With the social media landscape evolving every second of the day, it can seem grueling trying to stay on top of trends and truly nail down an understanding of the current state of the market. But here are a few simple things you MUST start with in order to stay up-to-date on the latest trends.
The 3F rule: FIND, FOCUS, and FRIEND your niche
In order for your social media presence to gain traction and appeal to your targeted demographic you must find your niche audience.
- Finding your niche not only gives you prospective clients, it builds a community of people that have something in common (a channel).
- Once your audience finds you, you will notice organic engagement on your posts, etc.
Build a Hashtag Ladder
The theory is that by having a set of 30 hashtags, ranging from easy to difficult to rank for, you can start to hit the popular results for the easy ones, gain some engagement, rank for more difficult ones, grab more engagement and so on up the ladder.
- Stitch Fix: Switch out underperforming tags with higher-performing ones biweekly or monthly.
Define Your Voice
Tailor your voice to match your audience in a unique way that feels informed but also stands out.
- Remain as close to your own personal values as possible to increase the authenticity of your platform creating an open and welcoming vibe
- Now that your hashtag ladder and channel voice is finished, you can start creating content and posting it.
Create Your Word Cloud
Put together a word cloud of what your freelance business is trying to accomplish with words that appeal to your targeted demographic
- Once you have a list of about 10 words or phrases, you start to get into the nitty-gritty of creating what is called the ‘hashtag ladder’ for your Instagram posts
Find Your Tags
From your word cloud you made before!
- Break the phrases into single words to find the tags
- Add emojis or a second word to dig into what’s trending
- Another crucial way to make sure you’re reaching your niche is by including your city initials in the tags
