Any of my clients or mastermind participants will tell you, I constantly talk about the three reasons why people use social media. The first reason is that people want you to educate on social media. They go online to learn something. I talk about this one the most as it’s the most common and the most abused. Let me explain…

What I mean about needing to educate on social media

Educating your clients on social media ranges across a number of things. It’s telling them about your product, service, business, or staff. It’s the behind the scenes images. It’s telling them that you have a sale on. It’s letting them know about the options available. It’s mostly about the ‘what & who’.

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Educating your clients is one of the easiest things to do. It’s selling. It’s promotion. It’s old school marketing. That’s the problem with the vast majority of business owners who move online, they apply old school marketing to new school technology. It just doesn’t work.

Consider this…

You’re reading your favourite newspaper or magazine. Do you read the ads or do you flip past the majority of them? Unless you are studying marketing or the ad catches your eye for a particular reason, you flip past. So what do you think people do with their Facebook feed or other social media? We scroll (the equivalent of flipping the page)!

Now, consider if you see an interesting story on your favourite celebrity/sportsperson and they are holding a product or it’s in the background. You take notice. Right? I’m calling this the Kardashian Marketing Principle. They make their money by selling access to their followers, the sponsor makes money by people seeing them use the product. Not by the Kardashians doing some cheesy infomercial type spruiking.

Businesses have a lot to learn from them. Educating the marketplace is not just ‘buy my shit’, it’s the exact opposite.

So how do you educate on social media?

Well look, you could use the Kardashians, but consider the possibility that you have your own Kardashians. You have testimonials. Third-party endorsements are a much underutilised, overlooked way of educating your clients. The beauty is that you’re not the one selling either. There’s a whole other article I wrote on testimonials and the power of customer endorsement that you can read and glean the magical ‘how to’s.

You incorporate it with other seemingly unrelated posts. You post a funny photo, meme or behind the scenes, and you suggest a service or product that’s related to the photo. It’s subtle. It’s the Kardashian holding the bottle.

You do a video on how you use your product or service. Believe me there is a lot of money to be made in being helpful. I spend hours each week helping people with no request for anything in return. Why? I know that I am building a relationship, I am building trust, and when that person comes to need what I can offer – they will turn to me because I was the one who was always there & ready to help. (You can read more on this in the book Youtility by Jay Baer – affiliate link)

Educating your clients isn’t straight selling, nor is it advising them of your opening hours. It’s best done subtly  and consistently. That’s the thing. By constantly pushing products or services in their faces they feel nagged, if you are more subtle & drop hints – you’ll get the sale. Kind of like wooing someone you fancy. The ‘How ‘bout it’ approach might work occasionally, but you’re better off buying dinner or coffee first.

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