What Does Your Social Media Marketing Bank Account Look Like?

Did you know that every time you make a social media post, you're affecting the long-term health of your business?  Most people think about what they want to post, do it, then forget about it, not knowing that they're either building up equity with their audience or tearing that equity down.

Today, I want to ask you one simple question: "What does your social media marketing bank account look like?"  Don't worry if you're unsure of what I'm talking about, because I'm going to break everything down for you now.

Every time that you make a post on social media, you're doing one of three things, much like you with a bank account . . . you're either:

• Depositing
• Withdrawing
• Over-Drafting

Now that you know the three outcomes every time you post, let's break down each one.

When you create social media content that adds value WITHOUT selling, you're depositing into your social media bank account.  You're giving your audience value that helps them solve problems they have, give them something to think about, and even give them the motivation they need that day.  All of these are examples of depositing.

This is 99.9999999999% of our content.  The reason is that when you focus on creating most of your content in this format, you're doing something very important for the long-term health of your business: you're brand building.  And brand building is what allows you to make the big sales, land the big contracts, etc.  The reason that most business owners fail is because of a lack of capital, meaning that they're not making enough money to sustain themselves, and the main reason for this is that they're focusing on making pennies now instead of making dollars later.

This leads me to the second outcome, which is that you're withdrawing from your social media bank account.  You do this when you sell in your marketing and/or social media posts.  And just to be clear: even if you add value in your content and THEN sell, you're still withdrawing, because people will remember the end of your post as opposed to the beginning and middle.

I'll make this as plain as I can: people don't like being sold to.  I don't know one person in the world that goes, "I really love scrolling down my feed and being sold to in every post!"  Yet, that's what most business owners and entrepreneurs do.  When you're constantly selling, your audience knows, and that's why your engagement is so low.  Your audience isn't dumb, they can read your bio, they know how to click links, meaning they already know what you do and what you offer . . .

YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP TELLING THEM WHAT YOU DO AND WHAT YOU OFFER ALL THE TIME.  IT'S CRIPPLING YOUR BUSINESS LONG-TERM.

Read that again and really let it sink in, because when you're selling all the time, what you're basically saying is, "I need money for my business, don't you want my products?"  And once again, if you're selling all the time, people will go find another business that does what you do that's adding value with no agenda.

Think about it: would people rather be poured into and have something taken away from them?  Pretty simple answer.

This doesn't mean that you NEVER sell, obviously if you have a product launch you'd want to talk about it, but again, if you're not sure how to go about doing this, I'd create 80% of your content that's strictly adding value, and the other 20% can be valuable content with a CTA to a product or service that you have.  This means that if you post 5x a week on social media, AT MOST, you should only be talking about your products and services ONE TIME.

The last one, over-drafting your account, is one of the three that can cripple your social media following and overall brand if you do it.  So how does one "overdraft" their social media account and business?

BY MAKING CLAIMS THAT AREN'T BACKED UP BY FACTS AND EVIDENCE.

For example, if you say you make a certain amount of money a month or that you can help someone make "x" amount of money every month, you better be ready to show examples of this happening, and no, I don't mean fake testimonials where you block out the person's face and write it yourself (we all know the people that do this).  I mean you better have video testimonials of people saying, "This person said I could make $10,000 dollars a month in my business and they helped me do exactly that!"  Then they show their CRM software or some proof that they've actually made that kind of money.

This is why talking about how much you make or how much you can make your audience is a slow recipe for disaster.  Because even if people believe you (which most won't), they will then expect you to get those EXACT results for them, and when you don't, you're going to be in some serious trouble.

The same can be said about your product if you have a  product-based business.  I'm sure we've all seen products that say they'll do all these amazing things, then when we buy them, they don't do any of it, which means they were all empty promises.  This is dangerous for a completely different reason . . .

MOST PEOPLE DON'T LEAVE A REVIEW WHEN THINGS WORK LIKE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO . . . BUT I GUARANTEE YOU THEY'LL LEAVE A REVIEW IF YOUR PRODUCT IS BAD AND/OR DOESN'T DO WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO DO.

There's nothing that will cost a product-based business more than a ton of bad reviews, because more and more, people are using things like "Yelp" and other review sites to research products before they buy, and with so many options out there, if your company even has a couple of bad reviews, it'll turn people off and they'll get their products elsewhere.

Make sure that if you make claims about what you and/or your products can do, that you've got ample proof and testimony to back up EXACTLY what you're saying.

I hope this was helpful in giving you an idea of how to evaluate your social media marketing content, and how to better create strategies and campaigns that add value and build brand long-term, rather than thinking with a short-term mentality.  If you have any other questions, you can always reach out to us on Instagram @michaelandjill and we'd be happy to answer them! (See what we do there, no sell, just added value)