How to Know if You Need a Marketing Strategist for Social Media Marketing

When do you need a marketing strategist? If you aren't a professional marketer, can you effectively do your own marketing? How to know when it's time to bite the bullet and get some help.

Have you ever thought you could do something yourself, that it looked simple.... and then wasted a ton of time, gained a ton of frustration, and almost quit about 200 times in the process trying to do it?

Been there. (bangs head against the desk).

WHY I CHOSE INSTAGRAM AS A MARKETING TOOL

When I decided to learn how to do social media for business, I needed to choose one platform to master first. In making the choice, I considered Instagram...mostly because of the data metrics available to track my progress, and also because there's a certain reputation that goes with Facebook users over 40: that you're old and can't learn technology. So Instagram it was.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T USE A STRATEGY

Instagram looks simple, doesn't it? You post a "picture," answer comments, and follow people, right?. Easy peasy. But here's what happened: Every single thing I wanted to do on Instagram required learning several new tactical skills to get it done. And a few strategic skills I hadn't anticipated.

Here's a few things I learned about creating an online business community:

1. Not ALL followers are GOOD followers.

2. In marketing, everything takes longer than you think.

3. Conversions don't have to be hard.

1. NOT ALL FOLLOWERS ARE GOOD FOLLOWERS

I learned the hard way. You know how you're supposed to use hashtags to get more reach? Hashtags require research and strategy. And by research I mean actually going to each hashtag board and looking at a few things:

• The type of images on the page
• The number of posts on the page
• The average engagement of the content on the page

Otherwise, you might end up with a thousand 22 year-old boys sending you DMS wanting "to be friends," because you didn't check the type of content on your hashtag pages...or that your post is "shadowbanned" because you used a banned hashtag. Ugh.

The next thing I learned was that not everyone follows you because they like your content. When someone followed me, I would follow them right back thinking they might be a potential client.

AND GUESS WHAT HAPPENED THEN...

After a while, I noticed that my following was not growing nearly as fast as the number of accounts I was following...until I learned about the follow/unfollow ratio and "popularity score."

Some people will follow you just to get you to follow them and then they unfollow you. Pretty soon, you're following more people than are following you and that will impact your account popularity score.

I learned not to follow everyone who initially followed me-I learned to be very choosy about who I followed.

I don't know if it's an actual score, but it's known that an account with a lot of followers but doesn't follow many accounts itself demonstrates high value to the algorithms. This means more reach for your content.

2. EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER THAN YOU THINK

This dawned on me as I was beginning to try to answer questions from new followers. The questions they asked made me think: "how do I tell them that the thing they want to do is going to require 8 other things they have to do first?"

Here's an example. Someone asked what kind of offering she should sell. The offering - that's the easy part, right? Nope.

Do you know all the things you have to know to create an offering? Let's just list out a couple things that come to mind in a conversation with someone who wants to create something to sell:

• You have to know what you do, but in a way that stands out. Easy enough. "I'm a consultant."-yeah, what kind of consultant?
• You have to know your ideal customer. "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Do you even know how many types of people I work with?"-you gotta know who you're talking to online. What is that phrase? Oh right...if you talk to everyone, you talk to no one. Just sayin'.
• You have to be clear on a vision and mission. "Aren't they the same thing?"-yeah, NOPE. they're not. If you don't know what you do and why, you can't expect someone to buy from you.
• You must know what problem you're solving. "I solve all kinds of problems"-well, that won't work. Pick one problem that's super important to your target market and solve it differently.
• You have to know how you do it. "I listen to my clients tell me what their problem is. And then I create a solution and a plan for them." -yeah, so how exactly do you do that???

HOW A MARKETING STRATEGIST CAN MAKE YOUR MARKETING EASIER & MORE EFFECTIVE

EXAMPLE: YOU HAVE A COURSE YOU WANT TO SELL. To create an offering like a simple webinar, you have to know all of the above and you have to know course design, lesson activity creation, and video recording.

I'll need a lead magnet.

Don't forget that you have to promote it and create lead magnets, too. Lead magnets require design skills as well as the copywriting and advertising skills to get someone to want to download it.

I'll need to talk about it.

To do that, you might need a blog to talk about it, and maybe some video stories or IGTV to get the word out organically.

I'll need a website to blog.

You need a website for that. And design skills. And SEO skills. And copywriting skills (again). And graphic design skills (again). Am I missing anything?

How will I get my lead magnet to the prospect?

Oh and once you find someone interested enough to download it, you need an email platform and a link platform to get the link onto your social media or website.

You see where I'm going with this, right? Everything takes longer and requires you to know a lot more than you think. You need to know more than just "your gig."

3. CONVERSIONS DON'T HAVE TO BE HARD

To make conversions on your profile page, you must first get those people to your profile page from your content. To do that, your content must be valuable enough to get them to want to learn more about how you help.

You have to know who your audience is and what they want to see in your content. As a business, it needs to be about the problems you can solve for them and the questions you can answer that move them closer to trusting you enough to want to follow you or have a conversation.

SOMETIMES, IT'S WORTH IT TO GET A STRATEGIST

I don't think you have to pay for everything. You can learn a ton on Youtube, books, people's free courses, etc. But sometimes you can't see inside your own business and you need the outside view of an expert.?

I learned that if it takes me more than a couple of days to figure something out, I need to call in some big guns. And not just anyone. I'm calling someone that I know KNOWS THEIR STUFF. Someone who specializes in that thing. Lesson learned.

I CAN BE YOUR SHORT CUT

It's taken me over three years, but I've put sense to the madness. And I put it all in a nice little organized box with a bow.

I'm not saying any of this is easy. But I am saying that it's doable - once you know what to do.

So if you feel as frustrated with "all the things" as I did, check out my Instagram page for free tips, schedule a complimentary call , or get your FREE Marketing Checklist .

Antonia is a college business professor and entrepreneur who helps service-based businesses position their businesses as unique, get visibility online, and attract local customers.