I know you already know that every single person that follows you, likes your posts, comments, views, and saves your post is your online audience and community. And if you don’t, well now you know.

Welcome to class. You have people following you but they are not patronizing the brand? It can be quite sad to have about 1000 followers and only about 50 of them are consistent clients, right? You begin to question what you are doing wrong or if this line of work is for you. I can’t answer that but I can give you tips to help with that.

First, you must understand that everything is about your marketing strategy.

Secondly, you must also understand that marketing isn’t magic; it is more of a learning curve.

Thirdly, marketing is trial and error; you must be prepared for many failed marketing strategies.

Fourthly, you must be ready to step out of your comfort zone and spend small money.

And finally, believe that you would get a hang of it.

1. Earn their trust

Who are you? How can they reach you? How are they sure you aren’t a scam? What’s your evidence?

People want to know that they can trust whoever they are buying from. So it doesn’t turn out to be “what I ordered vs what I got”.

2. What time are you posting?

What time is your audience online? Are they always online in the evenings, at noon or morning, or even at midnight? You need to study what time they are most active online.

You can study that by consistently posting at various times of the day and see which post gets more engagement. Hence the time of that post should be your significant posting time and note that you need to study for each day of the week.

This is important because if you post in the morning while your audience is more of night owls it is 70% sure that they wouldn’t see your post. After all, people are constantly posting and you might get buried.

3. Create a strategy

Start on the right foot by creating a social media strategy. All those Facebook posts and tweets may not help your sales much without proper planning.

First, determine the goals of your social media presence, whether it’s attracting more customers, boosting brand recognition, or improving customer service. Decide who your target audience is, and spell out a content strategy covering:

• your key messages

• kinds of content that will appeal to your audience

• a list of keywords that describe your business. You’ll use these words in your content to help you rank higher in Internet searches for those terms.

4. Use Social Selling

Social selling is building a network on sites like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook to make connections and present yourself as an expert in your field.

To get started, research companies you are interested in doing business with and take a close look at who you’d want to connect with. Then, click and start building a relationship with those people by sharing content, inviting them to events, or introducing them to potential customers.

But don’t expect this technique to make big wins quickly. Social selling is all about fostering relationships over the long term.

5. Enter into DMs.

I recently bought a dress for the first time from an Instagram vendor that I have been following for years but never paid so much attention to.

What changed?

This vendor in the past few months has been in my dm announcing herself in a very subtle way.

She started with a “How are you, just checking on your beautiful self today”. I didn’t respond but guess what; I checked out her page.

She kept going weekly. She would wish me a happy new week, happy new month, happy holiday, etc. Suddenly I began to respond to her. She wasn’t stalking or stressing me or even advertising her brand to me, she was just making sure I knew she existed and oh boy did I know she existed cause I always found myself checking out her page till I finally bought a dress, and ill be buying more.

4. Keep it simple and don’t make it a sales pitch

Too much of something ends up becoming a distraction. This means that whether you are creating a blog, a video, an infographic, or any other mix of content, make sure that it sticks to its narrative.