
created to use somewhere else. Snippets from your blogs and your email
newsletters become tweets, while quotes from interviews you’ve given get turned
into pinnable graphics.

This is why I made the Social Brilliant Spreadsheet! When you’re organized and
you plunk things into the right places, you end up developing a library of content
that you can use over and over again — and once you have enough, you’ll hardly
ever have to write more!

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ROADBLOCK #3: “I CAN’T KEEP UP WITH HOW ALL THIS

STUFF CHANGES!”

Social media is a constantly changing industry, it’s true. But the latest and
greatest isn’t what actually builds a strong strategy. The latest and greatest can
complement a strong strategy, but it takes more than hammers and nails to build
a house — it takes a plan.

This is why I wrote all this stuff down in the first place — because people get so
preoccupied with the little tips and tricks that they ignore the fundamentals that
are really important. You’ve heard of missing the forest for the trees? That’s
exactly what this is — because without a solid foundation in place, tinkering with
little details like whether you publish posts at 7:30 or 7:32 won’t make one little bit
of difference.

The tips and tricks change constantly, and you’re more than welcome to keep up
with them, if that’s rewarding for you. People like me love offering up the little
things you can do to make your life easier. But you don’t necessarily need those
little things. If you’re following the Social Brilliant plan, it doesn’t matter whether
Facebook’s algorithm is privileging videos or photos or text-only posts this month.
Information like that can increase your results by a tiny fraction, maybe, but that
sort of thing is temporary, and can cause you more headache than it’s worth.
Focus on your foundation, not on keeping up with whatever is supposedly new
right now.

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ROADBLOCK #4: “I JUST CAN’T KEEP UP WITH THIS ON

MY OWN!”

This is a legit concern — fortunately for you, you can easily outsource some of the
things you need to do. Loading up your blog content and social media posts into
scheduling software, for example, is relatively simple — any kind of
administrative assistant can easily take your text documents and spreadsheets
and copy/paste the right info into the right places.

If you want someone else to take the reins on the actual writing, though, be it for
blog content or social media posts — you need a professional writer (and I can’t
stress the “professional” part enough). The good thing is that blogging is
ubiquitous enough that there are literally thousands of qualified, experienced
people who make a living doing it, and a lot of them are talented writers who can
do this without forcing you to smash your piggy bank. You can hire them to write
blogs, social media posts, and other types of content, based either on their own
research or on conversations you have with them — a talented writer can turn a
conversation into a stellar article with relative ease.

The trickier part? Finding someone who can channel your company’s voice. You
don’t need someone who can just link to funny posts and share inspirational
quotes — you need someone who understands the voice, the philosophy, and
the personality of your company. Maybe it’s a freelancer who really clicks with
you and your values, or maybe it’s an intern who’s been around long enough to
get what you’re all about. Whoever it is, they have to mesh with your personality
and style — otherwise, they’re not going to accurately represent you or your
company.

Even if you don’t write a word of your own social media marketing content,
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though, you should always know what it is — especially when you’re just getting
started with a new professional. I wouldn’t recommend hiring someone and just
giving them the keys to the car, no matter how much experience they have — not
at first, anyway. Because whatever they write is going to represent you and your
business, which you’ve worked hard to build — and you need that content to help
your audience know, like, and trust you. You need that content to accurately
represent you. Because even if the content gets you all the shares and followers in
the world, if it doesn’t represent you and what you’re all about, it isn’t actually
working.

YOUR MASTER PLAN

Long story short? Start where you are and do what you can. Long story a little bit
less short? Well, let’s do a quick recap of how this whole Social Brilliant thing
works!

Step 1: Blog regularly, and make it count.

Remember to focus on quality over quantity. If you write one amazing blog post
per month, that’s going to get you a lot further than a mediocre post every week.
And don’t limit yourself to blog posts — create the type of content that resonates
with you and your business, whether that’s articles, video, podcasts, etc.

Step 2: Establish yourself only on as many networks as

you can manage.

Create no more than one account for each social network, and link to your
accounts at every opportunity. Put links in your emails. Crosslink across different
social networks. And just stick to the big ones, because they’re the ones that are

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worth your time right now — forget about the hot new thing (whatever it is), and
stick to the mainstream.

Step 3: Create your library of social media posts, and use

it.

Start out by posting to your social networks three times a day, five days a week
— just 15 posts per week. That’s a solid, achievable number. If you’re feeling
motivated, throw in the weekends, too. Even if you want to start out by just
scheduling one social media post per day, that’s perfectly fine — consistency is
what counts, and it will still help you start to gain traction where its needed.

Step 4: Use scheduling software to load your social

media posts.

Use the Social Brilliant Spreadsheet to plot out your posts, then just copy/paste
them into your scheduling software (MeetEdgar, for example!). Add in live posts
whenever you see fit — scheduling doesn’t mean you have to stop posting
manually when you want to, or responding to things in real time.

Step 5: Engage with others online to make new friends

and keep old ones.

Leave evidence of what you’ve done wherever you go. Reading blogs doesn’t grow
your business, but making friends with people does.

A FEW PARTING WORDS

Remember, everyone starts from zero. There was a time when I didn’t have a
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single Twitter follower, and when the only people reading my Facebook posts were
blood relatives. If I can leave you with one idea, then I want that to be it — because
it may not sound like much, but it’s the factor that holds people back more than any
other. Everybody starts with no followers, no blog readers, and no blog posts. Build
up your audience one person, one blog post, one social media post at a time,
and it only gets easier — in fact, it will never seem tougher than it does right now.

So please, go for it. Just start. Go out there and be socially brilliant! Create some
stellar content that you’re really proud of. Write some social media posts that link
back and drive people to your website. Talk to people. Make friends. Make it fun!

Social media marketing is effective. You know it’s effective. You’ve seen it
happen. And now you have the tools to make it effective for you, and to make it
happen for your business. So go on and start getting that momentum going. It has
to start sometime — may as well be now!

The
End

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