10 Ways Female Entrepreneurs Can Take Charge With Social Media

Female entrepreneurs are taking the world of e-commerce by storm in 2020. While women are building and growing their businesses, they often neglect to establish their online presence or fall short of reaching its potential, specifically on social media.

The social sphere is ripe with opportunities for networking and engagement for female business owners.

Women are more active when commenting, liking or contributing to online forums such as Facebook Groups. When it comes to women promoting their businesses online, they tend to take a different approach and leverage themselves as the face of the company to connect with their customers. 

I was honored to speak alongside such incredible women at Branded by Women, an event for women leading the charge for the future of female founded and run businesses. Each of the women inspire me for different reasons and motive me to strive for more out of life. In life, you can have it all – maybe just not all at once. These female entrepreneurs exemplify that in all aspects of business.

My presentation, “10 Social Media Tactics for Female Entrepreneurs” focused on everything from finding your niche and scoping out the competition to embracing your inner celebrity and how to leverage your failures to start a conversation.

Let’s look at 10 tactics female entrepreneurs can implement within their social media strategy to take their presence and engagement to the next level. 

10. Embrace Your Inner Celebrity

When you make a move to start branding yourself or your business on social media, first you want to think like a celebrity. What I mean by that is giving yourself an introspective look at what you’re all about and how you want to present yourself on social media.

Your voice, tone, aesthetic, values, and how you plan to maintain your schedule. From my experience working in advertising, a trick we would use when deciding voice and tone for top brands was to look to celebrities with distinct personalities that align with your brand characteristics.

For example, if you want to evoke a light-hearted, comedic tone on social media – look to comedians like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, or Tiffany Haddish.

Looking for a charitable and philanthropic approach? Oprah, Angelina Jolie, or even Lady Gaga could be a perfect match.

Got a sports brand? Serena Williams or Megan Rapinoe can serve as your inspiration. 

9. Find Your Niche

Now that you have an idea of how you want to portray yourself on social media, you have to hone-in on your niche. Start by evaluating your skills and passions, then ask yourself, “is there a market for my niche?”

The best way to discover if there is or not is to scope out the competition. Do a social media audit on the platforms you plan to post on. Evaluate accounts and hashtags that fall under your category.

See what other brands are doing, how they’re doing it, and how you can be better!

Once you’ve done the research, start testing the waters with your content, copy, and mediums (photos, videos, gifs, etc.).

8. Experiences are Everything

A great way to connect with your audience, customers and peers on social media is to share your experiences. You can talk about both your personal and professional experience and how they’ve shaped your journey in entrepreneurship.

Some topics to start with could be:

• What motivated you to start your own business?
• Struggles and wins with your 9-5 job
• Who inspired you to go above and beyond?

Sharing these experiences will help you bolster your relationships and relatability with those in your space.

7. Failures are Fabulous

Since we’re on the topic of relatability, another way entrepreneurs relate to one another is by embracing and sharing their failures.

Don’t shy away from your downfalls. Instead, leverage them.

While people enjoy hearing about what you did right, they also want to know what you did wrong. You can start a blog, vlog, or content stream on your social channels that enable you to discuss your past failures, strategy at the time, and what you would change now.

Just because you failed in the past, doesn’t mean you won’t again – and that’s okay! If you fail in the present or future, own up to it. Your audience will respect you for it.

6. Thrive in the Day-to-Day

You may have heard me talk about the three E’s on the Serious Sellers Podcast – Educate, Engage and Excite your audience, this time I gave the three R’s: Relatability, Relevance and Routine. 

• Relatability: When it comes to social media marketing and branding yourself or your business, relatability is key! Social media is all about people relating to one another through experiences, interests, and shared thoughts – when creating content keep that in mind. 

• Relevance: You also want to be relevant. Social media is quick! Content that might be “in” one day is “out” the next. Stay on top of trends, pop culture, news, and mediums that are popular in the social sphere. 

• Routine: To some, the word “routine” can sound dull, but with social media a routine can be a lifesource for your audience. Create content that your audience will come to expect from you (and that they will come back for). When planning your content, find out what’s feasible for your schedule and what you can maintain so that you can become part of your audience’s routine. 

5. Take Your Audience on a Journey

Think of your audience as your virtual companion – you want to take them along for the ride. This is where the 3 E’s comes into play; Educate, Engage and Excite.

• Educate: Educate your audience on what you and your brand are all about this should include your mission statement, core values, initiatives, and goals. 

• Engage: Engage with your audience and customers through your content streams. If you’re comfortable on camera, Facebook and Instagram LIVE Chats are one of the most effective ways to to engage there you can have a real-time conversation and answer any questions they may have. If going LIVE isn’t your thing, you can interact with you audiences through other mediums, like Instagram Stories. Utilize Instagram Story’s in-app features to increase engagement; A/B and polling feature, slider bar, multiple choice and question box are all great ways to talk with your audience and get their feedback. 

• Excite: With all the strategies, tips, and hacks people talk about with social media, oftentimes people forget one of the most fundamental aspects of social media: FUN! Entertaining your audience is key. The possibilities to achieving this aspect are endless, but can be done through thoughtful conversation topics, influencer content, attention-grabbing photos, videos, boomerangs, gifs, etc. Regardless of your category, if your content is boring, people will not want to engage or follow your channels.  

4. Transform and Evolve

The world of social media is ever-changing and evolving just like the e-commerce industry. You have to be willing and able to adapt not your content, but yourself to the fast-pace changes.

Similar to how expert sellers will tell you not to get too attached to your product, the same can be said for your content. Be ready to change your strategy at a moment’s notice based on trends and the social sphere. In recent months with the COVID-19 quarantine, TikTok has seen a huge spike in popularity. On the other hand, sensitivity surrounding the climate of the world has also been taken into account. 

3. You Better (Net)Work

One of my favorite aspects of working in an industry driven by entrepreneurship is networking. Attending social functions and events was the first step to networking with industry leaders and peers. Since quarantine, I’ve done more networking on social media than ever before. If you find your travel budget to be sparse, don’t dismiss the importance of networking on our social channels.

There’s never been a better time than now to “slide into the DMs.” 

2. Learn What Works (and What Doesn’t)

Be a chameleon – you have to learn what works best for your brand and ditch what doesn’t.

If you had what you thought was a genius content idea and it’s not bringing you the results you want, you can start by tweaking your approach, posting at different times and days, or changing the platforms you post on.

But if you find yourself putting more time into content that isn’t giving you the return you want – get rid of it! When deciding what content to focus on, utilize your channels insights, analyze the content and the analytics, and don’t be afraid to do some A/B testing with your copy, content, and platforms – this could help salvage your content.  

1. Be You

To some it may sound simple or easy, but never lose what makes you, YOU! Remaining authentic to what your audience knows you for will increase brand loyalty among your followers and eventually develop them into brand advocates and ambassadors. While changing and evolving, it’s important to hold true to those key values that enabled you to stand out from the crowd. 

Each of the tactics mentioned above have been developed and curated from my work in film, television, and advertising. They continue to be a crucial part of my social strategy personally and professionally, which is why I am so excited to share them with you. 

Social Media is subjective and is a different experience for everyone. This is precisely what makes it such a unique (and challenging) animal in the business world. Take the above tips and make them your own to achieve your #BrandGoals and help your business shine in the larger social sphere.