Don't Buy The Expensive Social Media Course, Read This Instead 🧑🏫
26 lessons from an avid course taker and maker
Thousands of online courses promise a massive growth in followers, engagement, and sales if only you Do The Work and stay consistent.
I’ve taken a lot of these courses over the years. Some are great. Some are not so great. One of my clients is in the middle of a LinkedIn Sales Accelerator right now and it’s been eye-opening to hear about some of the stuff that’s being taught inside (stuff that most of us already know).
The thing about online courses, particularly those that don’t have much (or any) 1:1 support is that most people never finish them. I read a stat yesterday that up to 85% of students don’t finish online courses. 85%!
Since I’ve taken a lot of courses and live-and-breathe social media on a daily basis, I thought I’d save you a bunch of time and money and tell you exactly what they’ll tell you.
Online courses don’t offer any secrets. Not organic social media courses, anyway.1 What they do offer is all the information in one place, personalised feedback, and accountability. Good online courses are worth their weight in gold. If you want my recommendations, let me know! I’m always happy to share my favourites.
But for now, let me divulge exactly what you’ll find in those pricey online courses…
Organic social media is a long game. It takes consistent time and effort to see results. Boring, but true.
Engagement ups and downs are normal (even for the most successful creators and businesses online).
The ideal number of times to post on Instagram (grid) is at least 3x per week. On LinkedIn, it’s 4-5x per week. On TikTok, it’s every day.
For most people, there is not an ‘ideal day’ or ‘ideal time’ to post (unless you have a very specific audience that’s in a totally different time zone). A consistent day and time is what matters most e.g. Mon, Weds, and Fri at 5pm, consistently.
Reels are the main growth driver on Instagram. They are the fastest and easiest way to increase followers and get in front of new people.
Photos are not ‘dead’ but if you don’t start sharing more video, growth will be very slow.
The best Reels are made using footage captured on a phone (vertical video). Don’t make Reels using animations in Canva and don’t rely solely on photo Reels. You won’t see as much success with them.
The anatomy of a high-performing Reel is fairly straightforward and yet no matter how many times I tell people exactly what to do, they ignore me 😆 Follow the steps in this article and you will start seeing results. I promise you.
The kind of Reel that always performs the best? An educational one. No matter what niche you’re in, if you can teach someone how to do something—you’re golden. And this isn’t limited to service providers like copywriters and social media managers and nutritionists. Think of fashion bloggers and home DIY-ers and creatives of all kind. They’re always sharing educational content (how to style XYZ, how to transform your kitchen on a budget, and so on). It doesn’t matter that most viewers will never actually follow through and apply the learnings themselves… it’s aspirational! We can dream!
Second to education, is behind-the-scenes content. Share your process, your environment, a day-in-your-life. It’s a great way to build trust.
If you want to use Stories effectively, don’t just use them to reshare content (yours or other people’s). Use them to share the behind-the-scenes of your business/life and to promote your offer. Remember, your warmest audience watches your Stories—those most receptive to ‘sales’ content.
Stories won’t help you grow followers (apart from the odd nosey non-follower, only your existing audience will watch those), but they are very good at deepening relationships and converting your existing followers.
The ‘Explore’ feed (you can access via the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of your homepage) is where your content will appear for non-followers who are interested in the type of thing you share. This is the gateway to capturing the attention of new people and, ultimately, growing your account. But getting to the Explore page is not ‘easy’. You’ve got to follow the principles of great content/Reels to end up there. Head to your Explore feed now to see the calibre of content that appears. P.S. I’m not talking about the subject matter, I’m talking about the format, style and length of the content.
You cannot just post great content and expect results. Regular 2-way engagement—i.e. you commenting and messaging and being a curious human being—is essential to growth. Social media is like virtual networking. It’s not supposed to be a broadcast channel.
On LinkedIn, don’t just post business content and professional branded photos. There is a huge opportunity right now to stand out with content seemingly better suited to Instagram e.g. snaps from your week, your studio, the less polished behind-the-scenes stuff. Aim to post 2x posts like these each week, and 2-3 ‘business’ style posts.
On LinkedIn, change your headline (the line of text that usually houses your job title) to what it is you do for people e.g. change from ‘Director of [architecture firm]’ to ‘Restoring period properties across Bath’. People don’t care that you’re Chief of this or Director of that. They want to know what you can do for them.
On Instagram, add a keyword to the bold ‘Name’ section of your bio e.g. Marvin Gaye | SEO copywriter or Nicole Richie | Maximalist interior designer.
If you’re using a Linktree or similar in your Instagram bio, make sure it only has 3 ‘branches’. Arrange them in order of your business goals (e.g. if building your email list is a priority this quarter, have that as the first ‘branch’) and don’t have any that send people to your homepage. Send them somewhere specific e.g. your testimonials page or contact form.
Speaking of emails, use LinkedIn or Instagram or whichever platform is your primary marketing channel as a way to build your email list. It’s so important you’re not reliant on social media alone. You want a way to stay in touch with people and regularly remind them about your products/services without an algorithm limiting your reach.
If you’re using LinkedIn for lead generation, do not send connection requests to people without a personalised message. It’s a waste of your time!
Captions are important, on both LinkedIn and Instagram. The best captions have a short first line (to grab attention but also so they’re not cut off halfway through + therefore lose meaning), short sentences and paragraphs (so they’re skimmable), and a call-to-action on its own standalone line and the end. Don’t bury your CTA. If you do, people will miss it.
Call-to-action = ‘comment below’, ‘how do you feel about X?’, has this ‘happened to you before?’ and so on. It’s a question that is easy to answer. It’s an invitation for your audience to engage. If you end every caption with ‘Check out the link in my bio!’ you will not receive comments and limit your overall engagement.
Look at your Insights! You should be looking at your analytics on a monthly basis to see what’s driven the most saves, follows, comments, and website taps. Do more of the stuff that’s working and less of the stuff that isn’t. Insights are so important. They show you what is working (and what’s not) for your audience. And if Insights make you feel a bit stressed out or confused, make time to familiarise yourself with them. I promise they’re not as confusing or intimidating as they might seem. On LinkedIn, look at your impressions, engagements, and follows.
When you publish a post on Instagram, do these things immediately: save it, like it, and leave a comment (related to the caption). On LinkedIn, like the post and when relevant, leave a comment. These are easy little things you can do to give your post a boost. For any platform, make sure you’re there (as often as possible) to engage with others so that you give your post the best possible chance of great reach and engagement.
If you’re going to use a social media scheduler, don’t let every single post ‘auto publish’. If you’re never/rarely there to actually hit ‘publish’ on a post OR engage with people as soon as your post goes live, your engagement will suffer.
Use tools to your advantage. Use a social media scheduler like Later to break the cycle of posting ‘as-and-when’, use ChatGPT for content ideas and captions. Use good old fashion iCal (or Google Cal like me) to intentionally block out time each week to write some captions or create some Reels. That last tip is the big ‘secret’ to staying consistent on social media. If you don’t have the desire or the resource to hire a social media manager, then do what I do for my clients—block out time to plan ideas, write captions, create Reels (those can be separate blocks of time). That is how you’ll stay consistent enough to start growing your following, increasing engagement, and not get burnt out by social media!
Phew!
Ok, I could’ve written at least 10 more lessons but this newsletter is already too long!
If you have any questions about any of the above—or online courses for that matter—hit reply or drop them down below.
I really enjoyed putting this together. I hope you get at least one nugget of wisdom from it.
Courses like Kaity Griffin’s Google ads course ‘Profitable Promotion’ offers so much information you would never find online. Google ads are tricky to get the hang of and unlike organic social media marketing, a lot is at stake ($$$!). For upskilling in an area such as this, a course like Kaity’s is a must.
Thanks for this very straight forward, to the point advice on multiple platforms. Like you I have attended a number of online courses in the past 6 years, amounting to 40K. I have been on several platforms but recently only on two - LinkedIn and Substack.
After struggling for years I have come to conclusion that I can’t do justice to two platforms. So, I am quitting LinkedIn and concentrating on Substack. It was a very hard decision to make because I felt I was ditching my followers on LinkedIn.
What I find hard is not the content writing but the engagement. Do you have any advice on ‘how’ to engage on LinkedIn? It sucks out all the energy from me leaving me depleted to do any creative work which I love to do.
Very helpful! Thanks for all of the tips and igniting a few ideas for upcoming content.