Hello Lovely & welcome back, I hope you are finding my content helpful on your journey & are being encouraged with my Instagram posts. Today’s post is going to describe how I got into the social media scene, how it drained me & how I am progressing with the mindset shift I’ve had to adopt.
I’d never really worried too much about social media, it just wasn’t for me & then a teen friend of mine mentioned it in conversation one day & offered to set the accounts up for me. I didn’t pay too much mind & for a while I didn’t even post anything but when I started getting into it, it really became a rollercoaster ride.
At first I tried to navigate around both Tik Tok & Instagram & I had to figure things out for myself. I was forced to ask my teenagers for help with understanding some of the videography editing functions etc & I felt like a real DUD but I didn’t give up. I persevered & as I continued making very low quality videos with not so great content/ captions, I still felt inspired & carried on. I remember making videos on Instagram taking like 6 hours to post because my app kept bombing out as I was editing but again I persevered & continued.
I watched reels daily & tried to learn from all the Insta coaches & marketing small business coaches & while never signing up for anything with them, I just felt like a sponge soaking up all the information I could get. I implemented some of it as I went & slowly I started seeing results. I’ve put together a little summary of exactly what I have done & I hope it helps you in your journey.
The most important thing I would like you to leave with though is that while I was intimidated by other profiles/ following of other bakers, I was grateful that a lot of them posted reels at some stage or other to explain that their “following” & success didn’t happen overnight. I have to constantly remind myself that I was extremely late to the social media game & while I it might seem that I am on the backfoot, the comparison I’ve been making is not accurate. The algorithm is also the devils spawn & can definitely drain you & kill your morale but once you move from worrying about how the algorithm is going to treat your content to rather how your audience is going to like it – it becomes a rollercoaster of absolute fun. At one stage I got a little addicted but I’m better now 
TIPS
I’VE LEARNED & IMPLEMENTED
·
Invest
in a tripod stand, these are relatively affordable & you don’t need a fancy
expensive one to get the results needed.
·
Change
the settings on your phone to 4k – 24 in your camera & try your best to use
the main camera & not the selfie one. This gives you a better quality.
·
Try
& video as much of your day as you can – random things you are doing, you
never know what could be used & how people will react to it.
·
I
watch reels everyday on Instagram & if there’s a tune I like, I save it to
my favorites & pair it with content at a later stage, this way I’m not
stuck looking for sounds when I need to post something.
·
Recently
I’ve found out that there is an option to “boost” your post, this is a paid for
advertising service, but it allows you to control your reach & ensures a
better reach. I spend around R300 – R500 a month. My reels normally reach about
350-800 views, sometimes 2000 if I’m lucky but with the boost I get up to 250k.
·
I
joined the social media bus when hashtags were a big thing & then suddenly
when I got the hang of which hashtags to use, all the social media coaches were
talking about hashtags being a thing of the past so I stopped. What I realized
though just the other day while trying to search on a social media platform is
that what you are looking for doesn’t come up unless someone used it as a
hashtag in their post so clearly hashtags are not a thing of the past.
·
Next
make sure your Bio is too the point & refers to who you are, what you do
& how you help people. Adding the location is also very important because essentially,
you want people in your area to start buying your products.
·
Ensure
that the content you are sharing is helping an audience, think of ways you can
uplift the community you are wanting to engage with you & if you service
them well, you will get the reach & response you need.
·
The
most IMPORTANT thing is to keep showing up, consistency is key. The more people
see you in their feed/ stories or reels, the more chance of engagement. The
human psychology reacts to something they find comforting rather than foreign
so if they see you only once, they’ll definitely forget about it. However if
they see you multiple times, eventually they’ll feel more comfortable & the
chances of them engaging with your content or following you increases.
·
Put
together a social media strategy eg. Monday – post a carousel, Tuesday – go
live, Wednesday – in stories do an ask me anything etc
·
Finally
start following other people in your business industry not only to learn more
from them but to also be exposed to their following.
Hope this helps, I would appreciate
some commentary on whether or not you agree & if there’s any other advice
you would like to share for the community.
Until next time – bake someone
happy!
