Social media”™s impact on businesses continues to grow as the days go by. Digital marketing has extended the reach of pre-existing brands and has allowed some companies to rise from the ground up.
We all know the power social media can have on an individual business. What remains in the fog is how we capitalize on that social media power for our businesses. After dominating many social networks and accumulating over 400,000 followers, I tapped into a three-step process for thriving on all of the social networks.
Step 1: Focus on one social network
Most business owners have a tendency to stretch out toward as many social networks as possible. They”™re tweeting new content, firing out pins on Pinterest, and sharing every picture imaginable on Instagram. The more social networks you take on, the more difficult it will be to grow on any of them. Spreading your time thin across many social networks makes you a master of none.
For a long time, I was a master of none. Then I finally hit my breaking point and temporarily abandoned all of my social media profiles except Twitter. That was 2012, and I created a five-year plan to, if I was lucky, end up with 100,000 Twitter followers.
It”™s 2016, and I have over 300,000 Twitter followers. That”™s the power of focusing on one social network. This level of focus requires that you invest massive amounts of time toward research and implementation. I researched all of the possible ways to grow a targeted Twitter audience and experimented. Through my experimentation, I came across the best tactics for growing a Twitter audience.
Step 2: Delegate your social media tasks
Social media domination by definition requires that you have massive audiences on all of the top social media platforms you want to play on. Spending the time to grow those audiences and consistently providing those audiences with new content will take up so much of your time that you”™ll have nothing left for the rest of your business.
When you reach that point of social media growth but time diminishment, delegation is your next step forward. Once you dominate a social network, the processes of domination will become easier for you to explain to others.
To dominate another social network without sinking the other parts of your business, you must delegate your social media tasks for your top social network to others. While I am still involved engaging with my followers on Twitter, I do nothing else for that social network. I”™m not following highly targeted people or scheduling my tweets. I delegated those responsibilities to a reliable freelancer.
At first, giving any amount of control to someone else will be nerve-racking, but once you and the freelancer get comfortable with each other, that power exchange will create more comfort on both sides. You have time to dominate another social network and the freelancer gets paid.
Step 3: Choose another social network to dominate
Once you delegate your social media tasks for one social network, you can approach another social network with high-level intensity. At this point, you are in the social media domination loop. Pick a social network, dominate it, delegate those tasks, and move onto the next one.
But here”™s the cool part about social media domination. Once you master a single social network, it becomes much easier to learn the others. Mastering each of them is like learning the Romance languages. Would you rather learn several Romance languages at once or start with one? With all of the subtleties in each language, mastering one at a time is the better route. Then you can master the others since the Romance languages share many similarities with each other.
Social networks work the same. The process for dominating Twitter is similar to the process of mastering Pinterest. The tool names, the name of the social network and the name of a post are different. Some subtleties exist, but the overall process is the same.
So what happens now? Start by committing to one social network and researching all of the possible case studies and tactics for that one social network. Once you master that social network, delegate most of the tasks for that social network. Then set sail for the next.
Marc Guberti is a student at Fordham University and a social media and business blogger and author. He”™s on Twitter @MarcGuberti and can be reached by phone at 914-722-6005 or email at Marc@MarcGuberti.com.
