Are you a business owner that’s thinking of starting a social media strategy. How do you begin? Which platform to start? How long will it take until I see any sort of substantial success? These are all valid questions that I hope to be able to answer in this article.

I think the first reason onto why you should start publishing on social media is that the reach of social media is global. Anyone across the world can check out your social media profile and access your company’s information.

Not having an online presence may mean missing potential customers that you would’ve otherwise gained if you had an online presence. While having a strong online presence may mean an increase in business revenue.

However, I understand that there are other activities that may be better suited for revenue generation, especially in the case of B2B where direct sales are important.

Therefor many companies have chosen to outsource this activity to agencies or freelancers to do their digital marketing work. Perhaps creating an in-house team is also an option, but it requires training and systems.

Many companies in traditional industries may choose to opt out social media altogether as there are better, more impactful activities to focus themselves on.

Either way I believe the first step is education. Understanding what are the pros and cons of online marketing, and if these things will suit your unique situation. Let me list some of them for you:

Pros of Online Marketing for small businesses

• Global reach for more customers.
• Content can be produced by anyone with a computer.
• Possibility for a piece of content to get the attention of a big client.
• Possibility for virality.

Cons of Online Marketing for small businesses

• Takes initial setup to get going, which may take out of your precious time.
• The digital marketing space is ultra-saturated and ultra-competitive.
• Learning curve involved.
• You can outsource to people that don’t know what they are doing & are as clueless as you.
• Social for B2B may not be so impactful.

So how do you start publishing for beginners?

I believe it’s best to do things step by step. Instead of developing a grand social media strategy. Let’s set a goal for you to post 10 things about your business on LinkedIn.

Or if you’re doing video marketing, make your first video and upload it.

This will help you get a feel of what’s it like to produce content, if you like it or not, and if this is something that you can continue doing.

A valid misconception is that creating content requires creativity skills and an imaginative mind. That may be true at first glance from a third person’s perspective, however I believe content marketing is a skill. As long as you sit down and force yourself to create something every single day, you’re going to get better at it.

In addition, all the content ideas you want to produce are already out there in the marketplace. You just need to find them and get inspiration from them. How? A simple google search is enough, going on the internet and browsing things. All of that is content that you can use for inspiration.

In terms of how long it’ll take for you to make your first online sale. It depends on your niche, competitiveness of your industry and effort you put in. Some people that have a unique offer can make their first sale in their first week of publishing consistently. Some people may take a year in a competitive field.

But the thing about this is simply to just get started, don’t overcomplicate things – trust that you’ll get better as you go along. I made my first sale through my YouTube channel only about 2 years in. But the marketing and personal branding that I have created years ago still play dividends today for me in helping me find job opportunities, attracting new clients and more.

In terms of publishing, I would like to help you avoid a very big mistake many creators make when getting started. That’s ignoring self-promotion. They create very good content but they don’t promote it. I believe you need a minimum of 3:1 ratio for promotion: content creation.

Be engaging on social media, post there, create connections, share your work. If you don’t share your work people won’t know about it. I hope this is a resource to help you get started in publishing your first few posts on social media, and good luck in your digital marketing journey.

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