How To Monetise Social Media and Leverage it Financially

Social media platforms are no longer just a means to connect and engage with people. They are a MARKETING WORLD on their own with their own set of dynamics. What’s more interesting and beneficial is that you can MONETISE these very platforms to generate a good stream of income. While there are scores of people who still believe that is impossible, since I am actually doing that, I thought to share that knowledge with you too.

Prep Your Social Media Platform

The first step to generate an income from anything is to prepare it well. The same applies to social media.

• Your social media profile needs to be active and have a presentable outlook for people to visit it.
• Even before that, establish what you are going to market and seek a suitable social media platform accordingly. Are you going to market your business or do you want to build your own profile and brand? When that’s answered, look for an appropriate medium. If you are an educationist seeking better speaking engagements, Facebook and LinkedIn suit your need well. If you have a retail fashion brand, Facebook and Instagram will work well for you.
• Next, make certain your profile picture/ video as well as cover photo/ video is all set and optimised.
• You would also need to fill in the about us section and story pertinent to the platform you are using.
• After you’re through with the basics, your task is to get a good enough audience size so you can then move towards effective monetisation. For Facebook/ Twitter, it is usually around 10,000 likes/ followers. You can do that by engaging more with people, boosting your page/ posts and an even better and more efficient approach would be to hire a skilled social media manager and expert to achieve the goal for you as it saves you time, effort and even money.

Once you reach that target, you need to work consistently to constantly grow your audience. Meanwhile, you need to focus on creating beneficial and attractive content because unless you offer value to your audience, they won’t stick with you for long as I say ‘Content is King.’

Build Good Content and Move Towards Monetization

To build meaningful content, here's what you can do.

• Find out your audience’s specific needs and requirements. Nowadays, Facebook offers a good option of conducting a poll. Ask your audience on what they expect from you or want you to do next and focus on that.
• When creating content, don’t just concentrate entirely on one kind. Instead, it needs to be a mix of written, video and images. Based on the industry you are in and the social media platform you are using, make catchy and meaningful posts. For Facebook, short posts and videos work nicely with a few long articles every once a while. However, for Instagram, your focus needs to be primarily on posting catchy photographs with short description.

It is important you build a comprehensive content marketing strategy so you are aware of what post to do next and everything leads directly or indirectly to the service/ product you are trying to sell. If you have trouble doing that, hire an expert content creator and marketer.

For monetization, you need to either sell your own product/ service or work as an affiliate for an already established brand. If you are already running a company or have positioned yourself as a brand, sell your own services/ products. However, if that isn’t the case, you can sign up for lucrative affiliate deals with affiliate companies. If you do that, you’ll get a share of the sale if someone makes a purchase following your video/ post containing the link of the product/ service.

Additionally, you can also do sponsored posting which option isn’t available on Facebook, but is accessible on Twitter, but for that, you need to state it specifically in your promotional Tweet. It takes some time to leverage your social media audience and generate income from it, but you will get there provided you are committed to the mission and work on it consistently. Since the market is moving towards the saturation point, if you want to monetize your social media, it is best to penetrate the market now. So what are you waiting for? Think of an idea and get started with it now because time is money!