How to Balance Promoting & Providing Value on your Business's Social Media Platforms

If you run a business and you find yourself struggling to strike a balance between promoting your products/services, and providing value for your audience to drive trust, authority, and ultimately reach your ideal people, this blog is for you!

Here are my top tops for balancing promoting and providing value on social media. I go into much more depth in the video version of this blog, so I highly recommend watching that if you believe this subject could really help you to hear more about :)

Creatively educate & inspire your audience 80% of the time, while incorporating sales/promotions at least 20%

I say AT LEAST 20% of the time because this should be the minimum amount you promote your product/service as a business account on social media. I know what you may be saying... "But I don't want to come off salesy!" Listen, I get it. I'm not great at keeping up the 20% myself, but at the end of the day, people know that they're following a business and they didn't follow you because you have nice hair, or a cool style. They followed you because they believe you can provide them value in some way shape or form.

A really great technique I've recently been privy to is utilizing Stories to sell/promote your offerings. The reason this works is for a few reasons that I'll list below

• Stories only last 24 hours

• Stories are meant to be short, so the smaller amount of information the better (quick hits)

• Stories are click-through-able... meaning, you don't have to watch them if you don't want to by simply clicking a button to opt out.

Because of these reasons, Stories are truly a great opportunity to not only promote, but they can be an opportunity to be much more personable with your audience, less "pretty" and "polished". Also because it only lasts 24 hours! Because of this timestamp, Stories are also perfect for running campaigns on sales, waitlists, product drops, etc.

When it comes to creatively educating and inspiring your audience, this is really speaking to the idea that you want your unique personality to shine. This isn't suggesting that you should be doing something totally different and unlike anything you've seen, but it's about finding a balance in putting your unique flare on something that may be tipping a cap to a trend you've been seeing. Save posts that captivate YOU, and take elements from these posts that work for a reel idea your have, and your style.

The reason this is important and WILL drive trust and authority is because it is clear that you are putting in effort to not only educate, inspire and provide value to your audience in some way, but it's also clear that you have something different to offer compared to other people. A quote I've recently heard is "people purchase from people, not businesses". In order to really attract your people to engage with your corner of the internet, you need to give them a reason to. The beautiful part is, you get to create that reason.

In your value-centric content, always point your community to a CTA (call to action) that will allow them to engage with you, and your offerings further

Now, these offerings should ALSO be value-centric. Why? Because always having a call-to-action to purchase something, or invest in something takes away from the trust and authority building content preceding it. I'm not saying this is always the case, but we want to limit this as much as possible.

Instead, I suggest pointing your community to something (connected directly to your business/brand's website or main platform), that provides even more value and still free. Within this "something", whether its a free downloadable checklist, guide, or incentivizing them to subscribe to your email list in order to receive (value), THIS offering space, is where you want to include the CTA that drives people toward something they can purchase to receive even more value.

By taking your community through this extra step of value-building, it provides an additional opportunity for people to gain more value, and build more trust with you and what you offer. This is almost critical, because the likelihood of someone purchasing straight from your social media page requires a LOT of trust building, and I assume you guys are like me and want content creation to be as minimal and streamlined as possible so that you can work more on your passion and spend more time with loved ones (whilst also providing utmost value elsewhere, just not through social media).

What this essentially is, is a "trust funnel". The more your customer can evidently see that you are worthy of investing their time and money in, the more likely they are going to do just that.

Separate yourself emotionally & mentally from your platforms to allow for your confidence to shine through and lead you when creating content

This seems like a little wellness tid bit, and that's because it IS. I genuinely believe our well-being plays a vital role in all aspects of our lives, but that's beside the point. The more awareness around your mental and emotional wellbeing you have in your life, the more aligned everything will be and feel.

On the other side of that point, the more awareness you have- the more sensitive, hypercritical, and focused on everybody else you can become. This comes naturally with being an intentional and mindful human being. But of course, when it comes to engaging with the world of the internet, this is where this can become a problem, and honestly, a source of de-motivation.

We have to choose to separate ourselves from what we create on the internet. It doesn't mean that you have to "dislike" what you're doing, or have some weird resentment towards it, no. It simply means that you as (your first and last name) is a complete and totally separate entity than who (your first and last name) is online. You, yourself, would never treat yourself like a business, so why should we treat our business like it IS us?

There is some grey area, of course. We put so much into our businesses and our passions that it actually does feel like an extension of ourselves, and any critique, negativity or dissapointment towards our business, it's nearly impossible to not take that personally.

BUT, I want to just remind you that you certainly are your own person, with your own life, your own tastes, style, and so much more. No matter what anyone says online, they are coming from a place of their own perspective with their own life, tastes, problems, happiness, or lack their of. In order to be successful and not get extremely caught up in the online world, and the harshness that can come with it, we have to start thinking objectively about everything we do for our business. At the end of the day, it will protect us and help us to thrive to the best of our ability.

Thank you so much for reading this blog and supporting my small business!

Hi, I'm Liz! I'm so BEYOND grateful to be serving you - wellness business leaders, creative solopreneurs and artisan crafters- in streamlining the content creation process off of your plate so that you can get back to doing more of what you love. If you're interested in learning more about what we do at Essence Presents, or your really looking to get your content creation process under control in your business, take your pick below:

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