There is no hard and fast rule on how often to share promo posts so I'm sharing how you can change how you think about them to help you figure out how often is ideal for you.
Copyright exists on the Internet with Catherine Berry: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1709287/9063686
Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/
Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844
Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/
Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844
There is no hard and fast rule on how often to share promo posts so I'm sharing how you can change how you think about them to help you figure out how often is ideal for you.
Copyright exists on the Internet with Catherine Berry: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1709287/9063686
Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/
Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844
Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/
Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844
Hello and welcome to Social Media for Humans, the podcast that empowers you to do social differently. Your host, Alexis Bushnell, and her guests discuss their experience of social media as business owners, users, and ultimately humans. With insights and advice to help you find an effective and ethical strategy that works for you. Grab yourself a drink and join the conversation. Alexis: Hello hello, I'm Alexis, my pronouns are she her, welcome to another quick tip episode of the Social Media for Humans podcast. Today I want to talk about how often you should put out promotional posts. This is something that comes up so much, everybody wants a hard and fast rule like you should put out a promotional post once a week, you should put out a promotional post three times a week, you should. And like, I hate to break it to you, this is not going to be that advice! In true you-do-you style, it depends! It depends on many many things but I want to give you a little explainer to maybe shift how you think about promotional posts that might help. So when a lot of people think about promotional posts, sales posts, however you want to think about them, whatever you're calling them, people imagine often a post where maybe the image or the video is about whatever it is, it's like here's my new product, here's my new service, here's how you can work with me, and the caption is like here's the details, maybe here's the price, here's how you can buy it, and that's that's kind of it, that's just like a sales post, like hey, here's the thing, buy the thing please. But actually there are so many other ways that you can do sales posts. Testimonials is a really good one if you are somebody who is not great at promoting yourself, who doesn't feel amazing bigging yourself up and saying like I'm really good at what I do, this product I've created is incredible, here's why. Using testimonials can be a really good way to big yourself up without you having to do it because all you're doing is saying this person who bought this product, or used this service, or worked with me in some capacity, they think it's amazing. You don't have to add to that, you don't have to say anything else. If you really sincerely hate promoting yourself and talking about what you do and that kind of thing, while you work through it. This is not me saying you can just only post testimonials, you never have to promote yourself in any other way, you can just allow that to be a thing. No! Go work with a coach, go work with a therapist, sort that out. But while you are doing that you can lean on those testimonials and use them to promote you. So whether you do that screenshotting them, copy and pasting them, using a photo of the person, with permission. There is a a whole podcast episode from season one about copyright still existing on the internet with Catherine Berry, please do go and check that out before you start posting photos of other people or photos that other people have taken, even if it's of your product. So testimonials, great way. Another thing that people don't consider often to be promotional posts are posts just about you, about why you're passionate about what you do, about maybe your thoughts on relevant topical issues to what you do and things like that, that can lead into a "buy my stuff" call to action. So if you are putting out a post that's like hey, I went for a walk at the weekend and it was really lovely, and had a nice lunch here, and I took my bag that I have created because I sell bags and it was really helpful because X Y Z. Boom! It's a promotional post but it is also just a nice story about you going out about. Things like that, and also even in, I've seen a lot of coaches do this really well lately, especially to talk about your own stuff whether that's like imposter syndrome, a lot of people are sharing really great posts about their own imposter syndrome, how they worked through it, and then the call to action is "if you want some help getting through your own imposter syndrome, here's this course I'm running, here's this one-to-one service that I offer," that kind of thing. So the whole post does not have to be just I sell this thing, here's the details of this thing, here's the price of this thing, here's how you can buy it, it's thinking, I say outside the box, it's still kind of in the box but it's allowing yourself to see promotional posts in a broader way so that they're not just a list of things that your product or service does, or however you're currently doing it. And that also leads into your engagement posts and your posts that you're putting up that aren't currently promotional in any way because a lot of you will find, I would wager all of you, that promotional posts generally don't do as well on social media. They generally don't as well for reach, they don't do well for engagement which is why they don't just well for reach, whereas engagement posts often do much better whatever they are posting about. But you can totally combine the two, so you can have what seems to be an engagement post that asks a question or that is based on something you posted about as an engagement post previously, that then at the end just has this offer of like hey, here's this thing that I created that is relevant to whatever this is. And on things like intro posts you can also use that as an opening, especially as like a service-based business, to invite people to work with you. So when you've put a post that's like maybe a picture of you, picture of you doing something that you enjoy, whatever it is, that you then talk about what you enjoy, what your hobbies are, what you're, who you are as a person, that kind of thing and then at the end you're like hey, if you want to work with somebody like me, here's what I offer, or click the link in my bio, or send me a DM to chat about, figure out we'd be a good fit to work together, things like that. So your promotional posts don't have to be just what many people consider to be promotional posts. And this isn't about kind of luring people in with a warm fluffy story about whatever it is and then shifting into by my stuff, it is about making it relevant to the post, to the rest of the post, and just inviting people to buy if they want to, you know, if you want more details, if you want to get on the wait list, if you if this resonated with you and you think you could benefit from this, you know. Your call to action doesn't have to just be buy it, buy it at the link in my bio, buy it by clicking here. So try to shift what you consider promotional posts, how you think about them, and then figure out how many promotional posts make sense for you. I would not recommend that every single post you put out is a promotional post of of some kind, it is really important to have other content, but if you are somebody who is not amazing at putting out promotional content, I know there are many of you! Several people in the Social Media for Humans Club, not good at putting out the promotional content, so this is something we talk about a lot! So yeah, if you are somebody who struggles with that, try and have a little think and shift how you're seeing promotional posts and how you're doing them, and then see how you feel about it. Maybe you feel able to put out an extra promotional post, maybe you feel able to schedule in a few more and see how you feel. If you would like some help with your own promotional posts, with shifting how you see them, with creating them, with all that kind of thing, you can join the Social Media for Humans Club, that is for business owners who are trying to make social media work for them without losing their mind, or selling their soul, or any of that kind of thing, we don't like that here. So yeah, I would love to see you over there in the Club. And if you would like early access to podcast episodes you can join us on Patreon, they are currently three episodes ahead over there, so two guest episodes and an extra tip episode, so if you are an impatient person like me, you can go and join us on Patreon. So I would love to see you either in the Club, on Patreon, follow me on social media, all that kind of thing, and take care. If you want more regular reminders to find your own way to use social media, follow Alexis on your social platform of choice, all the links will be in the show notes. Until next time, be a human.