Social Media Freelancer's Handbook: Navigating the Path to Success

1. Welcome & What you will learn : Hey everyone and welcome to my successful social media side hustles, Skillshare class. I'm so thrilled to have you joining me today because we're going to be chatting about exactly what you need to land your very first social media client and run the account with great success and confidence. Social media has opened up a world of opportunity for me in my life because it's meant that I have an invaluable skill to teach to other people achieve of which are my clients. I deal with a lot of clients and have a lot of accounts that I've worked with over the years. I really want to be sharing with you 10 years of agency and direct access to my clients in terms of what I've learned and how I feel that you guys can add value to someone's life by offering social media as a service. Without further ado, let's jump into the SlideShare so you can find out exactly how this class is structured and what the learning outcomes will be for you. In terms of the structure of today's Skillshare class, I'm going to be taking you step-by-step through everything that you need to know in terms of landing that very first social media client and to do that, I'm going to be sharing with you a couple of slides. First off, as I said, lovely to meet you. My name is Megs and I've worked in digital marketing and social media marketing for the last 10 years. I started out my journey at a digital agency as an intern and within about five years I found myself as the Head of Strategy and then finally the Head of Innovation. I subsequently then changed to a big job at a big brand and became the Digital Marketing Manager, which I absolutely loved and did for about two years. Now I'm taking on my own freelance social media clients and of course, doing my online training. It's really a pleasure to be on this journey with you. I have had many titles as I mentioned, whether it's Digital Strategist, Head of Strategy, Head of innovation, or Digital Marketing Manager. But really social media has been at the core, no matter what my title was. I believe that a lack of passion is absolutely fatal so I tried to encourage my students to find their purpose. Oftentimes it is doing social media on behalf of other people, other times it's running your own business and maybe you're just doing this course to learn about how you can up-level your social media. Either way, social media is going to give you so many tools to scale your passion. Whether that's just being able to earn money remotely and that's your passion, that's incredible. Social media will help you do that. If it's about selling more of your services or your products, again social media is just unlocking a world of opportunity. I would love it if you subscribed to me on YouTube, I make loads of educational content over there. That's what I do when I'm not working. For my clients and on behalf of other people, I'm really building my own brand on YouTube. If you could search for Megs Hollis on YouTube and give me a little subscribe or a like, I would be so appreciative. This channel is all about teaching people how to do digital better. I really feel like that's my purpose in life and what I use social media in order to scale my business through. Meet Blue. Blue is my absolute most prized possession. He's a little Pekingese Maltese cross, and so the two of us live very happily together in Cape Town in South Africa. Just to give you a bit of context there on who I am and what makes me tick. I'd love to see in the comment section and more about you so please do post a little blurb about where you're joining us from and maybe what your day job is or maybe some some your passions too. 2. The Structure for Today's Class : In terms of the structure for today's class, it's really a six-step process that we're going to be chatting through. The first is your project. On Skillshare we love to structure things around projects because we feel like putting things into action is really going to help you concretize exactly what you've learned. Stay tuned to find out your secret mission. Then we're going to chat through an approach. What is our methodology in order to land off this social media client? What does that look like? What are those very practical and implementable steps that we need to be undertaking? Then my three-step process of unlevel, uncover, and unleash. This is really the meat of this master class today where we're going to be discussing things like what tools you need, what software, what considerations you may need to bear in mind. Maybe you're not feeling like a social media expert. You really need that little injection of what it is that I need to know in order to be able to share this with my clients and ultimately make money. Then finally, we're really going to be recapping everything that we've learned in the conclusion, and making sure that we've left no stone unturned and that there's no questions that we still need answered. If at any point something does crop up, I love telling to my students, so please do leave me a comment down below and I will be sure to get back to you as soon as I can. 3. What you can expect from being a Social Media Manager: Next up, let's talk about our approach to this task. How are we going to tackle the task of launching a social media side hustle? You want to launch a social media side hustle. What are some of the things that you need to know in terms of day-to-day expectations that a client may have of you? What can you expect to do on your average day? Well, I can confirm that brainstorming content ideas is going to be one of the biggest tasks that you undertake for your clients, and then taking these ideas and putting them into action using what we call content calendars. These content calendars is what's going to make it easy for a client to approve that they're happy with what's going on on their social media networks before you hit post. Next up, of course, uploading this content into automated schedulers is going to make your life really easy in order to post across multiple channels. Contrary to popular belief, someone is not always behind the computer or the phone pressing send as the post goes live. There's a lot of tools that help us to ensure that although it looks like we're always on, of course, we're mindful of things like our mental health and making sure that we're not having to be online 24/7. Facebook, and Instagram, and LinkedIn, and Twitter, all do their best job to try and make their platforms really user friendly, but luckily for us, there are a lot of third party platforms which make it even easier. In terms of the tools that you're going to need to become a social media side hustle and the ones that are going to support you in having multiple clients and managing multiple accounts, I've really tried to always choose either the free version of a platform or the most cost-effective one. This is to be really budget sensitive because of course this is meant to be an income generating exercise and not make us feel like we've been put out of pocket. I will be very transparent around the costs of any tools involved. Anything that you need to pay for, we'll caveat quite a lot and hopefully always provide some alternative if that's not an option. Next up, we're going to be thinking about how you go about designing those social media graphics that are an absolute given if you're doing social media for anyone, whether you're running posts for them, Facebook ads for them, and many, many more things. At this juncture, I'm just going to pause and say that paid media advertising is not something that we're going to be covering in this course because it's beginners and learning of firsthand. However, in our subsequent course that is under construction and very much in the works, we're going to be talking about scaling and actually making a social media agency in which, of course, we'll talk about paid media advertising. If you do want to hear from me on that, please leave me a comment below and I can actually give you the launch date for that second Skillshare class. Then we can expect to engage and interact with our channels, answer DMs, and just be that front-facing customer service person. Then, of course, you're going to want to have fortnightly or monthly meetings with clients to unpack what is and isn't working. We always talk about social media marketing and digital marketing as being an iterative process and this is no different. You're never going to get it right first time, which actually takes a lot of the pressure of you. I would really encourage you to lean in that feeling that, actually I'm going to do my absolute best. Then, at the end of the month there's going to be learnings in terms of, ways of working with my clients, content that works and doesn't work, platforms that work and doesn't work and not take any of that really to heart. Really, these are the key expectations that a client would likely have of you. Maybe one that I haven't mentioned would just be a general understanding of the ins and outs of the platform but, of course, that's what this class is going to assist you with. Then, also just being on top of the trends and we'll share with you exactly where we suggest you go to find some trends, predictions and those sorts of things, as well as the trends that we do mention in this class particularly. 4. Getting into the Right Mindset: In terms of getting started, the three key areas that we're going to be talking about before we get to our three-step process is mindset, tools, and strategy. In my mind, this is probably the three most important things to actually get started and get those wheels in motion. Mindset, we want to be organized and we want to be excited. Those are the two states that we definitely need to find ourselves in, in order to be able to produce creative content for anyone else. Then we're going to look at the tools that we need, so that we make sure that we have everything set up before we land this client. Then finally, the strategy. Once we have landed that client, what is our plan? How do we execute upon it? What does that actually look like? In terms of the mindset, this comes up a lot in many other courses. But I think it's really important to just caveat the social media class with two. Social media can be a dark place. No one is really disputing the fact that being online all the time can be a sole thing. Really, when it comes to mindset, we need to focus on keeping ourselves positive and keeping our social media channels positive at all points in time. I will often speak to my students about, A, curating a social media diet that really fills your cup and makes you feel good and makes you feel I'm happy to be alive. Because obviously, being a social media manager of any kind will mean that you do have to do that. In terms of this fixed mindset versus growth mindset, this does come up a lot. But certainly, on the social media space having a growth mindset is going to help you. Because guess what? Social media is always changing. There's always going to be questions that a client asks that you have to go back to the drawing board to uncover. We really want to lean into the growth mindset side of things to ensure that at no point are we just feeling defeated, feeling like we should just give up or something is too difficult. When it comes to our skills, we want to feel the skills are going to develop with the hard work and they're always going to have the ability to improve. In terms of challenges, we want to embrace them as far as possible and feel that they're an opportunity to grow and remind us to be more persistent in our approach to things. We're not, of course, going to be an expert overnight in social media and neither is anyone else. Even if you're just a couple of steps ahead of your client, we want to make sure that you just increase that gap over time to make it really feel like you are the thought leader that you want to be. In terms of effort, it's absolutely essential, you do have to have that persistence with social media, and you need to have the dedication to this path to mastery. You really want to have that North Star thinking, "Okay, this is where we're going to get to, but it's going to take time." In terms of feedback, you need to view it as useful. When your client comes back to you with comments or changes on your content plan, be accommodating, be welcoming, be open to it, agree with them and say, "Gee, I didn't think about it that way, but thank you so much for raising it." There's nothing worse than someone being defensive when you make any remarks about the work, because at the end of the day, the client should be trying to help you to produce a better output for their brand. You want to think of it as useful, something to learn from and identify those areas of improvement, so that you can do a better job ultimately. In terms of how we treat setbacks, we want to use any setback as a wake-up call to work harder or work smarter next time. Really, I would urge you in most elements of life, but certainly social media to just really think about, I am having a growth mindset or am I having a fixed mindset in all of this? Then, of course, you have to be excited about social media. I feel like enthusiasm is so infectious that you do need to convey that enthusiasm and just really possess around social media. As I said, curate that social media diet. Only follow brands and people which fill your cup. Just be really conscious about when you log into social media, what's making you feel like you don't like social media, it's not a constructive place to be, because absolutely, it means that something has gone wrong and we need to rectify that before we proceed. We want to be really intentional with our interactions online. We can't spend 24/7 online, so we do just need to be clear on when I open my phone or I open this app, what am I actually going there to do? We don't want you to be mindlessly scrolling at all points of the day through social media. Then read up on trends and changes and what's upcoming is what's going to really invigorate that love for social media. People will say, "I know how Instagram works," and they'll take a photo of the pedal and not look at it again. But there's such cool websites out there. Social Media Examiner is probably the best example of something that every time I go there, I learn something new. You really need to take out half an hour in your week possibly, just to read a couple of articles about what's upcoming. Then if there's an awkward silence on a status call with your client, you can always be like, "Hey, did you hear about X, Y, Z from Social Media Examiner?" Most of the times they'll say, no, and there's a talking point for you to really show how much you are showing up for them and their brand. Finally, consistency is going to be key so be sure to play the long game. You don't want to produce 100 pieces of content for a client and then be so exhausted that you're never going to be able to produce content for them before, so just be sure that you're being kind to yourself and managing the expectation of your client accordingly. 5. Rock your Instagram: What I've done is put together two cheat sheets for you guys, one for Instagram and one for LinkedIn. You really feeling like you know the platforms in an out and that you're going to be able to put your best foot forward on those. But little secret, I've actually made the cheat sheet for all of the social media networks. I'm actually going to pop that down below as a PDF so that you can download that and refer to edit any points if you have queries about other social media networks and what their role is in the broader social media strategy. One of the key things in convincing a client that you are an expert in social media is to know the differences, the subtleties, and the nuances between the different platforms. When do I use Instagram versus Facebook? When do I use LinkedIn versus Tiktok? They all have very different roles, and they all meet quite different objectives. You want to be clear on what it is that this particular network is giving you that maybe another one isn't. When we talk about Instagram, from an analytics perspective, we have Instagram Insights and this is going to become your best friend as you go on to monitor social media for someone else. bear in mind that Instagram Insights will only appear if you have an Instagram for business profile. I will share with you exactly how you do that. All right, guys, in terms of swapping over from a typical Instagram profile to an Instagram business account is literally as simple as 1,2,3. I'm going to play the screen recording that I took a bit earlier, sharing with you guys exactly where you find that setting and just making sure that you do toggle that on. The key benefits, as we said, was of course that insights will then appear for you and your brand, which is really integral because it gives you that historical data that you're probably looking for, for either you or your clients so definitely do be aware of that. The second thing is obviously those call-to-action buttons that you see on branded pages will say things like call now or visit websites or get directions. That's actually facilitated by means of the Instagram business profile as well. If you do not have the business profile, you're not going to get any of those settings. Definitely something to watch out for, just to make sure that you have in fact swapped either you or your client over. Next up, we're going to be telling to the advertising for Instagram, bear in mind that you can do advertising through the app. You can also do it through Facebook's backend or Facebook's Ads Manager or Business Manager. Because of course, Facebook owns both Instagram and Facebook. By the way, it also owns WhatsApp if you're in a country where a WhatsApp is big. You'll see that there's a lot of app overlap between those three platforms. Then from a learning standpoint, go to Facebook Blueprint. Facebook Blueprint has so many resources, short courses, short classes, nothing is paid for until you do an accreditation. You can learn about anything Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp related using the Facebook Blueprint. In terms of the pros, the cons and the features of Instagram. In terms of pros, the stuff that we've come to know and love about Instagram is inspiration and discovery. It really is the platform to go to be inspired. It focuses a lot on lifestyle, opposed to product photography. Often when clients will go wrong is have too much product and not enough lifestyle. That could be an actual fact, be one of your first recommendations to them. You need to of course have strong aesthetics to stand out in this visual first platform. You want to have the ability to communicate brand and company values through your photography and through your captions and the ability to soft sell. I always tell my students to tell, tell, tell and not sell, sell, sell. Instagram is really the place where you need to leverage your storytelling abilities and really share in why your brand stands for something, what it is that you sell, why it is that you sell it and really tell that behind the scenes story. Then of course it does have some editing functionality, but guess what? No one uses it. We're definitely going to chat through a couple of apps that you may want to use, just to app level and the editing side of things. Then it's known for higher engagement than, let's say a Facebook. It's also really well-suited to retail an e-commerce objectives. If your client is operating in that space, you would really want to leverage that quite hard for them. In terms of cons, if your brand or your client's brand is not very visual, this is where things can become a little bit more tricky because it is a mobile first platform, of course, that is the device that most people are going to be visiting you from which may have different considerations. Then you can't have links in your photo captions. We do need to think about the ways around that. So is that a Link on bio or a link tree, which are both third party tools that allow you to actually create a little mini switchboard using the only length that you're allowed in your bio. How do we navigate that? Then of course, bots and spam are going to mean that you, as the social media manager, will need to be very aware of fake likes and people that are maybe coming to your platform and posting weird and wonderful things there. In terms of the features of geotagging and hashtagging on Instagram is integral. If you do not have a hashtag strategy, and you do not geotag a lot of your posts, the discoverability is unlikely to be there. Definitely be sure to understand the benefits of hashtagging, which hashtags to use for your clients and be sure to use different size hashtags. You don't just want to use the most competitive ones because, of course, you probably are less likely to rank for those. Then we've got so many functionalities that we really should never have a shortage on this front. We've got Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, Instagram Guides which I want to share with you guys. IGTV, IG shop, Instagram for Business, which we've just spoken about, and then Instagram Insights in terms of understanding how the content is performing. 6. Mean Business with LinkedIn: Next up, let's chat through the LinkedIn cheat sheet. LinkedIn also has an analytics portal which again is going to be useful to understanding what isn't performing. It's got advertising formats that we're not going to chat to necessarily, and then finally, from a training perspective, they of course, bought Lynda.com not so long ago. They have an entire LinkedIn learning Bolton section on that. In terms of the pros of LinkedIn, LinkedIn is great for networking, connecting with business owners, freelancers, and like-minded professionals, establishing yourself as a thought leader which is of course what we're wanting to do, B2B marketing so selling to businesses as opposed to consumers, then in that case, LinkedIn is going to work even better. It's great for sharing behind the scenes, business content, recruitment, and HR needs, product launches, lead gen, and much more. In terms of considerations, it is primarily B2B, so B2C is less apparent, and that advertising does tend to be a little bit more expensive than Facebook and Instagram. So moving down the line, that might also be a consideration for you. Then in terms of features, LinkedIn has company pages, career pages, it's got the LinkedIn learning functionality, and we really want to make sure that we're getting endorsements, recommendations, and if you'd like to, you can of course upgrade to LinkedIn premium. I wouldn't suggest that at this point, but certainly if you were curious, I have doubled in it in the past and that it is quite interesting just to see who is viewing your platform, and then of course, the jobs portal too. So those are the cheat sheets for Instagram and LinkedIn, but as I say, as a secret gift for all of you, have actually made them for every social media platform, including for Clubhouse and for TikTok, so please do check that in the resources section. 7. Content Repurposing & Gary Vee: Next up, I'm going to be sharing with you, love him or hate him, why Gary Vee is really a good person to look at from a social media perspective. Gary Vaynerchuck, if you don't yet know, is really the king of content marketing. He has really made the known thing that not every piece of content is unique. You don't need to produce a separate piece of content for LinkedIn versus a separate piece of content for Instagram. It's really about having your own content and then seeding it in different ways. Definitely, as your need to create more social media content comes about with this side hustle of running a social media company, is really how do you produce the ideas that you need for all these different social media networks. He speaks about document pillar content, which in my head I just call hero content. It's really bigger ideas that you can then trickle down into micro-content across the various social media networks. He explains that he publishes a new episode every day on the GaryVee Video Experience, which he then distributes on his YouTube channel, Facebook Watch page, and IGTV. He also then has a daily podcast called the GaryVee Audio Experience, which he distributes on iTunes, Overcast, and Stitcher. In addition to what he just mentioned, he continually posts micro-content, which is distributed on Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Quora, and many other social channels. Then the micro-content from each episode is used to drive awareness back to the longer-form content. You can see that it's not necessary for you to have a new idea per platform, per post, but really to think of it in the same way that Gary Vee does in terms of hero content at the top and then distributing and disseminating at the bottom across the various social media platforms. 8. Your Social Media Toolkit: Now that we have nailed mind set, we're feeling excited and enthusiastic, what are the tools that we need in order to nail social media? Well, the first one is Google Slides. The reason why I love the Google platform so much is because everything works seamlessly together. Although there are alternatives like you can use PowerPoint and you can use Excel, I love that everything's in the Cloud with Google and it all stays in one place and it shows that none of your hard work gets lost. That's my preference for Google. I do have a Google Suite account which allows me greater storage on things like Google Drive, but there are free versions of all of these, I think Google Drive you just get very small amount of storage. I also do know that a lot of people do prefer Dropbox, I can't stand it to be honest, but if you do like Dropbox more then of course that's perfectly fine. Then Canva from a design perspective is the number one, the absolute creme de la creme. So that's what we're going to be using when we speak about the design side of things. Then you're going to want to pick a scheduling tool. My two of choice are Hootsuite and Sprout Social. Hootsuite, I've put the logo there because it's cheaper than Sprout Social but Sprout Social, in the interest of transparency is the one that I do use. Then in terms of a bonus resource, having AirDrop if you have an iPhone and a MacBook or if you use WhatsApp, these are really great in order to send content forwards and backwards between your computer and your phone, because this is going to become important down the line when maybe you need to make sure that you have backup posts on your phone or anything like that. I'm going to share a little demo on my WhatsApp with exactly how I manage that flow between computer and phone. 9. Creating Professional Presentations with SlidesGo: If you're wondering how I produced these beautiful slides for this Skillshare class, well, look no further than Slidesgo. Slidesgo is going to make creating your Google Slide decks so easy. The Google Slide deck we're primarily going to use to sell to the client upfront but of course it is going to come in at a later point when it comes to our reporting back on the stats in terms of what's doing well and what's not. Please type in Slidesgo into Google after this class, and have a look in terms of their free templates. I type in social media and I find so many templates, including of course this one. But here are some other examples of ones that you can use just to make that presentation really feel seamless and you don't have to be a designer to produce really high quality presentations to sell your services. Here' s another one that I use some infographics for on this particular Skillshare class too. This is really going to help you come across like you are a social media expert and like you maybe a social media agency simply by using something like infographics. Then finally I left this one. If you want that more feminine touch, there are beautiful templates in that regard as well. As I said, there are some premium versions on Slidesgo. I just use the free ones and I type in social media. 10. Introducing... Scheduling Software : In terms of Canva, we're going to be doing a whole demonstration just on how I use Canva to run social media creator for my clients. Be sure to join for that little demo section. But certainly just know that Canva is going to be an integral part of your process and then finally your scheduling tool. As I mentioned, you can use Hootsuite, you can use Sprout Social. There's other ones like Plan or Planoly which are Instagram-specific. But for me, because I want to encourage you to use a bunch of different platforms for your clients, 2-3 is what I would suggest. Hootsuite makes it really easy to actually schedule the content, which means you don't have to be online when the content goes live. That is the primary use case for this kinds of softwares. It also helps you to monitor all of the reviews or comments in one place, which means you're not having to log in to Twitter, log in to LinkedIn, log in to Instagram so it's really cool from that perspective. When I log in to my premium Hootsuite account, it gives me this view and asks me to actually add different accounts and link everything together in one place. There is a free version of Hootsuite and it's the most affordable option, so do check out their pricing. As I say, I won't check pricing specifically because it maybe in a different currency but it's definitely cheaper than Sprout Social. The free Plan I think lets you link up to three profiles, maybe Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But if you had a fourth, then of course you would need to upgrade to that premium version and then do also frequency cap you so you can necessarily post unlimited content even if it's just to three channels. Regardless of the scheduling platform which you use effectively, you're going to be looking at a calendar that looks like this and then have the ability to say what you want to go up when and on which platform. This makes it really easy for you to make sure that stuff is set up ahead of time. You don't having to worry about scheduling on the day of posting. It should all be done and pre-scheduled ahead of time. Of course, as I say, if you want to make government digital nomad, you not having to worry it every hour that this content to go up. Here's an example of me posting to megs.hollis, that's my Instagram account. You simply enter your text, you drag and drop your media, and then they do also of course, have access to photo banks and that sort of thing. But you would ideally be producing your content in Kanban and uploading it here. Then here you can see on the right-hand side, there's the ability to pick a date and pick a time and then Hootsuite's got what they call auto schedule which will go out when it thinks most of your audience is online. This is the one place where I really think that Sprout Social is a little bit better because it actually gives you optimal times contained within it. 11. Scheduling 101 (Sprout Social & Hootsuite): First off, when you log into Sprout Social, this is what you're going to see. Although it looks complicated, fear not, it really is simple. The only one that I want to really have you guys concern yourselves with is the publishing tab. Here if you click on publishing you can actually toggle between your various clients at the top here and then actually schedule a post that'll go out to their feed. Let's pick this mark client. Here you can see as you hover over the various days of the week you can literally shade your post like that. There's also a functionality to add a note. For example you could add a note to yourself like campaign starting or middle of the campaign which just would help you to keep tabs on when you need to post reminder posts and that kind of thing. Then you would simply select one of the days or one of the hour so that would be the one way of doing it. Alternatively, you could literally just go back and then have clicked that top right-hand button to compose. Actually you don't need to be in the publishing tab to do this but I like just going to publishing first so I can see what is already scheduled and upcoming in the agenda. Then I would select that top right and then you can see you can either select just Facebook or just Instagram or one or the other. The reason why I would suggest rather just doing one at a time is because Facebook doesn't actually use the hashtags whereas Instagram does and Instagram you'd need to be saying things like link in bio whereas on Facebook obviously you can just include that link. It's really important that you do just make sure that whenever you are setting up content that it is, the spoke to the actual platform even if the copy is exactly the same just to make sure that you've really paid some attention to that. Let's say we were going to do Facebook. It's literally as simple as selecting when you're wanting to post, is it immediately or are there specific days and times. What I really like to do is say specific days and times, pick the dates, and then actually do the struck down of use optimal time. This is so handy because obviously you're not going to know when the audience is online unless you are delving every day into the analytics to try and work out. On this day it's 2:00 PM, on this day it's 3:00 PM. It's really doing all the hard work for you which is so cool. Another function that I love on Sprout Social is the fact that you can toggle on this as a draft which means you actually don't have the opportunity to even select this show draft on calendar. You could actually just completely leave it out and have it appear in your draft section. But let's say we were in fact going to go ahead with it, we would copy and paste our caption in here, there's still opportunity to add emojis using the add emoji section. Then once you've dragged and dropped your image, it would actually give you a preview. Let me share with you guys. Let's say for example we took a post from my downloads. You just wait for it to do its thing and then finally it'll populate once it's loaded. Bear in mind though the one thing that you do have to be conscious with Sprout Social is it's not going to be able to post carousels for you. It's also not going to be able to post thrills or IG stories. What it's going to help you with is the static post and just making sure that everything is lined up to go. Then what you're going to do is actually download the Sprout Social app. Then you'll get a notification when it's ready for your carousel to actually be posted and in this way, it actually triggers a workflow which just reminds you to login to your phone and upload it like that. As I said, because it's a third party platforms, obviously it's difficult with the API to always get this thing right so you do obviously still need to add a level of manual intervention. But it is definitely going to make your life easier predominantly if you are using a lot of statics. But even if not, I find it still really, really helpful. If you actually do upload a multitude of different images, it's actually going to ask you to select a little red clock icon which is actually then going to allow you to select who receives that notification. Let's just see if we can get this MP4 to load. I think maybe it might be a little bit too big in which case maybe we just select one of these images. Let's select this image and then here you will say it's actually slowly loading over there and then it'll appear as a preview on the right-hand side. Anything you type in here will of course appear below that. What I did also mention or do mention a little bit later in this course is the fact that often what you'll find is if you are scheduling for Instagram, your line spacing may get stripped out. In which case I've actually popped a link for the exact tool that I use to do this. It's called IG line break Caption Maker. In which case I'm actually posting the caption in here first to make sure that it maintains those line breaks. But then you literally just pick the time and bogs your ankle. I really hope that that clears up the main functionality on Sprout Social. Towards the end of the master class we'll also talk about how the reporting side of thing works and how Sprout Social can make this a little bit easier to you. The other thing just to bear in mind with Sprout Social is you actually don't need to specify whether you are uploading a post or a story, you're simply going to drag and drop it. The other thing to bear in mind with Sprout Social is you also are not going to specify whether it's a post or a story. You're simply going to take the image and drag and drop it and then when you get the push notification to upload your three stories, when you open the mobile app it actually asks you if it's an Instagram post or an Instagram story and then bogs your uncle, you select the correct one. The last thing you would want is obviously for your story is to crop as posts. Next step let's chat about Hootsuite and how this differs a little bit from Sprout Social. I'm just going to pop my screen recording on so that you guys can see exactly what it is that I'm doing on Hootsuite. This is what you're going to see when you're logged into Hootsuite. If you choose to rather go the Hootsuite option, again you'll see that there's a lot of similarities between the two tools. You also click and select publisher and there bogs your ankle you're going to see the exact same layout where you're actually able to select any of the blocks that you like. Let's say we want to select 12:00 PM on Tuesday, it's going to ask us do we want to select a post on Instagram story or a pen? Here you can see they actually do ask you to differentiate between the two. Let's just say that we're going to select the post option. We're going to go back and get that same image, drag it across. Again, the previous on the right-hand side, you guys really get the picture. What is a little bit different though is instead of that drop-down way on Sprout Social it's giving you the star ratings in accordance with when is the best time to post. You'll notice that this one actually doesn't have that. It's got something a little bit different which is called auto-schedule which when you click the little I-boxes, what is auto-schedule? Hootsuite will choose an optimal time to post. I'm not sure that it necessarily tells you when it's going to be posting it, you just know that it's going up that day at an optimal time. So up to you which one you prefer. I do prefer Sprout Social as a result of that because I just like that Sprout Social tells you that upfront. That is it with Hootsuite. I will return to both Hootsuite and Sprout Social at the end of this master class to share with you guys the reporting section and how this looks on each respective platform. 12. Using Google Slides & Drive: In terms of Google Sheets, this is probably the most valuable asset in this class. It's going to be my step-by-step demo of how to use Google Sheets to manage content. Initially, when I started to use Google Sheets for content, I felt like it wasn't necessarily best suited, but I've since come to realize nothing beats it. Even looking at dedicated scheduling flows within platforms like HootSuite and Spread Social, I still do prefer using Google Sheets because I feel like it just keeps a paper trail of everything, and if ever anyone has anything that they need to refer to, whether it's you or the client, you both have access. So I really, really do like using Google Sheets. In today's class, I'm really thrilled to be lifting the hood on exactly how agencies are doing this because you just want to run one social media account, but people are using these platforms and these tools to run 10, 20, 30 accounts. So really once you've got the knack of it, it's going to mean that you can scale in that next phase. Google Drive is really important because you need somewhere way keep all of the images and your client, and you both need to be able to add to it. If you're wanting to be a digital nomad, then, of course, you need everything to be in the Cloud, because, hey, imagine what would happen if your laptop went missing or you lost your phone, so you don't want to be housing anything at all in the computer or the phone, you actually want to be uploading everything to Google. I haven't provided costs for these because obviously, it does depend on your currency, and so I'm not sure if you're joining from America or like me, from South Africa, so the options are a 100 gig one terabyte, two terabytes, and then I think there's even bigger than that. I just have the 100 gigabytes, one, and that works perfectly for saving my clients creates some assets. 13. Transfer Images from Your Phone to your Computer: As a social media manager you'll find a couple of instances where you really do need to send things to yourself on your phone or your computer. Some of the ways in which I would suggest you do this is obviously AirDrop, if you're using an iPhone with a computer. Otherwise, if not, I've got two helpful hacks that will help you out. If you don't need this tutorial, then please feel free to skip through to the next one. But if you're interested in finding out how you can seamlessly move things from your computer to your phone, then please keep on watching. This is also, of course, great for backups. If you want to make sure that a post that's going out is backed up somewhere, this is also a really great way of doing that. I'll just pop on my screen recording on my phone. If you're using WhatsApp, what I'll have to do is just simply create a new group, by saying, New Group, adding someone that won't mind being removed from the group seconds later, so I'm going to add my boyfriend. Then the subject line of the group, I normally just say, test. Then you create the group like so. You go into the Group Info, go to the person that you added and then you simply say, Remove From Group. All that happens is you get left in a group by yourself, which means you can drag things from your desktop onto your WhatsApp for web, and then download those to your phone really easily. Funnily enough, I've recently started using Telegram, and actually they have a very similar functionality. Definitely if you are a Telegram user, please be sure to check this out. If you go to your profile, you'll actually see that there's a section called saved messages. There, you're actually able to send things to yourself without having to do the little WhatsApp workaround. I really hope that that was helpful. 14. Our Strategic Approach : Next up, let's talk about the strategy that you actually want to employ to go out there and get clients. I typically will use the personal brand route where I literally just use my own personal profiles, whether it's Instagram or Facebook to market my services. That is the route that I would suggest for the quickest way to market because obviously, you already have a following on those profiles, and you can actually just share it with your friends and family. Some people, however, want to be a little bit more anonymous, in which case, they can create social brands, where they come up with a brand and a name for their social side hustle. But this will take a little bit longer because, of course, it involves creating a logo, coming up with a name, and registering all new accounts. Then the time-consuming part, of course, is then building those audiences as well. My suggestion would be to go for the personal brand, unless there's a really strong reason maybe why you want to separate the two, but really it is up to you guys. In terms of some examples, I absolutely love Nadine Burton. She calls herself blonde_seashell, and you'll see why in just a second. But here, her Instagram page is in her name. It said she's an entrepreneur, she helps women quit their 9to5s and start an online business so that they can work from any where, #beyourownboss. Definitely as a side, please do go and follow her because, of course, if you are trying to get started in this field, she is honestly a thought leader in this arena, and I really do look to her when I'm needing some inspiration about becoming a digital nomad. There you can see she's the founder of The Social Shells. So we'll show you, she could have either chosen to just do everything under her own brand, or she could have chosen to have her separate agency business as a different brand, or you can do a combination of both once you get to that stage. But certainly, she's optimized her personal profile where it's not obviously just being used to shade dog photos and what she ate for lunch, it's been used incredibly strategically. Someone else who I love from a personal branding standpoint is Tokelo Motsepe. Definitely, check her out. She's also a South African entrepreneur. Here you can see she's absolutely using it for selling and group coaching and one-on-one consults and everything like that, and she's doing it under her name. It's really compelling. She hasn't felt the need to actually hide behind a brand. But then let's go back to Nadine. She actually also has a social brand. She speaks about the social shells. You wouldn't maybe know that it was her necessarily. She does post quite a lot about herself, but it could completely be separate from her own identity. Then, of course, you would do the same approach in terms of having these highlights in your Instagram like templates, results, shells, which are her students, and then courses. Either way, it's really just semantics how you choose to do it. But certainly, if you choose to operate in your own name, you will have that audience up front. I also really suggest you following The Digital Picnic. I was recently introduced to by a fellow Skillshare teacher [inaudible] Please do search her social media courses on Skillshare. They are brilliant. She spoke a little bit about Digital Picnic, which piqued my interest. Definitely, have a look in terms of how they share their content. But you can see that I picked a brand name, brand logo, granted they are a full-blown agency, but in your instance, it would just be the logo that maybe provides that one step of separation. Here you can see maybe Part one and a spoiler alert. What we're going to be talking about is really how to optimize that profile to make sure that looking at your bio, looking at your profile picture, looking at your link, it's obvious that you are open for business. Because that's, of course, what we're trying to signal at the end of this course. Without further adieu, let's really move into that three-step process and understand how we upleveling, uncovering, and unleashing, and then finally landing that first social media client. 15. Uplevelling & Unlocking : I'm so excited to share with you guys the uplevel phase. This is honestly the most exciting. The challenge and the task at hand, is to become your first client. It's one of the most gratifying, and fun exercises that you can do on social media. Pretend like you are a client, and you are running your social media like a business. Because at the end of the day, if something goes wrong, it's your social profile, and you are going to fix it. Definitely while you're getting your confidence up, I would really encourage you to take this approach. It gives you just a practice run. Then the other quote that I love, is that people say, never trust a skinny chef. You want to be eating what you preach. Definitely, if someone was sent a proposal for social media, and they looked you up, and they were like, Megan doesn't have anything about this on her Instagram bio, it just won't seem authentic or genuine. Definitely start with yourself first, put your brand at the forefront. This is really going to help you put that thinking cap on in terms of, how do people perceive you? Who's your target audience? Who are you talking to? All the good questions that you're going to have to be asking once you take on a paid client. Step number 1, you want to nail your brilliant basics. We're going to start with Instagram first, and then move on to our LinkedIn. With our buyer, we need to be as specific as we possibly can. If I can go back to that Nadine example. Remember she says, I help women quit their 9to5s and start an online business, so they can work from anywhere. It's such a loaded sentence and statement, that that's really where you wanting to get to. Because you want to say something like, I do social media marketing for small businesses so they can uplevel, for example. That's really going to indicate to people that you opened a business, and that you're wanting their work. Second of all, stating your location, and which areas you are serving, is a great one also to start. Because you may wish to serve anyone, because it's online, you may not mind where the person is based, or you might think actually it would be nice to meet with the person, at least initially, to get a sense of their business. If you are approaching this from a client standpoint, you would also need to be very specific, when you update their bio, and make their bio pop. That they are very clear about where they're serving, which audiences. Do they offer nationwide shipping if they have a product? It's no use, not saying where it is that these people are. Its the biggest mistake that I see people making. Always having a clear Call To Action is imperative on Instagram. That's why we're going to share with you exactly how you swap over from an Instagram profile to an Instagram for business profile. This is going to allow you to have Call To Actions, or CTAs as we call them, like shop online, or visit us. If you have multiple Call To Actions, we're going to use Linktree, or linkinbio. What it is in terms of Linktree or linkinbio? I prefer Linktree. Again, it's a matter of preference. Linktree allows you to create what I call, a mini switchboard. Instead of just having one link that takes you to one place, you're going to have a Linktree link, that takes you to this little microsite, if you will, that then directs you where you're needing to go. If you have a website, that's incredible, you can put the first block to link to your website. If not, you can link to resources, you can link to articles that you've enjoyed about social media. Anything that's added value to your life that you think will add value to your clients life, that's what you're going to want to be doing. It's completely free. If you don't mind having that Linktree branding at the bottom, you can select different options, depending on what your preferred colors. Step number 2 is to optimize your Instagram name. Did you know that the name field in your bio, is completely separate from your handle? Your username you've already registered, and that you can change as well, but that's not what we're talking about in this instance. We're talking about where it says on that right-hand side Yournamehere. You actually want to have an ACR friendly name that says something like; social media strategist, social media expert, social media coach. Then you can even say in your bio, maybe a little emoji, and then say Megs, if you really want to drive home what your name is. But it's already in your handle, so why are you using up that precious real estate to not communicate that social media is what you are all about. Definitely be sure to leverage that name field, as far as possible. Step number 3 is you're going to be highlighting your skills and your target audience. Remember we said Social Shell's one was, "helping women become freelance social media managers, and work online from anywhere". That's the business version versus the Nadine one, that I just read to you. That's also, again, very specific about what it's doing, and we want to be as laser focused so that people know, what are we trying to do to establish ourselves as a social media manager. Step number 4 is of course, adding your contact information. It's imperative that people can get in touch with you. Guess what, when you land your first social media client, what steps are you going to undertake? Step 1, you're going to optimize their Instagram bio. Step 2, you're going to add an ACR friendly name for them. Step 3, you're going to highlight their skills, and their target audience. Step 4, you're going to add their contact information. You see why it's so brilliant to go through this exercise on your own accord, because it means that when you do it for a client, it's going to be as easy as pie. Then you're going to want to complete your LinkedIn profile. Now this is less applicable to your clients, unless you are managing someone's personal LinkedIn profile, which is highly unlikely. This is more about the social selling that you're going to want to be undertaking to land that first client initially. Instagram's probably going to be a more transferable skill, because of course, whether you're doing it for a brand or for yourself, it's much the same. On LinkedIn, that's not really the case. On LinkedIn, you're basically going to want to have as filled out profile as you possibly can master that has examples of your work, has examples of courses that you've taken. You could probably even add that you've taken the skillshy course or make a post about it. Definitely, that is something that you want to consider with your LinkedIn. The first top tip that I have to offer for you guys, is to edit your custom URL. In the top right, you can see there my URL. That's going to mean that you actually don't have that long string of numbers attached, which is really indicating that you know what you're doing here. Then you're going to want ensure that your title, and your about section are up to date. To give mine as the example I've said in my About section: Digital Marketer, YouTuber, Course Creator, #DoDigitalBetter, most passionate about digital strategy, innovation, tech and eLearning. Love connecting with other South African risk-takers, and magic makers. There you can see I'm very explicit around what I'm all about. Then more recently, I've actually just added that, where you can see the speaker emoji, it says how you can pronounce my name, and I say, Hey, it's Megs, connect with me if you want to learn about digital marketing. There already, you can see that it's just one level above other people who haven't taken their time to fill this in. Then what I love about LinkedIn, is this featured section, it's so beautiful. So I've added all of my most recent YouTube videos that actually share all the work that I'm currently busy with. I would really suggest if you have any portfolio work that you can share to make sure that this is showcased here. So that people when they land on your LinkedIn, they think she is a thought leader. The articles thing that we spoke about in the cheat sheet for LinkedIn, definitely if you don't have anything at all, that would be the best place to start and just write an article by why you love social media, how it's impacted your life, and maybe how it's built your brand or how you are using it to build your brand. Then in terms of your activity, you want to be really active. You don't just want to be spamming people with self-promotional messages. Here you can see mine is combination of compliments of people saying, I can't wait for your business to launch. Congratulations to a class of students that I've taught. So I'm being very intentional in terms of how I use it and making it clear that I'm there to add value and not just to solve. Remember, we want it to tell, tell, tell and not sell, sell, sell. Then in terms of completing your LinkedIn profile a little bit further, definitely add any skills, including guess what? Social media markets, copywriting, and content creation. Add those in here because this is the gold. This is where people are going to be curious and look you up about. So definitely if people can see the 46 people endorsed me for digital marketing, guess what? I probably know a thing or two. Then giving recommendations. This is my favorite tactic, is to actually give recommendations that are genuine and heartfelt to people that I have worked with, and just say, they are hard working, they are committed, they were a pleasure to work with. Then at the end of that, actually saying, would you mind writing something similar in response? It's a very non-awkward way to build up that social proof that actually it may not be as it specifically pertains to social media because, of course, we're still getting there with that, but definitely to say you're hard working, that your results are answered. Any of those transferable skills are going to make your new social media clients feel really at ease, like they are in good hands. Then you're going to start with your content calendar. Here, I've made a little mock one. Where we say, tell, tell, tell, don't sell, sell, sell, what we mean by that is in the orange box you can see where I'm sell, sell, selling. But then in the gray blocks, hopefully I'm not sell, sell, selling. I'm actually tell, tell, telling, and I'm introducing myself, I'm giving tips about social media, I'm telling you an inspiring story, I'm showing off my office, I'm doing a weekend celebration, I'm supporting others, I'm sharing my favorite tool, I'm saying, where in the world am I, in Cape Town with my Pekingese blue. Behind the scenes, follow me, ask a question, share a book review, show you brand values, inspiring quotes before and afters, comment on topical news, sharing a resource, motivational Monday, sharing gratitude, revealing your biggest hobby, compliments, again, tagging your business buddy, your most helpful resource, and a fun personal facts. Then by the way, we're going to share a blog post, we're going to promote our offer, we're going to share our logo, and our backstory, our products, and then promote an email list if we get that far. You can see that this is really going to help you get that balance in terms of people thinking that actually you're taking them for a ride and you're just trying to [inaudible] them versus that you're actually in it for the long haul. I don't want you to ever feel overwhelmed by the prospect, of course, and content creation. I want you to feel inspired. This is a slide that I come back to to this day having been in social media for 10 years. I'll think to myself, am I trying to entertain? Am I trying to inspire? Am I trying to educate or am I trying to convince? Then picking formats that make most sense for what you are trying to do. Remember, you're going to have to do this on behalf of someone else. If you battle with it for yourself, then that's something you need to earn because you can't then go to someone else whose business you know less about than yourself, who you, of course, are the expert about, to then know which content formats are going to work. It's different for every brand. Some some may find that video works really well for them, others may not., Think about what are the different kinds of social media content that are well-suited to you and have your cap on, thinking, when I do this for someone else, these are the kinds of formats that I'm also going to have to create. That's what I just love about this approach of like, let's do low-risk for ourselves. The other thing we want to get a grasp on while we're doing our social media 5-10 posts, remember from our project, we want to make sure that we're using hashtags appropriately. This is another thing that I often do see people getting wrong. People use hashtags on Facebook, and that's just not going to work. Facebook by default, the API or profiles are set to private, which means using a hashtag is not going to do what a hashtag is meant to do, which is increase your discoverability. You want to be using hashtags for Twitter, for LinkedIn, and Instagram. You want to make sure that you're using hashtags on the right platforms. Using the right size hashtags, remember we said that some were more competitive than others. The easiest way to find out how competitive a hashtag is is to simply type it into the Instagram search and see how many results come up, and then picking a combination of small, medium, and large hashtags and using those consistently. It's also great to use a combination of branded hashtags and unbranded hashtags. So hashtags are for discoverability. How many are we going to want to use? You can use up to 40 on Instagram. Buffer says about 11 as the ideal, but people have very different views on this. Also, a question that I get a lot is whether you should put your hashtags in the caption or in the comment section. Honestly, it makes absolutely no difference. Pick a set of hashtags that works for you. I would say between five and 11 is probably a good starting point, and then aiming for quality and not quantity. Algorithms limit the reach of the posts, necessitating that your praise needs to be really high-quality. You want to focus on putting forward the 5-10 most high-quality posts you can possibly muster and not worrying about posting three times a day every single day. Then leveraging UGC wherever possible. This is going to be more important in the brand example as opposed to your example. But you don't want people to think that you are talking at them on social media, you want to bring the consumers into the brand. You want to incorporate what they've said about your products and make sure that if you do get testimonials about any of your services, please use these on your Instagram stories as a highlight because that is just absolute solid gold. Now that we have an inkling of how we're going to approach this task, let's jump straight into our Canva demo so that I can show you how it is that you're going to create the beautiful bits of creative that you need for your social media rollout plan. 16. Let's get Creative with Canva!: Anyone who knows me knows how much I absolutely love using Canva for all of my design requirements. I'm obviously not a designer, so it makes it really easy to actually approach content creation without needing to know what dimensions a post needs to be, or even having to start from scratch, because there are so many incredible templates. Now, the first format that I'm going to share with you guys is one of the favorites that I use for my clients. It really does make it feel like there's production value even if they've supplied the images. What will often happen is, if there are a skin care brand like in this instance of my client, they'll actually send me three product photos. It would be a product range that they're possibly stuck, and then the 4th photo, I would just use their logo. Then what I do is actually animate that using Canva. What this does is because we know that with social media, sometimes static posts are not actually what's going to work the best. It's going to give us the opportunity to export that post as an MP4. We call it a rotating image or rotating video. It's simply four different styles that I just rotating through. I'll show you guys exactly how I do that. I'm simply going to go to canva.com, I'm going to go to "Create a design. " I'm going to then say "Instagram post". You can either design your Instagram post here, and on the left-hand side, of course, there's loads of cool templates that you can use. But in my instance, I'm actually going to add the three sliders and then I'm going to drag images onto each. Because this is of course, just for illustrative purposes, I'm actually just going to go to photos, and then use stock photography that Canva has. This is a really high knee part of their tool that they actually have this plugin. Let's, for example, use this beautiful one of people eating food and simply pop it like that. Then maybe this beautiful art gallery peck, put that on the next one, a beach shot, put that on the next one, and then finally, let's assume that their logo is some flowers. Let's assume that that's their logo. Then of course you have these four different images. Now you can either go and download them as PNGs. This is a great format for social media because often what you'll find is with cover pages, sometimes when I export them as JPEGS there is a little bit of a fuzz on them. If you are creating cover pages for clients, that's a great life hack is just to export it as a PNG. But then instead of actually downloading them individually as either slides or together as a zip file, I'm actually going to change the format. I'm going to say MP4 video. Then I'm going to see here, there's actually the opportunity to change what effect is. If I click on ''Animates'' and I select the slide that I'm working on, for example, we can have Breathe, and then I always just toggle this down to three seconds. Then I will do the same effect on all of the posts that are actually going to appear within this rotating things. Again, Breathe three seconds, Breathe three seconds, and finally three seconds and Breathe. Then what we're going to do is we're actually going to see it's 14 seconds long and they have the ability to bend down like that as an MP4. I'll show that as soon as it has downloaded. But you guys will see these are the things that clients are not necessarily aware of how to do. They would have either posted it as a carousel, which could also look beautiful, or they would have just posted them one by one. By actually adding just a little bit of designed pizzazz, it's really going to share your value as a social media manager and as a major asset to the team. I honestly don't even tell them that I'm using Canva, it's just my little secrets and obviously means that things look really professional. I mean, I think that just adds another level and obviously you can have a play around so that maybe not necessarily all of them are zooming in, but you get the picture. That's a really great life hack for Canva. Other than that though as I say, the major benefits would be that it actually is enabling you to not need to know the dimensions of anything. If you go into the social media section, you'll see there's everything from Instagram post, Facebook post, Instagram story, Facebook cover, and much, much more. Funnily enough or fun factor actually designed my YouTube intro and outro using Canva with the exact same techniques, so literally creating four slides and then exporting it as an MP4. I really hope that this Canva tutorial was helpful to you. 17. Content Planning with Google Sheets (Demo!) : Next step, let's chat about how to use Google Sheets for content planning. Google Sheets is going to be a really important tool for you and your clients to really make sure that you're not posting anything that hasn't been approved, and to ensure you're able to actually do your planning somewhere and do that pre-production so that it's not a case of you being online all the time. We really want to have as much pre-prepared as possible. How often and how frequently you're logging on to the Google Sheets and actually populating with content will be up to you or your clients. But I would suggest maybe fortnightly or even monthly actually, having a time that's blocked in your calendar just to focus on content and your Canva asset creation from a design perspective. Then in this way, your client can hop on at a predefined time or maybe when it suits them, and then they can just log on and say approved, approved, approved or needs work, and here's my feedback. That's really how we're going to be using the Google Sheet. If you're wondering why I'm not using Hootsuite or Sprout Social because they do have pre-approval processes and workflows, the challenge with this is that especially something like Sprout Social, it costs about $150 per user. In the very beginning of this class, we said we're going to always take the cheapest or most cost-effective means by which to do something. That is why I actually use Google Sheets as the pre-production phase, and then I actually do the scheduling. It's not a case of scheduling and then asking the client to approve on the software itself, it's just because it's a little bit expensive when you do it that way. When you do it this way, it's a really nice way for both of you to be looking at alive documents, and actually being able to ensure that you're on the same page. Similarly, when you have those status calls with your client to make sure you're both looking at the exact same screen. This is the template which I have developed for you guys. It is available, totally customizable so that once you've gotten a hang of it, you can also add your own tweaks. Definitely things like color scheme for your client if you want to actually put it in the brand colors, that could be a cute way of doing it. But as you can see in the bottom left-hand corner here, I've used conditional formatting, which means that when a cell is actually picked up to having the words under construction, it's always going to be in yellow. If it picks up for approval, always in orange, and so forth. The very first line is date, and then underneath that it'll be, Monday 24th of May. Then underneath that it'll be the status. This is the color coordinates of parts. When you're initially working on the post, you're going to have it as under construction just so the client is not trying to give approvals while you're still busy with the asset creation. Let's say that we're actually setting and working on our document now, we're just going to pop everything as under construction. Now if the client logs on and is looking at the previous week or the next week, they can see exactly where I am in the document. You'll see also that this is tab Number 1. I've just said here Month 1, so you could either split it up with the tabs reflecting months, so January, February, March, or if you want to, you could do the tabs as weeks just depending on you or on the client's preference. Here the client is going to have a comment section. The reason why it starts off with comments is because if a client is quite organized, they know what their promotional cycles are, they will actually populate an indication of what this post may be about. For example, they know on the 15th of May, the Eyelash Special is launching, then they will just populate something along those lines to you. Obviously, you will also get some of that detail in the status call that you have with them, but oftentimes, if they are organized they might even prefer to join on the sheet because it helps them from their own planning perspective. They would use their clients comments box upfront if there was a note that they wanted to add or you while you're on the [inaudible] them. What it's also then really useful for is once you actually have finished with your post, you could actually then change this to for approval, and then as a client, I could actually say either approved or disapproved, approved, or I could say something like leave it as pending approval, and then say can't approve until terms and conditions have been added, for example. There, of course you can see that already your client is able to add a little bit more detail so that you are clear on what still needs to happen in order for this post to be approved. You wouldn't want them to just say disapproved because maybe you won't understand why that particular post isn't being approved. Then there's option for you to create the type of post. Again, this can be used by the client upfront so they may specifically know that they have a video that's upcoming or you actually might go in and say, I think that would work better as a carousel versus a video. Both of you are going to be using the type of post. Time of post should be you because of course, we said with Sprout Social and with Hootsuite, it's going to give you the ability to see when is that post going to do the best. Even if the client has maybe said they want it to go out midday, you might want to override that and just say, actually I'm only going to schedule it for 2:00 PM and then I just do an asterisk. Then at the bottom, the asterisk, I'll just say equals best time so that the client knows that I'm actually changing it in their best interest as opposed to just changing it for the sake of it. Then you're going to get to the image section. There's two ways in which you can add an image. If you click "Insert Image", you can either populate the image in the cell or the image over the cells. If you need to populate more than one image, so you're doing a carousel, then I would suggest doing over cells. Let's say over cells and then actually drag and drop. An example that I've done for our clients. We just pop that on, it's going to actually appear quite large, in which case you are literally just going to do those changes yourself. Then you actually make this block wider. That is why we had to select over the cells because it's actually not going to take up the full cell because you're actually wanting to apply something else in there. Over the cells, and then you search for the second image. This, for example, would be if you were doing a carousel post, as I've said. For example, this is what it might look like. Again, you're just going to do like that. Then if you would like, you can also add a row with the Dropbox or the Google Drive reference so that if a client wants to go and look at that creative in a bigger format, then they can, but if not, then you could maybe just keep it for your own reference so that when you're scheduling it's easy to go in there and find that piece of creative. Otherwise, the client can actually just come and make sure that the copy or whatever, maybe it's a little bit smaller and the image is all good to go. That is the one way of adding the image. The other way of adding the image, you would have gone Insert image and then in a cell. I'll show you why this is a little bit different. It fits it really snugly, which is amazing if there's only one post. But as I say, if you're now trying to add multiple images, you can see it's just going to center it. You can then try and push it to the left, but it just gets a little bit messy after that, exactly. That's why I would suggest just checking if it's one image or multiple images then you're going to add it in a slightly different way. Anyway, there are our three images. Then you're going to go ahead and populate your Instagram copy. Here we could say, check out our latest gifting options as an example. Then we've actually got hashtags as a separate cell underneath. This is because you're going to want to have done some hashtag research for your clients. I recommend using anywhere between 12 and 30 hashtags. Definitely do use hashtags. Remember that if someone is not yet following your page, that hashtags are one of the few ways that's actually going to aid discoverability, other than that, you're pretty much relying on paid media. Definitely I would suggest having hashtags and making sure that they are differing sizes. One of the common mistakes is to use very competitive hashtags and have all 30 of your hashtags be things like hashtag Kate's on. The reality is if you search for hashtag Kate's on on Instagram, you'll see how many posts have actually got that hashtag and then what following do the posts have that rank really highly and you'll see actually they have hundreds of thousands of followers, which means that your client, which probably or most likely has less than that is not going to feature. So you want to have a combination of the smaller hashtags, the mid-sized hashtags, and then the really big hashtags and you're going to populate them here. You can use the same hashtags for every post, but you might want to have generic or always on hashtags and then actually create a separate line item for additional ones. In this instance, I could hashtag things like collagen and the actual toiletry bag words in the images. Then the other hashtags could just be all always on, branded hashtags, and hashtags that are specific to the client's industry. If you want to tag a model or tag a product using the IG Shop, you would probably want to make notes of it over here. Then also if you need to make a change to the buyer, this is really important. You don't want to say in the copy, check out the link in bio and then you haven't potentially made a note yourself just to actually update the link in bio. I will often change this to a different color, like maybe yellow, and then just make note of it. Once I've actually implemented that, then I'll just change it back to gray so that it's not drawing my eye. Then Facebook copy is slightly separate, you would populate this underneath. The reason why you're going to write separate copy for Instagram and for Facebook and for LinkedIn and Twitter for that matter, this template is going to be sound. No matter how many platforms you have, you're just going to keep on going, so Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. But the key difference between Instagram and Facebook is first of all, you're not going to use your hashtags on Facebook so those hashtags would completely fall away. Reason being, the default setting on Facebook is actually that most pages and profiles are set to private so things like hashtags don't work nearly as well as with platforms like Instagram and Twitter, where the API means that most things are set to public, in which case everything is searchable. Facebook's not great for that so you're actually wasting your time with hashtags from a Facebook perspective. Rather, just have the hashtags in the Instagram section, leave them out in Facebook completely. Then also obviously you're not going to say things like link in buyer. You can actually have the shortened link. Then underneath there, I've got a spot for links where I can actually just populate my full links or my Bitlys if I'm using a link shortener. Then you're of course going to bookmark this sheet so that you can evermore just reference back to it easily as can your clients. As I say, when you jump on the call with them, you're both looking at the exact same screen. What's also super handy is obviously you can also say things like look in column D. It's not going to create like, often what I'll see with clients is they'll actually have PowerPoints. Then it's like, oh my gosh, what slide are we on? Just a nightmare. This really helps you to ensure that you only have one version, you're both looking at the same version. It's always live. You can put images, you can put Dropbox references, you can do the whole shebang in here, and it's just going to make that content planning so much easier. Then you're never going to run out of space because as I said, you can always just add those tabs. If you do have any questions about this Google Sheet method, please do let me know in the comment section below, I would be happy to assist you, but I've really found that it's a nice visual way to get clients onboard. The other challenge, apart from what I mentioned with having to pay an additional $150 per users, if it's a case of onboarding a client in to spot, a lot of times clients are not actually interested in upskilling in that perspective and that's why they've entrusted social media to you. By by not actually having to upskill them in a whole new platform, you're probably actually doing them a massive favor by but just being like, I know that Google Sheets is one of the simpler things to use, just hop on there, it's on a live link and Bob's your uncle. It also means that you're not sending things forwards and backwards and version control and all that disaster, it really takes care of so much. Let me know what you guys think. I'd love to hear your feedback down below. 18. Unleash your Learnings: I am so excited to let you guys know that this is step 3 of our three-step process which of course is unleash. Now we're going to be working to unleash these newfound skills that we've developed throughout today's Skillshare class and so put into action everything that we have learned. Can you tell that I'm just a little bit excited? I've even got the most dorky mug ready saying, "Olive me loves olive you," and I really do love that you guys are this far along in our journey. Let's talk about the ways in which we are going to land this first client. We should be feeling a little bit more confident, we should be feeling like we understand the process because of course that was what the previous section was about, and now we're ready to find our first client. The first port of call is to reaching out to friends and families. You want to have a first client that's not going to terrify you for life. You want someone that's going to be patient with you and if you do battle to answer a question, they'll completely understand and you could be transparent of where you are in your journey. That would be my absolute ideal client for you. However, that's not always possible. The next rang out would be to market your service on Facebook groups using those rotating posts that we shared with you on Canva. You can also DM a very specific brand on Instagram because maybe you've seen like, here's a brand that's a local business, they seem to be doing well commercially, so maybe they have a little bit of budget, probably not much, but we can be optimistic and a girl can dream. Then you DM them and you say, "Actually I have these skills in social media, I'd love to unleash them for your brand, and so is there a way that I can send you a proposal? Can I get an email address from you and just actually put together my thoughts in a proposal?" You could connect with the brand owner on LinkedIn. Remember, we now have beautifully established LinkedIn profile that we can put to use, and of course, offering a free trial or reduced rate or for first month is going to be imperative. You really want to start thinking about what that commercial proposition is. When you meet with the client for the first time, ideally, it would be face-to-face, but if you are aspiring to be a digital nomad, you might not even be in the same country. Some of the things that could guide your conversation with that client is understanding their brand. You could be the social media expert, you could be amazing at social media, but if you do not have a good understanding of the brand, you're not going to get very far with this exercise. What I always say to my clients is social media holds up a magnifying glass to a brand. If you are not clear, as maybe you haven't taken the time to onboard yourself or as if they potentially don't have that understanding of their brand, who it is, who they serve, and so forth, it's going to be very difficult to get your social media spot on. You really want to try as best you can to make sure they are clear on their brand, you are clear on their brand and together with them as the brand custodian, brand expert and you as the social experts are really going to work together to make magic. In terms of some preliminary discussion points, I love speaking about positioning, finding out how they position their brand, their essence, is there something that is unique to them and makes them who they are? What is the value proposition? Are they a premium brand or they are affordable brand like what is the pricing like in regard to competitors, the tone and manner, how do they typically talk. This is essential when it comes to social media because of course you're going to be responsible for writing these captions. Then do they have a personality that they like to idealize or what persona that really stands to represent who their client bases? Because this all makes it so much easier. If they don't, there's actually a better opportunity for you to maybe start to distort this over time and maybe put forward a brand book at a later point. The other thing you want to make them aware of, particularly if they have no inkling of what social media is all about, is you want to be clear on what you are trying to do. This is one of the diagrams that I love. Please feel free to use this in your deck when you're positioning or pitching to them. The social media content that you're producing collectively needs to bring the following three things to life. The brand's best self; product's brand, company, marketing position and heritage. The audience's mindset; attitudes, behaviors, and interests which you will find out using things like your insights tools. Then cultural contexts; reading the news, trying to work on what's going on in that industry at any point in time, macro trends, daily trends and so forth. Really, this is a great way of looking at social media holistically. It's not about zooming in to a one strategy, it's actually about looking around you and saying, "What are the competitors doing? What does this mean? What are the industry trends? How do we speak to this as an authority and position yourself as that authority for the brand?" You also want to engage and unpack with them how would they like to work in terms of touchpoints. Sometimes like to meet once a week. I like to do WhatsApp calls or you could do Zoom call or Google Hangouts. Or you could do monthly calls, for example. But you want to be quite clear on what that way of working is with them. You could say to them, "Monthly I'm going to brainstorm ideas with you. I'm going to discuss any policy changes or updates to the platforms which may impact you. I'm going to review your goals and analytics with you and I'm going to spot any issues and flag them before they become problems." I mean, a client is just going to absolutely love you if you say this to them. Then you can say, "As a pro bono or as a value add once a year, I will link them updates to a one-hour or a 90-minute session where we really work together to evaluate our goals, we identify what were the most popular pieces of content over that period, and we put together layouts." I think having this commitment and showing them you're not just going to be on an island somewhere on your laptop producing content for them and it's never going to actually be critically evaluated and scrutinized is not going to stand you in good stead. I think having the forums to have these open conversations, it's likely that you'll maintain the account for a lot longer period of time because you're opening and inviting the clients, and actually saying, "What is working, what isn't working." That's also a great way to broach the topic with them in terms of how long are they in those for, if they don't seem commits and maybe they're going to be like, wait a second, I don't ever want to chat to you." It'll really give you an indication of what kind of client they're going to be. It's a really great vehicle in order to establish that. I get a lot of questions, of course, around how am I going to charge for this. My suggestion is to try and not to go the hourly rate route, if a client insists on it, possibly you could, but what I would suggest rather is a package. A package is going to be a small tier, a medium tier, or a high tier package, and that's going to dictate how many posts you create for someone on which platforms. Then that expectation is completely on the table when you sign, when you invoice and so forth, and that SLA or service level agreement, is really obvious. You're saying, "This is what you can expect from me." Just as a handy, a side tip or top tip, is definitely be sure to cover when you will going to be answering queries. If you're not going to be online after 5:00, put that in the Ts and Cs, if you're not going to be online in public holidays, put that in the Ts and Cs. If you're expected to be online on public holidays or after hours, and of course, make your rate 1.5 times at that point. Because maybe you could say, "If I were to work off my hourly rate it would be x, because I'm working on a public holiday it'll be y," and then just charging them over and above what you're getting paid from the packages. The packages is a great way to really manage the expectation. It's not about, "Have you worked eight hours this month?" It's like, "Have you delivered the eight post that you said you're going to", which really does make the conversation a lot easier. To make you guys' life a lot simpler, I have included this all in my slides. If you want to use this keys feel free. Your package one could be four posts per week on Instagram. Be sure to state whether it's stories or posts, because sometimes stories are a little bit easier, sometimes posts are a little bit easier, but you just want to be clear on where exactly on Instagram you're posting as an IGTV. Facebook, how many posts? LinkedIn, how many post? These are literally just example templates that you can steal and use and abuse as you like. But the main thing is you're establishing the frequency and the cadence of which you are posting. Then what I also like that I'm also going to include in the template section is sharing when it is that you're posting this. Are you posting to Instagram and Facebook at the same time? Is there any staggering of the content, and how do you represent that. I really like this visual because it makes it really clear. Because maybe if you were adding on a blog post, you could be like, "I'm going to post on the blog post on this day, and then these are the other channels that am amplifying". You get the picture. Depending on how many platforms you are offering to them, it's going to get a little bit more complicated. But certainly I think these schematics are going to make it so much easier to really be on the same page with your clients. Like I said, make it a no brainer. You are not asking a favor from someone. You are genuinely going to be adding value to their business and genuinely putting more time back in their hands to focus on working on their businesses as opposed to in their businesses, which let me tell you, as a small business owner, that is crucial. Make it feel like a no-brainer by offering loads of value upfront coming to them with the cheat sheets that we've supplied and saying like, "I'm going to share these with you, and I'm going to really take you on this journey and make you feel a lot more confident with social media." You could even offer the first month free, or you could offer a discounted trial period. I have made no attempt to say what you guys should or shouldn't charge because, of course, it depends where you are in terms of your confidence. It probably depends also on your expenses and what you're trying to cover. But I would suggest, in order to manage expectations do be affordable in the beginning. You can also look at something like Fiverr, the website Fiverr, to see what people are charging for social media services, for post creation services. This is probably on the very low end, but certainly it'll help you to structure a payments and way of presenting your payment in a way that makes the most sense. I really, really hope that that part helps. Then when you go to the client, a key piece of advice that I will give to you is to have done your research in terms of who you think their audience may be. If you feel like you're totally starting in the dark or shooting in the dark, then put this together after you've met with them. Say, "Based on our conversation, this is my understanding of your audience." Then it shows that you're really coming to grips with the audience, and who you'll be speaking to, and what community you're going to be nurturing ultimately. This is also a great place to start, and you can even put together a little persona. I absolutely love this. This is actually going to share with the client the fact that you've given a name to their primary audience and you've really taken the time and made the effort to get to understand them and get to understand what are those factors that are making them potentially buy from your brand or not, because ultimately that's what the client is going to be interested in. Then I would always suggest doing a topline KPI looksy-see. KPI stands for key performance indicator, and you want to basically see where are they at currently by doing a mini audit like this one for example, where it shows how many followers, how many views do they have on each platform, and then that's really going to stand you in great stead to go back to them after your one month trial has finished and say, "Look how much growth we've had." The big caveat here would be that some of these metrics are considered vanity metrics, which means that someone might be buying, but your followers may not have increased greatly. It's not necessary that the more followers means the more sales. Definitely take this with a grain of salt, but definitely take a stab at where are they now, and where are you wanting to get them because this is the return on investment that the clients are wanting to see. Feel free to use this template in order to unpack that. Get an indication from them what it is that they're trying to achieve from a KPI standpoint. Is it leads, is it revenue, is it customers, is it repeat customers and loyalty, what is the objective that they're trying to meet? All of these talking points are really going to feel like you know exactly what you're talking about. Please feel free to jot them down and make sure when you have that initial call or that initial coffee with the client that you know exactly what it is that you're going to be asking them about their brand. Then the only thing that is left to touch out about is reporting, and how we actually go back to the client at the end of the month, and share with them how their content's performing. Let's slide into our reporting demo next. I remember it guys. Can you believe we're at the end of today's Skillshare class. It's been an absolute joy having you on board. I would love to hear from you in the comments section, please let me know what you learned. If you learned something, what you're planning to go forward with, and which clients you're approaching. Is it a beauty client, is it a fashion client? I'd love to hear from you. Please do follow me as a teacher on Skillshare, I'm really trying to grow my following, and if you wouldn't mind leaving me a review, nothing would make me happier. Until I see you guys next time for our next Skillshare class, I really wish you all the best with your social media, and I can't wait to hear about those social media wins that you make when you land your first client. Anyways guys I can't wait to see you for the next Skillshare class, so that we can continue to do digital better. 19. Reporting 101: In terms of the reporting functionality on Sprout Social, you're literally going to go to the left-hand side again and select Reports. It's going to give you a bunch of different reporting options. Now bear in mind, I'm just on the most basic Sprout Social platforms. I'm not necessarily going to see the custom reporting. There is a more advanced tier which does allow you to do more advanced reporting, but because it is quite a bit more expensive, I just have the basic plan when it comes to Sprout. The one that I normally will actually select is just going into Instagram. Let's just select Instagram Business Profiles and then I scroll to the bottom here, it's going to show me my top performing posts in terms of what's doing well on Instagram, in terms of engagements, likes, comments and saves. Then I go to View Post Performance Report. This is actually going to give me a chronological flow of all of my posts and what did well and what did badly. That's a really beautiful way in which you can report for your clients. I like to just select "Share" and then say "Download PDF". It's actually going to pull all of these stats. It does really depend on how much reporting your client does want to see. Sometimes this is totally perfect to just say these are my date ranges and then share the posts in accordance with chronologically, either doing it chronologically or as I said, doing it this way where you're actually breaking it down according to the performance. Here we can see things like impressions over the period, engagements, post link clicks, as well as the audience growth, audience metrics, publishing behavior, and so forth. You can also see the demographics of the page, which is really cool. Here you're actually able to see exactly what your audience looks like and where they're coming from. That's really making your reporting so simple, you can export that as a PDF or as a.CSV, which is obviously the Excel file formats, and put that into a beautiful template. I think Sprout Social wins from our reporting standpoint. But next up let's chat through the Hootsuite options. Next up, let's chat about the Hootsuite reporting options. Again, your just going to go on that left-hand side and you're going to go to Analytics. Then when you're in Analytics, you're going to see what reports you can actually create. You can say "Create Reports" and then select your profile on the left-hand side. I'm going to say Instagram Business. It allows you to upgrade your plan to get deeper insights about your specific audience. From here you actually going to go to Instagram overview and then say "Create Report". You can do this, of course, for any of the platforms. It's just simply going to start building up a dashboard for you in terms of things like how many post did you deploy during that period, how many followers did you gain, what is your post engagement, post video views, impressions, reach, engagement rates and so much more. This also has the ability to be exported as a PDF. Let's just say that we wanted to do that and they will actually email you the report. It's a little bit different from the Sprout Social one. Those are two ways that you can do your reporting to actually give your clients insights around what is working and what is not. The third method that I'm going to share with you guys is using the Facebook plat. If you've chosen to do it using the Facebook platform, what you're going to do is go to the page that you are an admin of and scroll to bottom left, which is going to say Insights. Here similarly it's going to give you a dashboard that actually expresses how your post content has been performing, my favorite review I simply scroll to the middle, it says your five most recent posts, and there you can see it gives me a really good indication of what's doing well and what's not. As you can see, they really have made reporting simple. Although, I must say when you export data out of Facebook, it is quite difficult because you have to split text to columns in Excel and it just causes a little bit of a mind crunch because it doesn't necessarily put them nicely in columns like you would expect it to. I battle a little bit when it comes to Facebook because I find it a lot more admin intensive, which is where those Hootsuite and Sprout Social recommendations are really going to come so in handy. 20. BONUS: Answering your FAQ's: Welcome to the FAQ bonus section, where I am going to be answering all of your frequently asked questions. Hopefully, if there's anything that was still niggling you in the back of your mind in terms of stuff that wasn't clear. Particularly if you're taking on board social media management on behalf of a client, this section is going to be super handy in addressing some of the documentation that you will almost certainly require before taking on social media management, as well as some final handy resources just to make sure you guys are truly well on your way. Let's run through some of the most frequently asked questions that I get. Although this is not a frequently asked question, what documents don't need to succeed? I really do feel like it should be, because oftentimes what I find when people start to panic is when you stress test with them like, well, what was the agreement with your clients or what was your agreement with your supplier? It turns out oftentimes that there wasn't an agreement or if there was an agreement in place, it maybe wasn't specific as it needed to be. I've put together my top eight tips in terms of what documentation is really handy when either someone is running with your social media on behalf of you, or particularly to protect you as the social media freelancer as well. The first thing that's really going to help you is a brand guide. I always say that social media holds up a microscope to your brand. What I mean by that is if a client or your own brand is not clearly defined in terms of its look and feel and its fans, social media really does hold up that magnifying glass to that and draws attention to the fact that your brand is not as well established as it should be in terms of look and feel and how it really shows up online. Then it becomes incredibly difficult to do great social media for that brand because it's indistinguishable from other brands within the market. It doesn't really clearly communicate its own unique selling proposition and really, you're going to lose a lot of your content to the catcher of this is the case. If it's your own brand, I do suggest taking one or two steps back, potentially working with the designer to set up corporate identity or a CI as we call it, and really establish what are those logos and funds that we're going to be using, hex codes, color palettes, you name it. That's really going to help you when it comes to generating your social media content and really going to save you so much time in the long run to not have to deliberate what colors look good on your reel. It really needs to be a no brainer in terms of these are my brand colors, these are my brand fonts, that's what I'm going to stick with as far as possible. If it is a client that you're working with, this is a little bit more sensitive because you would need to say to the client, look it's going to be really difficult to proceed in a smooth and succinct way without doing a little bit of groundwork first, but ultimately you'd be doing them a favor by just being honest with them. The more clearly defined your brand is, the more succinct you're going to be able to communicate it on social media, and so really this is one of the best places to start. Number two is my community management guide. You can also call these frequently asked questions. If you're going to be doing community management on behalf of your clients, you need to obviously have a great understanding of one of the questions that customers are asking in regards to the product or service. These may not be immediately apparent off the bat, so it could be things around shipping, logistics, what happens when there's a customer complaint? How does this all get addressed? Not only is it the answer to these questions in a generic fashion, it should also take the turn that you're wanting to respond with as well, is it quite a sassy response? Is quite a formal response? Devoid of emotion. Do we want it to be quite full of emotion? That's all going to really come down to the brand personality. I find these FAQs of community management guide super handy because if, for example, your team gets bigger and you're expanding, you need then to brief someone else on a brand turn as well as what are those questions that they're going to be answering from a day-to-day perspective. Now in terms of how long I suggest you take to get back to a customer, I like to benchmark and a maximum of four hours, but bear in mind this is, of course, working hours. We all need to sleep, so definitely do not try and respond to people after hours, definitely not after let's say 7:00 PM in the evening. I don't think anyone expects that, but I think it's a great idea to communicate that with your client as well. The third is the escalation plan. I call this a here you're going to call, so who you're going to call when things go wrong. Sometimes you do encounter some weird and wonderful things in the world of social media. Examples would be, terrible content being posted to the page on a weekend when no one is monitoring the page. Of course, trolls are quite affair with the fact that people are offline and potentially could take advantage of this. You want to have an escalation plan that makes it quite clear in the instance of an emergency, who is it that you're going to call? Is that the brand manager of the company? Is it someone higher up? If it's a complaint that's gotten really serious as they may there maybe a reputational key office that you can speak to you. Oftentimes what helps me and some of my clients is to classify these ideas as red, amber or green. Red being the building is burning and drop everything and handle this, escalate to the CER and issue a press release. Then you can work backwards from there, but that's really going to be a great starting point. Number four is absolutely crucial whether you're on the client side or whether you're the supplier, the SLA or service level agreement. We're going to go into a lot more depth on this one, particularly because as I say, a lot of these things are overlooked, and only once the wheels come off, do people start to ask questions in terms of why wasn't this picked up, and then realizing change gave was out of your scope but you hadn't communicated that that would be the case. This is really an agreement which is going to cover how frequently you check the page, as well as some other key details around public holidays, Christmas and so forth. Really how it is that you're handling things in almost every eventuality. Then number five is your digital marketing strategy. Social media might comprise a massive part of digital marketing, but it is not the entirety of digital marketing. Of course there would be other assets in play including things like websites, newsletters, and so forth. As far as possible, you want your social media to really be cohesive within that broader strategy. Some people might not call it a digital marketing strategy and might be more of a brand strategy that does include things like websites in it, but really you want to make sure that social media is operating within a broader ecosystem, it's aligned to its broader ecosystem and it's really supporting the key objective. If for example, part and parcel of the digital marketing strategy is something like growing the email database, then that should be something that appears within the social media objectives too. Definitely trying to keep a consolidated or coherent approach across multiple different online platforms, is going to be the best recipe for success. This may force you to work with other supplies and other members of your team, but certainly it's going to be worth it on the long run when you do have that, beautifully consolidated approach to your online presence. The second one is a content strategy. You will have seen it come through quite clearly in this course that it needs to really be a defined thing that's written down somewhere. Even if you're your own clients, I would really urge that even if it's a one pager, you have clearly defined in terms of what would best practice look like for your particular brand. This will define your content pillars, your content strategy, as well as a clearly defined editorial process. Again, where the wheel sometimes do fall off this in the process, so you may start off with the best of intentions, but as soon as you start skipping meetings like statuses or watching sessions, it starts to make it more and more difficult to keep track of social media, so you'd really try to install that operational rigor as far as possible when it comes to both the content strategy and the execution they are. If nothing else, I would suggest that there is an approach be it a one-pager which quite explicitly states the role of each channels on the channel palette. This might also help you in the future, if someone says, why don't we create a TikTok or why don't do we create a [inaudible] you can circle back to the current type forms that you have, why you have them? What is working well for you? What is not working well for you? So that in every eventuality, so people suggesting that you do different things or more things, you can come back to that single point of truth and that's really going to stand you in good stead. The next item is a hashtag strategy. Again, people do tend to skip this. I loved doing a one pager where I list four different sets of hashtags, which I can either save as a shortcut on my keyboard on my mobile phone, for example, iPhones make it really easy to do this, maybe it's a sticky note on your desktop, or a physical sticky note on your desk. Just making sure that you are consistently using hashtags to make sure that that organic visibility is as good as it can be, and then only trying to augment with paid media. If you don't do this obviously, your reliance for the paid media becomes so much larger, and that is not exactly what we're wanting. Bear in mind with hashtagging, like we said, you can also hide these and stories and help you to appear on the explore page as can you with stuff like Reels and IGTV. Differently do make sure that you're maximizing hashtags on that these are written down somewhere. Finally, the last thing that I just want to mention is some reporting template normally going to be handy, especially when working with a client to say to them, this is a dummy or a sample report of what it's going to look like, this is what you can expect, these are the metrics we'll be tracking. Is this what you're looking for or not? Then be able to actually tweak and optimize accordingly versus getting to the end of that first month with your client and saying here is the bigger report that I've spent hours slaving over, only for them to say, you haven't captured the major things that are important to me. Just getting some alignment on KPIs and metrics is going to be really helpful, and just managing this expectation with your client upfront. They are quite different approaches to reporting. You could either build a live dashboard if you wanted to, using a tool like Google Data Studio, but typically you do need paid plug-ins to do this. Alternatively, you would just be exporting it out of your usability software like your HootSuite or your Sprout Social. Now, as promised, we said that we'd go into a little more depth when it comes to the service level agreement or the SLA. The reason why I pause on this point is because it is really bedrock of your relationship. It's going to capture everything from how much time you're going to be working on their social media every week, what outputs your client can expect, so is it mood boards? Is it looks and feels? Is it three Facebook pages a week? Is that 100? It's very difficult to get on the same page with your clients if you haven't drawn this line in the sand. You're also going to stipulate how often you would send the content calendar and how long your client has to approve it. Oftentimes what will happen is the client will be delayed in their approvals, resulting in the outputs going out a little bit delayed, and if anyone would say, ever pointing fingers, you really do want to be quite clear on the fact that the feedback was delayed and that's what's causing the issues. You also want to state your hourly rate for the hours that you estimate that you will need. Even if you are offering packages, it is a good idea to give an indication of what the hourly rate is because if ad hoc requirements crop up, you can say to your client, '' Look, not currently within our scope of work, but I'll charge you at X amount per hour over and above.'' This is also really important if you need extra time, so you may choose to have a higher or a lower hourly rate on the extra time. For some of my clients, for example, I like to actually drop the rate once it goes over a certain threshold because then it's almost like rewarding them for their loyalty. But I can see in some instances you may actually want to do the reverse and increase your hourly rate on the over and above items, based of purely homage over time can you work. If this is a side hustle, it might be a bit challenging to work too much over time. You're also going to state how many times you'll check the various pages. Whether you'll check the pages on weekends and public holidays. When your contract starts and ends that being quite defined in that end point. Because I do think, especially if it's a new client, it's nice to have a trial period. If things aren't maybe going your way, you could cease the agreement before it really takes a hold and how often you will invoice. Some clients have different billing cycles and you just want to make sure that you're really aligned to that. Then whether you will be doing paid media for your clients and if so, for how much? Because the last thing you would want the client to think is that it's actually been incorporated in your costs, and that there's some Instagram boost budget which there isn't. Remember that this is a hard cost, so it is a little bit difficult with invoicing, it might be something that you actually choose to invoice upfront or putting down a deposit of 50 percent that covers this paid media costs as well. The same goes for any software that you may need. Again, it's a hard cost if you're using things like Sprout Social and HootSuite, you may choose to itemize that or you may choose to hide it as fact in your normal billings. Then how much paid media management you'll charge and breaking upward is copywriting versus design versus paid media management. Then what are those reports that you're actually going to be generating on a monthly basis. Next step is how should I price my services? Now this is obviously quite a contentious issue because everyone has different opinions around this. But I'll try to give you guys the most objective view possible. There is a lot of temptation particularly in the social media realm to undercut. In order to get the business you think, okay, they've got a supplier and they're charging excellent each charge x minus 100, and you end up backing yourself into a corner typically where you actually not able to cover the time that you actually need to spend doing a good job. What that could result in is a shoddy output just by virtue of how much the clients is paying you. My preference is rather to offer new clients a promotional period, so for example, maybe the first month is discounted, but really to make sure that the rest of the agreement is covering your time as best as you can. This is why I did mention in the tool section that I do love Asana and it's time tracking plugin ever that you're able to implement over and above. If you ever do need to convince your client that you need a bigger retainer or prove that you are spending the hours that you say that you are, then that's a great way to build trust. The worst-case scenario is really going to be this long-term contract with no clear point at which you can raise your pricing and actually move into the next chapter. Using time tracking plugins is going to be super handy, not only for your client but also for you. I tend to be quite optimistic in how long I think something is going to take me and then when it takes me double, it's quite difficult obviously to reconcile that from a profitability standpoint. That's just something that I want you guys to avoid as far as possible. Note that you also need to take into account any of those hot costs or overheads like I mentioned, so things like Canva premium, your handy scheduling tool, and it's quite nice to itemize this on the invoice so that it's clear that it's not just about your time taking into account any of that paid media promotion. Then also a great hack is to figure out how much you would ideally like to bill from your services and work backwards in terms of what you can manage. Say you could only manage three plans and you want to bill say in rands because I'm based in South Africa. Let's say you wanted to bill 10,000 rand over and above your current salary, then you would know if you could only take on three clients that you want to pass them around like 3300 rand. It's also worth putting together packages even if you find that a lot of your plans to part from them, which I also do find is a thing like, @but it's the spark service then how can I put forward a package when every client is different?" But really it does help the client to understand if it's something that they can afford or maybe they're being a little bit ambitious in terms of having your on a monthly retainer basis. What this does also open up? What I do like to encourage my students do is have a once off fees. You could always conduct a social media audit and put forward recommendations and then not necessarily come on-board long-term. This is a really nice way to be sensitive to people's budgets without them killing us off in the long term, trying to do work that the client is genuinely can't afford. Next step is help. I'm not getting along with my plans, what do I do? I've been in this predicament before. It is a very tricky one to manage. Anyone who is in this predicament, I really do empathize. But it's imperative tap a good working relationship when it comes to social media, because there is a lot of back and forth and approvals that are going to be happening. You can make your process as seamless as possible but oftentimes they will still be what's up the go, flying forwards and backwards, and you just don't want to be doing that with someone who you don't feel comfortable working with. If you're not feeling the love, I would suggest trying your best to address what it is that's bothering you when it comes to working with this client. Then if you feel like it's maybe not reconcilable to exit the agreement as graciously and as quickly as possible. So rather than continuing to build an expectation is just to say,'' This isn't maybe the best brand fit for my business.'' One tactic is to meet for a chemistry coffee, I find this very helpful, even if you plan on working remotely. If you are based in the same or similar place, it is nice to meet your client face-to-face at least once upfront. If you get the hibi-gibis or feel like this is not something that you want to pursue, I think it's well worth actually stating that. The last thing you want to be doing is marketing for a dentist, for argument's sake and bores you to tears. I think just getting to grips in terms of what it is that they need and whether or not that's a good fit for their business and for your business. Next step is, of course, where should you look for work if you are not a social media manager or aspiring social media manager who's trying to get work. Take it from me, Facebook groups are absolute gold mines, be sure to check these out. They're typically country-specific, but definitely it is worth looking a little bit broader than just your country, so maybe you could pick your state or your country and then maybe something just bigger than that. But certainly you're not want to go too global with this because competition will get bigger and better or worse. Then searching on LinkedIn for jobs with keywords like freelance or remote, I also find it works really well. I also like creating a freebie or legion in order to start conversations and build your credibility within the space. It could be things about like maybe Social Media Management 101, and ensure that you are showing up as consistently as you can online and sharing your services in creative ways. Once you have one client, it becomes infinitely easier to land works and rest assured that once you have that key client that you enjoy working with and whose Instagram feed is really looking magical, you can really say to your newer clients,'' Look, this is what I do and I'm so proud of it.'' Also that helps the passion to really come through. I also like it when service providers use the Instagram stories to haul the highlight that's caught something like testimonials, which really speaks to the fact that you're a great person to work with, which I know you guys are. Making it clear where your best and which niche you're operating and make this quite specific in your bio if you are looking to gain work as a social media manager. Next step is, how do I become better acquainted with my clients business without asking them at 1000 questions? The Frank answer is that you can't, you can do as much research as you can possibly stand within reading a wave side, reading past social media comments, but most of the time it is predicated on a good working relationship with your clients, so you do find yourself asking a lot of questions upfront, and I think it's worth having that conversation with the client saying, it's not going to feel like it's work out thing to me initially, because I am going to have a lot of questions about your service and product, but make it clear so that you can accurately portray them online and longer-term obviously some of those time savings are going to pay off. Then finally, being online 24/7 has left me hating social media more than loving it. I hear this all the time. Now, if we go back to some earlier point around curates and our content diet, this is going to be one of my peak key pieces of advice here is that you want to be really mindful in terms of what you are consuming. In fact, you can always take a bubble bath, go for long drive with great music or indulge in social media and in a personal capacity to remind yourself that, it's not necessarily the doom and gloom that it seems to be. It's an inevitable that you're going to reach this point at multiple points in your career as a social media manager or as a brand owner that's really undertaken the huge responsibility of doing social media. Just be sure that you're keeping yourself in a positive mindset. Also, I do find that juggling does help a lot and then again, getting to the source of what is actually bothering you. Oftentimes it'll just be unfollowing a handful of people and you can carry on your merry way. This is going to be a better long-term approach than just giving up with social media all together. I really hope that there's a bonus section on FAQs was helpful. If you have any further frequently asked questions, it goes without saying that I love chatting to you guys and I want to hear from you in the comments. The more questions that you send, the more juicy these FAQs sections will be in future, so please do help me improve my courses. I'm all for constructive feedback. 21. Thank you for Watching!: I'm a weird. Guys, can you believe we're at the end of today's Skillshare class? It's been an absolute joy having you on board. I would love to hear from you in the comment section. Please let me know what you learned, if you learned something, what you're planning to go forwards with. Which clients you're approaching? Is it a beauty client, is it a fashion client? I'd love to hear from you. Please do follow me as a teacher on Skillshare. I'm really trying to grow my following and if you wouldn't mind leaving me a review, nothing would make me happier. Until I see you guys next time for our next Skillshare class. I really wish you all the best with your social media. I can't wait to hear about those social media wins that you make when you land your first client. Anyways, guys, I can't wait to see you for the next Skillshare class that we can continue to do digital better.