Do you feel like you’re stuck in a rut doing the same things over and over again? Are you wondering why you’re not being seen as much as you’d like?
When you work with clients, it’s really easy to get caught up in the client work and neglect your own marketing. But if you want to work with even better clients next year, then showing up and being visible needs to be a priority within your business.
In this article, we’re talking about how you can make sure the right people see your business in 2024.
4 ways to improve your visibility in 2024
- Update your social media for SEO
- Collaborate with other freelancers & business owners
- Prioritise video content
- Sell consistently & strategically
1. Update your social media for SEO
SEO is becoming increasingly important, especially as social media platforms are becoming more searchable. For years, YouTube has been the place with the best SEO capabilities, but it’s happening more on TikTok, Instagram and most other social media platforms now. The way that people are using social media is changing as more and more people are using it as a search engine as well as, or even instead of, Google.
Make sure your business can be found when searching social media
If you want to be discovered, you need to make sure that you’re searchable. If you don’t, you’re not going to be seen.
By prioritising and focusing on that SEO aspect, it helps you to not only show up on that one platform but elsewhere as well. It can even help your Google SEO!
Nowadays, people are using social media to search for things they’re looking for (just like Google). This means that they’re using social media to find freelancers on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn to see who comes up for those search terms.
By taking the time to ensure that those keywords are in your profile and that your platform is optimised in a searchable way, you are going to be discovered by so many new people and get ahead of the competition!
How to get started with SEO on social media
The first thing you need to do to get started? You guessed it. Research, research, research!
You need to start by doing keyword research on your social media platforms. Knowing what people are searching for and optimising your content to reflect that is going to make it much more likely that you show up for those terms!
Research is a step that gets skipped a lot, and this is because we assume that we already know what our ideal clients are searching for. But in reality, they might actually be searching for something else.
For example, you might call yourself a social media strategist or social media marketer, but if your ideal client is actively searching for a social media manager then they aren’t likely to easily find your page.
When you take the time to conduct research and optimise your profiles, platform and content for those search terms, you will be found by a lot more people!
2. Collaborate with other freelancers & business owners
Collaborating with other people is a brilliant way of getting in front of a new audience. And if you do it right, you can get in front of audiences filled with your perfect people, that someone else has already built.
So have a think about who you could possibly collaborate with. Who might have a similar kind of audience to you?
Now, if you’re a social media manager, you might be wondering whether other social media managers will even let you get in front of their audience. So many social media managers, like the ones in our membership, are totally up for collaborating and working with other social media managers. But sometimes, you will need to think outside of the box.
There are so many other types of business owners and freelancers you could collaborate with! For example, perhaps you know a bookkeeper who serves a similar niche as you do. Sure, her audience aren’t following her for help with social media, but they’re following her because they run a business. The chances are high that they may need help with social media as well.
Collaboration can build your credibility
We’ve already established that collaboration is a brilliant way to grow your audience, but it can also be great for your credibility if you go about it the right way and align yourself with the right people.
Keep in mind that it’s not just about the people who have a similar audience to you. It’s also about the people who are looked up to and admired that you should be building relationships with.
Just remember that these collaborations need to be genuine, they need to be authentic, and they need to align with you.
How to find people to collaborate with
Guess what? It’s all about research. Again.
While you’re doing that SEO research we spoke about earlier, you might notice the same people popping up time and time again. This is one way that you can find people to collaborate with.
Once you’ve found someone you think would be a good fit to collaborate with, initiating that collaboration can sometimes be as simple as dropping into their inbox and saying “Hey, do you want to do something together?” and it’s great when you’re able to connect that easily!
However, you’ll often find that you have to build relationships with these people first. It won’t necessarily be easy, and you’re not going to be able to create all these partnerships and collaborations overnight, but this can often turn out to be a good thing.
When you take the time to build those relationships first, you’re able to make sure that you don’t end up in a collaboration with someone that, six months down the line, you realise is actually not who you thought they were. By building that relationship beforehand, you’re able to get to know that person and make sure that they are actually aligned with you.
Examples of collaborative content you can create:
- Go live on social media to share tips, advice, or opinions on relevant topics
- Collaborative feed posts
- Appear as a guest expert within their membership or other paid community
- If you have complementary services, create a digital product, offer, or service together
- Refer clients to each other
3. Prioritise video content
The third thing you need to focus on to get your business to show up next year is video.
And you may be thinking, “yeah, but I don’t want to show my face on video, I don’t want to be on video, I don’t want to spend hours editing video content”, but it doesn’t have to be difficult!
Yes, there are times when you probably need to show your face and get on video, but you don’t always have to. In fact, there are some amazing accounts on Instagram that have grown through video without ever getting in front of the camera. So if that’s something that’s been holding you back, you just have to think about how else can you do this so that you can position yourself well.
However, you also have to acknowledge that by not showing your face, you are making your life a lot harder than it has to be.
We get that it can be scary, but at the end of the day, you need to realise that while you might really care about what you look like on video, nobody else is even paying that much attention.
And the great thing about social content? It’s usually gone by the next day! Especially with Instagram Stories, which is the easiest way to get started with video content. Just by posting a 15-30 second story, you can build your confidence so much!
The way consumers interact is changing
You may have noticed that social media platforms are shifting to prioritise video, but they’re not just doing it for the fun of it. Nowadays, people are choosing to consume more and more video content, which is why it’s being prioritised in the algorithms.
If you’re not using video, those who prefer to consume content via video are simply not going to interact with your content. It’s so important that you have different types of ways you communicate with your audience and video is the big one right now. If you skip this, you’re going to be missing a big portion of your audience.
When you’re looking to build relationships, showing up on video is one of the quickest ways to do that because people are actually able to see and hear you and get to know you before they decide to spend their money with you and hire you as their social media manager, or sign up to one of your offers.
Ultimately, video is a quicker way to start that process of building relationships.
We spoke about how to build better connections this episode of JFDI with The Two Lauras.
The best thing you can do on video is be yourself
If one of the things that’s been holding you back from showing up on video is thinking that you need to get dolled up and spend hours getting ready to go and record your Instagram Stories and Reels, but then you have a discovery call on Zoom and you haven’t made the effort you do on social media, things don’t align.
The best thing you can do on video is to be yourself. If you normally show up to your client calls and discovery calls in no makeup and a hoodie, it’s totally fine to show up like that on any video content you create. Because if someone gets on a discovery call with you expecting you to look like you do on social media and then you turn up looking totally different, that’s going to be quite a shock to them.
4. Sell consistently & strategically
There's no point doing all the things that we've just talked about, to get in front of all these new people unless you are then going to be very straightforward and clear about how they can actually work with you.
And this doesn't apply only to your own content. The same goes for your clients. If you're spending time bringing all these new followers in for your clients, but you're never selling to them, it’s a huge waste of time!
People are not mindreaders. People are not going to know about what you do and how you can help them without you actually telling them.
It’s not up to your audience to go and search for how to work with you. At the end of the day, people are lazy, and they're not going to trawl through your website to try and find the information they need. They need you to hand that information to them on a plate and make it easy for them to find.
They may read the information in your most recent social media posts, but they’re not going to go back that far, which is why you need to sell and then sell again.
Having a sales-based marketing plan is not just telling your audience what to do in January and then never doing it again. You need to be doing it constantly from different angles, in different ways, tackling different objections etc.
Be strategic about how you sell
With that being said, one thing you don’t want to be doing is constantly putting out sales posts. You need to be strategic with the way you sell.
The best way to sell on social media is to use a launch model. That's why we teach that in our programme, social prf.
When you are strategic about selling, you will get better results because people will know what is coming. You will have planned out that content so that you're mentioning what's coming up, and priming your audience so that they’re ready with their credit card to buy whatever it is you're selling when it’s available.
What exactly does “launching” mean?
Especially in the online world, the word “launches” is very much aligned with coaches and memberships and new products, but launching applies to everything.
Some people like to call it promotion. For example, an eCommerce shop won’t necessarily say they’re launching a new product, they’ll say they need to promote it. So the terminology may be slightly different in different industries, but essentially, it’s the same.
What probably won’t work is going out and creating one post promoting your offer and then never mentioning it again. It does not work like that. So whether you call it a launch, promotional period, or something else, having a strategic, consistent sales plan is an essential part of selling on social media.
RELATED PODCASTS
How to shift your mindset around selling on social media (and get more conversions for your clients)
How to get more potential clients to say YES!
It’s time to make a commitment to your growth
ACTION STEP: Block out time in your diary every week to work on the things we’ve discussed today.
Make a commitment to yourself that you will focus on doing at least one of these things. You don’t want to look back this time next year and realise that your business is still in the same situation as you are today, hidden away from your potential dream clients.
So in our true Laura style, JFDI. Get out your diary, block out that time, and let’s do this!
