hey everyone it's remy from hubspot and today i want to break down the key steps you need to follow in order to grow your social media platforms growing your business on social media can seem a little daunting and it can also feel like such an overwhelming task when you think about how saturated all of these platforms are right now in 2021 statistics show that there are over 4 billion social media users but again the good news here is that there's truly room for all businesses to thrive online you just need the right steps and the right tools speaking of tools i'm going to share an amazing and free hubspot tool with you today that'll take your social media game to the next level but before we get to that let's start with step number one pick one platform to focus on first before trying to take on all of them at once i know some people don't really think social media takes a lot of work but i promise you it's a lot of work especially as a business i mean some businesses even have entire teams dedicated to their social media but if you're just starting out this is the perfect opportunity to pick one platform to focus on based on the kind of content that will suit your business best for example if you're opening up a gelato shop you might want to start off with instagram or tick tock to show pictures and short form videos of your product but if you're an online business and teaching a skill you might want to use facebook or youtube instead to create long form videos on your product or service making a list of what your business goals are will help a ton so that way it's easier for you to identify which platform you want to tackle first so once you've picked a platform to start off on step number two is to plan plan plan many different social media experts agree that planning your content one month in advance works best and it gives you enough time to squeeze in those spontaneous posts whenever necessary you know what makes planning social media content a breeze a planning tool more specifically hubspot's social media content calendar this tool is seriously a social media game changer it's like one giant template where all of your content and ideas can live so you're not scrambling to put something together last minute there's a tab for each social media platform so whether you're on just one platform or more all of your content is organized and it's in its own tab there's also a monthly content calendar so you can plan ahead and see what's going to be posted for each day of the month in the top right you'll see a color coding key which makes it so much easier to coordinate all of the different moving parts for each month this tool also has a scheduling tab so you can schedule your content to go live on certain days and specific times and last but not least a tab to store your oldies but goldies many businesses repurpose their content so this is the tab to keep those posts in that don't have an expiration date remember when i said consistency is key i wasn't joking all of these different social media platforms are competing to have people stay on them the longest so they're naturally going to favor pages that are posting consistently and engaging with their followers as well when you're posting you're spending more of your time on their platform and when you're engaging you're keeping other people on their platform longer and it's kind of creepy if you think about it too much because our attention is what all of these platforms are after but hey we do live in the era of social media and that's just the ugly truth so moral of the story be consistent and use a tool like hubspot's social media calendar to stay on top of your game the link for it is down below in the description box so make sure to check it out moving on step number three for creating an effective social media strategy find your niche and study your competition in order to stay consistent you have to keep up with trends in your niche and see what other accounts are doing so pay attention to how they engage with their audience and what kinds of questions or comments are people leaving that you could also answer on your account but please remember to never steal or copy content big no no something i personally love doing is creating a list of accounts similar to mine and looking at what they're doing that's working and what isn't working and then building my plan from there there isn't a perfect formula to creating content online so it takes a little bit of trial and error to find what content works best for your business and helps you reach your goals and that brings me to step number four quality content is your content providing value is what you're posting something you would even stop and watch or is it boring is it teaching anything is it making people laugh always remember quality over quantity many pages are just pumping out meaningless content every day and it's so easy to want to do that as well but this isn't sustainable for long-term success again that's why studying trends and using something like a content calendar will help keep things organized and it'll help you achieve better results for your business the last step and probably the most important one once you've built a following is to engage with your audience if you want to keep your audience it's better to think of your followers as a community instead of just an audience these accounts are following you because you provided something of value to them and when they're leaving you supportive comments or questions it's your job to engage with them and show them your appreciation as well when you're first starting out a great way to get the ball rolling is to ask questions ask your followers what kind of content they want to see from you get their feedback on what you're currently posting and see if it's working or not just create a voice that feels more relatable and more human behind your business page so remember number one focus on one platform first build that up and then it'll be easier to transfer over to other platforms number two use a tool like hubspot's content calendar that'll keep you on track with all of your posts number three find your niche and study the trends and your competition number four quality over quantity and number five engage with your audience i hope you've enjoyed this video if you did let us know by giving it a thumbs up and if you aren't subscribed already don't forget to hit that subscribe button down below before you go see you guys next time bye [Music] you