As I’ve been doing social media marketing for quite some time, people often ask me, how do I become more influential on social media? How do I monetize my influence? How do I monetize social media?

But the thing is, should you really make social media platforms your business?

In today’s episode, I share with you the difference between running a business and leveraging social media platforms to promote your business. And what’s more valuable than monetizing your social media presence.

Key Highlights

[1:16] Monetizing Social Media

[1:38] My Social Media Marketing Journey

[5:31] The Importance of Having a Product When Monetizing Social Media Influence

When monetizing social media, you need to understand the difference between running a business and leveraging platforms. You need to have a product or business first, then use social media platforms to promote them, not making these platforms your business.

[07:08] Determining Your Content Medium 

[08:38] What Platform Should I Create Based on My Content Medium?

[10:40] Creating a Platform While Leveraging it to Build Relationships

How can you create a platform and use your influence to build relationships with your potential customers and network?

[12:57] Which Social Media Platform Should I Spend More Time On? 

[14:06] The New Digital First LinkedIn Group

[15:39] Content Creation Being a Team Effort 

[18:05] Understand Social Media

[18:41] Building Relationships With Products and Services

Where and how can I get a return of investment from the relationship I have built?

Notable Quotes

• You need to understand the difference between business and platform. Social media is not a business.
• What I mean by platform is, if you really want to have impact in social media, you can't be everywhere at once, you got to pick your battles. 
• It's about business. And it's why I build a team outsourcing many tasks. It's why I talked about content creation being a team effort. Because you should not be working in your business, you should be working on your business.
• Build a very nimble team of hiring experts around the world that are really good at what they're good at. You can create some scale, and build a platform, which allows you to focus on your business. And that is how you leverage all this for your business. 
• Don't build social media influence, build business.  Build influence, to build your business. 
• But that to me, and the money you can make from being able to sell more products and services, has way more value than you trying to monetize your own presence.

Links Mentioned

• Digital First LinkedIn Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2321400/

Learn More:

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• Buy Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth: https://nealschaffer.com/maximizinglinkedinamazon
• Join My Digital First Mastermind: https://nealschaffer.com/membership/
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• Download My Free Ebooks Here: https://nealschaffer.com/books/
• Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/nealschaffer
• All My Podcast Show Notes: https://podcast.nealschaffer.com