Obsessed With Social Media? Here’s How To Leverage On That

How many hours do you spend on social media daily? As an addict, how many hours do you spend? How about you cash in while having fun on social media. Social media has become a really lucrative business that the average Nigerian is very unaware of but if you play your card right and input the required effort, you’re sure smiling to the bank with little or no stress.

People who have the knowledge on how lucrative social media often think you must amount to hundreds of thousand followers before you begin to cash in but that’s why I’m here to save the day; I daresay even with less than a hundred thousand followers, you can as well as smile to the bank. If you fancy turning your social media obsession into a side-hustle… This post is definitely for you.

Do you need plenty followers to cash in on social media?  Oh well, It goes both ways i.e. Yes & No

Yes – Because at least, you need a decent and convincing amount of followership and activities on your page before anyone considers paying you.

 No – Because brands are now about quality over quantity; this means that they would rather pay a person with smaller audience of engaged followers. Gone are the times when they go after just celebrities to advertise their products. They now deliberately look for ordinary people like you and I to influence consumer’s buying behaviour.

For instance, having a page that indulges a particular set of persons like students, even with a relatively small audience; you’ve got a selling point and could be a brand influencer in that regard.

Like we know, the world is changing and getting digitized so this could be a full time job for some people, giving them the avenue to be self-employed.

There are thousands of people already aware of social media being a digital gold mine and if you want to join the moving train, there’ll be a need for you to be different. It doesn’t mean you’d do something unreasonable but it does mean you have to find a niche or specialty, something you/your page would be known for on a first visit.

Probe yourself on that thing you’re passionate about or have an amount of knowledge on. You’ll be spending so much time developing that interest of yours so be sure it’s something you really enjoy. When you get the idea, you can narrow it down to a specific angle that either hasn’t been done before or is rare but don’t forget that you must make it entertaining and indulging.

Don’t forget that it has to be a niche that’ll spark conversation and content ideas for a really long time. Be sure of tracking your competitors to see what they’re doing. You could also do little researches to ensure that it’s an area where people are willing to spend money on; are there products or services available for people to buy?

There are little or more things you can do in boosting your social media following. You don’t just ‘slay’ or put out that well-thought out content and expect thousands of followers to fall from heaven. In whatever setting,  formal or informal, the role of promotion shouldn’t be overlooked, if you actually want to monetize your social media usage.

–  You have to be consistent. Be sure you’re doing whatever it is on a daily basis, at least the period you’re just beginning because if you post irregularly, people would easily forget and move on from your page.

–   Interact with people especially within your field. People often forget the ‘social’ part of social media. Reach out to people in your field, like their posts and comment if possible share too. They’ll most likely take note and may return the favour some time.

–   Using hashtags may be pretty uncool on some posts but I daresay its one of the important ways to gain followers. Hashtag is a way of reaching out other people in your niche with the right keywords of course. You can either create yours or use hashtagify.me to find the most popular hashtags to use relating to your content.

–   Always use analytics to know how well each of your posts are doing. Also switch your page to Business page for those using Instagram. It helps to keep better record of the activities on your page.

–   Do advertise your content. There’s no harm in doing some paid advertise to give yourself a boost. Every business  needs advertisement and in this case, your business is your page and content, even if all you do is be fashionable on your page. Yes, its your business

–   You must have quality and relatable content. You must be careful in selecting contents or niche because some content may not work for your own cyberspace. As a Nigerian in the Nigerian cybersphere, there are some content that may not easily resonate with Nigerians and that may tarry the growth of your social media account status.

The cyberspace is broadening by the day and its my candid advice to anyone who can spend hours online either stalking celebrities or trolling instead of bettering your wellbeing with what you do effortlessly. A set of people are influencers on Twitter, they’re paid to advertise for big brands and attend high-profile events. A lot of them attained that height by being funny, some by giving sarcastic replies, some for their witty sentiments on certain issues making the rounds. The internet is large enough and can accommodate almost everyone as there’s a market for you out there. You can’t claim to be jobless and a victim of bad governance when you spend virtually 24 hours online either trolling or stalking celebrities.

Many of us read The Shade Room but don’t know how it came about. The Shade Room is owned by Nigerian-born Angelica Nwandu who took her obsession for celebrities up a notch by writing about them and uploading on her page while she was jobless and in debt in just 2014.

Whatever your niche is… it must not be celebrity-oriented, whatever field it is you have interest in, you can tailor and incorporate it to fit the social media space. Best believe  there’s a market out there for you