How to use Social Media? (The 4 C’s)

How do you use Social Media?  To broadcast to the world or to create a supportive and nurturing environment in which your business can grow?

Regardless of whether you are on Instagram,  Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok or any of the other social media platforms the principles are the same. Your potential followers do not want to just hear you bragging about your latest this, or amazing that, they want to get to know you, form a relationship with you and then maybe they will buy from you or refer you to their network.

Here’s how you can start that process.

Community

This is what social media is all about in my book. It’s about building communities, not just amongst peers but with clients, prospects and other totally non-related businesses and people. It’s about finding common ground or common goals and sharing thoughts and ideas. I always think of social media as I do my life, making friends and growing a network to help me on my way, this is just one that gets you through your business life!

Conversation

The bit I love! Social media doesn’t work unless you converse. You can’t make friends with other people or form bonds if you don’t converse with them. I love that social media enables me to talk to people I would never normally come across and that it enables other people to reach me from different parts of the world and country. By starting and continuing conversations you enable people and accounts to get to know you and this improves the engagement rate of an account and builds those relationships that are so important.

 

Man and woman engaging with each other in conversation at a desk
Converse with your audience and followers as you do with colleagues and friends.

 

Connection

It’s the connections that you make that can help your business thrive either by providing you with services but also sharing your story. Look to build connections with other businesses that complement yours, that are likely to attract similar clients to you as you can then both service them. For example, I met the amazing Kaye King when I started and not only has she helped me in my business but we also refer clients to each other as her ideal client avatar is similar to mine, we bounce ideas off each other too and I now consider her a dear friend.

Collaboration and Contribution (I know I said 4 but I couldn’t choose from these!)

So you have your community, you’ve connected with them and started conversations so now it’s time to Collaborate and Contribute. Share each other’s success and launches, mention each other in your posts and blogs, I am often mentioning The Growth Hub in my posts as this is an organisation that has supported me from the beginning and that works with lots of other businesses similar to me. So why wouldn’t I mention them? I also collaborate with other social media experts who could be classed as my competition but are also my peers and whose opinion and knowledge I value.  Collaboration over Competition is a valuable skill to have in your arsenal.

So remember those 4 C’s next time you wonder what you should be doing on your social media.

 

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