For many entrepreneurs, their social media team is a one-man army – namely, themselves. Despite this, business owners must dominate these platforms to make an impact. This article outlines how to do just that even if you are the only soldier on the battlefield.
The Secret to Making a One-Man Army Look Like a Squadron
The reality is that most companies cannot hire a full social media team for various reasons.
Unfortunately, that also means that the responsibility of digital marketing falls on you. At first, the task seems overwhelming and intimidating, but there is a way to simplify things.
Maximize Content to Its Fullest Potential Across All Platforms
By doing this, your branded content does the heavy lifting for you, instead of vice versa. But, there is an exact formula for creating and distributing your material for it to be effective. So, spamming your audience without any rhyme or reason is not going to get you where you want to go.
With that in mind, I am going to break down the step-by-step process of establishing an online presence as a one-man army.
The first move of your one-man social media army is to identify a dozen or so of the headaches your business can relieve for your customers.
One-Man Army Social Media Battle Plan
Now, as I detail this strategy, there is something you’re going to notice: I will not emphasize producing professional-quality content at any point. In fact, you should be prepared and willing to be “not good” in the beginning. In the long run, it is more important to be everywhere than to be “perfect.”
However, do not mistake this to mean that the information and value you provide can be low-quality – it needs to be rock-solid. For that reason, we are going to begin with that cornerstone as the foundation of your social media marketing battle plan.
Find Out Their Problems
The challenge in finding new customers or tapping into other audiences is that sometimes, people don’t know what they want. It’s not their fault; they feel this way because they don’t know what problem your product will solve for them. This makes it your job to showcase solutions.
The internet is the modern-day equivalent of a billboard for your business. So, the first move of your one-man social media army is to → identify a dozen or so of the headaches you can relieve for your customers.
Keep this list close, because it is the tactical blueprint for the rest of this battle plan.
Speak Your Customers’ Language
A lethal marketing mistake is assuming that consumers understand your particular industry’s nomenclature. Your customers are not “in the sauce” of whatever you sell 24 hours a day, seven days a week like you are! This means that using slang or wording your messaging that way is going to isolate you and breed misunderstanding – both of which will cost you revenue.
To prevent that, you are going to simplify your list of solutions in as many ways as you can. This naturally forms catchy bullet points for the first content you will create on your one-man army crusade.
Educate and Inform via Podcasts
In terms of content for digital branding, your first move should be a podcast. Believe it or not, this is not a complicated task to accomplish. Each item on your list of customer “pain points” is a topic for an episode or series for your broadcast.
As far as the technical side, this doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult, either. In fact, I suggest you use basic Zoom recordings at first for this purpose. I have a complete podcast guide for beginners if you want to upgrade your quality later on.
The reason I want you to do it this way is because then, you have both the audio and video footage. And here’s why you want those separately and together …
Break it Down
This is where you start working smarter, not harder. Take the full video of your podcast, then cut it up into shorter videos. From there, you can upload those clips as:
- TikToks
- Instagram Reels or Stories
- YouTube Videos
This casts a wider net across the internet, allowing your content to reach more people on social media. But, it doesn’t stop there.
Quotes from the podcast can be used as Tweets. Lists of tips can be turned into infographics. Or, transcripts of the broadcast can be modified into blogs or articles.
With a little creativity, there is no limit to how you can repurpose your content. This makes being a one-man social media army infinitely easier. Nonetheless, you don’t want to go it alone on the frontline forever.
Add Mercenaries to Your One-Man Army
If you work social media to its fullest potential you will, eventually, need to enlist reinforcements. Especially because with these platforms, consistency is the key to success.
And, you need to pay attention to your business at the same time!
In most cases, you still will not be able to bring on a full-time social media manager. However, you can get part-time or contracted help. Examples include virtual assistants to edit audio and video, or hiring specialists from websites like Fiver to handle specific tasks.
Either way, you can get support for tasks that aren’t in your wheelhouse; but once you have these assets, don’t let them go to waste.
Do it Again
Here is the mistake I see not only individuals, but also companies make constantly: they make some killer branding content and the post or video does well online. Then, they never use it again.
What are they thinking?
When something performs well, you should do it again immediately and across every channel you have! I promise it will not hurt your image. Think about how many times you’ve seen Coca-Cola and their polar bears at Christmastime. You’re going to be fine.
Being a one-man army seems like a huge battle to undertake on your own, but it does have an unspoken advantage.
When something performs well, you should do it again immediately and across every channel you have!
The Advantage of Being a One-Man Social Media Army
At the end of the day, it takes massive efforts to make social media successful as a business owner. Still, I want you to look at it from this perspective:
No one is going to be as passionate or knowledgeable about your product or service as you are.
That means as the sole digital voice for your brand, nothing gets lost in translation. This also means the messaging will be crystal clear once you need to add more soldiers to your cause.
Just make the most of your content and post it often and everywhere. That is how you become great.
