Tag Archives: becoming a social media expert

Using Social Media to Increase Your Value

By Amanda Smyth Connorwinecomputer

Are you offering your clients a full suite of services, or are you waiting for them to hand you the assignment?

Don’t miss an opportunity for an upsell!

For every assignment that you undertake, whether it be writing copy, or creating blog strategies, or working on an SEO and linking plan, you should always be thinking of ways to upsell yourself and your services, and the number one upsell to consider is “how can I tie this project into social media?”

A well thought out social media strategy is money in the bank, kids. And it is the first thing you should address with your client:

“What is your social media presence and how can we use it as leverage to make this project more successful?”

For any blogs you write, you should be cross-promoting them on your client’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages.

For any SEO strategy you undertake, it can only help to cross-link through social media channels in order to direct eyeballs to your projects.

For any content development, you should be engaging readers on social media to entice them to WANT to learn more about your client’s project.

If content is king, social media is its free-wheelin’ cousin who can always be counted on to bring a respectable bottle of wine to any family holiday.*

Translation: Content is the most important thing, but social media supports your goals.

And don’t be afraid to charge for these social media services. You will spend the time crafting professional status updates, engaging influencers on Twitter and monitoring conversation across all channels. This takes time and skill, and these skills equate to billable hours.

Never miss an opportunity to offer another layer of value to your suite of services.

*Social media should not be counted on to bring wine to any family event.

**I would strongly recommend that you not use social media after drinking any amount of wine.

***The author of this post is not actually drunk right now, despite her poor sentence structure.

Do you have questions about social media or how to set social media pricing? I’m always happy to answer questions (via the comments field.)

Amanda Smyth Connor is a social media manager for a major publishing company and has managed online communities and content development for many start-up and Fortune 500 companies.  She has been a professional editor for more years than she can remember.