Social Media Advice I Don't F*ck With

10 Apr

TL;DR Building a successful social media presence isn't about following generic advice. Avoid obsessing over posting times, following back everyone, or posting daily. Instead, focus on:

✅ Creating content for your ideal audience

✅ Engaging authentically with your community

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So you’re trying to grow your podcast?

If you’ve spent any time on social media trying to grow your podcast (or business, or blog, or community) then you’ve likely been bombarded with 783947 different pieces of advice, all which seem to contradict each other. The thing is, there is no one right answer when it comes to building your online presence. BUT there are some pretty clear wrong ways to do it. If you’re looking for step-by-step instructions on how to exactly build your social media strategy, then this isn’t the blog for you. But if you want to know what not to do, keep reading.

You have to post at certain times of the day

You’ve probably seen social media experts say posting at the right time of day will help you grow. But tell me, what happens if the ‘best time to post’ happens to be at 1 in the morning when you’re trying to get your beauty sleep? You’re not going to post at that time, and even if you schedule the post, you won’t be able to engage with your community during that time. So instead of trying to decipher what the best time of day to post is, try posting whenever it’s easiest for you. The reality is, staying consistent on social media is hard. Adding the stress of when to post is just not worth it.

You should follow back everyone who follows you

You’ve probably seen ‘follow chains’ going around, or you may have even fallen victim to them yourself. These are when you follow back anyone who follows you with the hopes of growing your follower count. While this may look good at first glance, it’s actually trash. When we follow everyone who follows us, two things happen:

One: We end up building a following that is not at all aligned with our strategy and so our engagement tanks.

Two: Your feed gets so clogged up with posts, half of which I assume you probably don’t even care about, that you won’t want to engage with your feed.

Instead, focus on building a community of followers that are aligned with your goals. Follow people who inspire you, excite you, make you want to do more for your podcast. And when you see a new follower, don’t feel pressured to follow them back.

You have to post daily

This is something I know you see a lot. Social media experts are constantly saying things like, “You have to be consistent”, “Post daily to grow faster” blah blah blah. That advice is vague and unhelpful. If your focus is posting daily, you’re going to end up creating content for the sake of creating content. This will leave you with poorly thought out, possibly crappy content. Remember, consistency doesn’t have to be posting constantly (do you see the difference?) Choose a posting frequency that works for you (and if it is daily, kudos to you!) and focus on high quality content that is going to capture the attention of your ideal audience and leave them wanting more.

You have to engage before and after you post

Okay, don’t get me wrong, engagement is absolutely important. But sometimes life gets busy, and new emails pop up and before you know it your scheduled post has gone live and you completely forgot about it. While it can be good to engage with your audience before and after you post, it isn’t always necessary. You can respond to comments, reply to DMs and interact with stories at a time that works for you.

You have to be on all social media platforms

There are 2 reasons why I don’t think this is even remotely good advice:

One: trying to perfect every platform and create content to post will get exhausting very quickly. The goal here isn’t to pump out so much content that it leaves you exhausted or burnt out.

Two: Is your ideal audience even on every platform? Probably not.

Here’s what I mean: If you are selling something only old people want, would they even find you on TikTok ? not likely. So focus your attention and energy on where your ideal audience is.

Now that we’ve talked about things I don’t care about…

I’m going to leave you with 2 pieces of advice I do care about:

One: The quality of your posts. Seriously, quality is important, if it’s not going to attract your audience, what’s the point?

Two: How you engage your community. I know I said it doesn’t matter when you engage, but it does matter how. Are you ghosting your community?

Honestly, there are a million different things you could do to make your social media successful (not to mention, success means something completely different to everyone). So instead of worrying about trying to follow every single piece of advice you see online, create a strategy that works for you and stick with it.

Hey there 👋 Nice to virtually meet you! I’m Chelsea, social media and podcast enthusiast. I’d love to get to know you better, so here are a few ways we can stay connected:

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