Building a Consistent Social Media Presence

[00:00:00] Paula: Hello everyone, and welcome to chatting with the experts TV show, a show in which I showcase women from Africa and the Caribbean who either live abroad or continue to live in Africa and the Caribbean. Every week, these remarkable women come on my show. And share, educate, and empower women globally. And so today is no exception. My guest today is Turiya Hodge. And we are going to be talking about the art of showing up and building a consistent social media presence. But before I bring her on, I want to tell you all about her. I’ll read her bio. Turiya is a female social media strategist who is passionate about helping coaches, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders maintain an authentic presence on social media platforms.
[00:01:37] Paula: As a social media strategist, she emphasizes the importance of serving people online through messages, stories, and connecting conversation. She firmly upholds the value of knowing the audience, and she believes in asking the audience to serve and show up consistently for their tribe.
[00:02:07] Paula: Welcome to chatting with the experts, Turiya.
[00:02:14] Turiya: Hi Paula, how are you?
[00:02:17] Paula: I am great. Thank you for showing up today for me.
[00:02:21] Turiya: Oh wow, thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to sit down with you and have this conversation. I love what you’re doing with your platform chatting with the experts.
[00:02:32] Paula: Yeah, it’s amazing. I meet some incredible women. Of course, you’re one of those. And what I like most is that these women are so passionate about what they do that they’re willing to share it. They’re willing to, empower other women globally. And so that’s one of the reasons when, 2024, I was like, I need someone to talk about social media. We hear so much about it. We are all involved in it. Many years ago it was for the young people. Now all of us are involved. And so I thought who better than you. So thanks for showing up today.
[00:03:07] Turiya: Oh, you’re welcome. And like you said, it’s social media is one of those things. I remember back in the day, people questioned whether it was going to be a fad or something that’s gonna last. And it has proven to stand the test of time and it has evolved and is going to continue to keep evolving. So for us as female entrepreneurs, we just have to try our best, to keep up with all of the times, all the trends and make social media work for us and our brands.
[00:03:35] Paula: Absolutely. So I know that. One of the things that you wanted to talk on is the impact on social media and brand growth.
[00:03:48] Turiya: Yeah. It’s very interesting because I just mentioned with social media and social media being this thing back in the day when it first came out, people weren’t sure really what social media was going to turn into. And one of the things, for me personally, when I first got onto social media and I started to look at it from a business perspective, I was all in from the beginning, because one of the things that I realized is that social media gives everyone the opportunity to participate fully. So you could be a big business and you could have millions of dollars set aside for your branding and your marketing, or you could be a new entrepreneur in the space and you’re just getting started. And social media levels the playing field for everyone. So it gives us all the opportunity to do what I call show up and shine, which is actually show up and get our authentic message out into the marketplace so we could start to attract our divine people. And so one of the things that I always tell all of my clients, I tell people in my community are super achievers. One of the things that really fuels social media is consistency. Okay, and you want to really stop and think about being consistent on social media, but before we get into consistency, I want to take a minute to define consistency, Paula, for our audience today, because I think there’s a lot of misconception around what consistency is.
[00:05:28] Paula: Yes.
[00:05:28] Turiya: So I came into social media when people would give you all of these rules and it’s you have to be on social media all day long in order to make social media work. People will tell you in order to make Facebook work, you have to post three to five times a day on Facebook. You have to post seven to nine times a day on Twitter, LinkedIn, it was one to three times a day. YouTube, three times a week on YouTube. And I started to think about it and I was just like, Oh my goodness. If that’s all I’m doing, then I have absolutely no time to do other things in my business. And so I get it. I get that there are entrepreneurs out there who don’t desire to be on social media in that like sucking up that much of their time.
[00:06:24] Turiya: So one of the things that I got really present to and we’re going to talk a little bit about strategies because I understand that’s what you do on your show. You always be able to leave your audience with things that they could implement right away.
[00:06:38] Paula: So what I can implement it too. It’s not just the audience. I’m learning from my guests.
[00:06:43] Turiya: So one of the things that, I encourage everyone to think about when it comes to consistency is setting the expectation for your audience. So what do you mean by that, when you say set the expectation for your audience? So if you show up on social media three times a day say you’re using Facebook and you’re on Facebook and you set a pattern of posting content three times a day, then your audience is going to come to expect that consistency from you. And believe it or not. They’re going to be looking, so it has happened to me where you, Oh, you didn’t post today.
[00:07:22] Turiya: I’m just like, that’s a lot of pressure. So set your expectation for your audience. And so be realistic about it. If you can show up once a day, set that expectation. If you could show up once a week, set that expectation for your audience. But it’s important for us to really be realistic. What can we do? So if you could do, once a week, you could do twice a week, you could do five days a week, whatever that is for you, you want to make sure that you are consistent with it. Because one of the things that I see happening all the time is that people will get excited and I see this with new platforms will get excited, they’ll join new platforms, and they don’t really stop to think about what it takes to power a new platform, and they might not have the resources. They might not have the skills. They might not have the time to be on this new platform in a consistent manner. And therefore, they stop showing up.
[00:08:26] Turiya: Now, I want to talk about the impact that you have on your audience when you just stop showing up.
[00:08:34] Paula: That’s important because, as you said, you’re trying, when as a solopreneur, you’re trying to be consistent, you’re trying to dot every I and cross every T. And then the overwhelm starts.
[00:08:48] Turiya: Yeah.
[00:08:49] Paula: So you’re telling me now or telling us now the impact we have when we don’t show up because we’re so overwhelmed is important. So let me hear that.
[00:09:00] Turiya: Yeah. So cause once again, the first thing about social media and it’s all about marketing. So this is the one thing that I want our audience to take away from us today. Social media is marketing. It’s about the conversations that you have in the marketplace. And most importantly, it’s about building, and trust factor. So I know our audience have probably heard this before, but people actually want to do business with those that they know and trust. And social media is by far the easiest way to get in conversations with your audience and give your audience the opportunity to know and trust you, number one, and know and trust your brand. So that’s the very first thing.
[00:09:42] Paula: Okay.
[00:09:42] Turiya: And then the second thing that I want to share in social media is actually a long game. That’s another thing that I try to encourage people to think about with social media. It’s not that thing where you get onto social media and immediately you expect to see some of the results because people always want to know, how can I make money off of social media? I think that’s the big question. But I’m here to shift it and like social media is not your selling tool. It’s actually your marketing tool and this is the place where you have conversations in the marketplace and the purpose of you having the conversations in the marketplace is to attract your divine people to your brand. So those are the 2 things that I would really like people to take away from our conversation today about the impact of having a consistent presence on social media.
[00:10:41] Paula: Okay, so the impact of having a social media presence. It’s very important. But then it gets to the point where you have to know how often, not how often, because you’ve told us how often, but are there specific days should I create a calendar, when I’m posting weekly, so at least the consistency for my audience also lines up with consistency for me.
[00:11:07] Paula: So I know Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’m going to post something on Monday, Wednesday, I post Friday, I put something else.
[00:11:15] Turiya: Yeah I had to learn that the hard way, so I’m going to be totally honest and totally be transparent. So I remember when I first started in this space, I would do this thing that I like to now call inspirational social media. And so for you or for audience if they don’t know what inspirational social media is. It’s when you get inspired to post something. So something drops in your spirit, something lays on your heart and you go, Oh my goodness, this is really good. Let me flip open my phone. Let me go to the computer and let me make a post about it on social media, and you go ahead. You make that post. You feel good. People are engaging. Crowd goes wild and that’s great. There’s nothing wrong with having inspirational posts on social media, but the question becomes what happens. On the days when you don’t feel inspired. And so I hope I’m not the only one.
[00:12:17] Turiya: I have those days, Paula, I have to be honest where I don’t even have a thought that comes to mind versus, putting it together in such a way that my audience will engage within all that stuff. And so one of the things that I had to learn how to do is that I had to learn how to plan to be consistent on social media.
[00:12:40] Turiya: So that’s one of the things that, I share. You have to plan to be consistent because that’s what it is. If you’re not planning to be consistent, then you are gonna not make it in a consistent world. So one of the strategies that I’m going to give today is to share with our audience, start to think about your content pillars. Your buckets.
[00:13:02] Paula: Okay.
[00:13:03] Turiya: Okay. So as an entrepreneur, a business owner, especially for coaches out there, coaches and consultants, we usually have four to six categories or topics that we talk about. And I like to call those our content buckets. And so if you sit down and you take a look at your content pillars your buckets, then they kind of serve as a guardrail for you to create content. Now this does a couple things for you. So number one, It will keep you from having to guess what you’re going to share on social media because you already know when you create content, you’re going to create content in these buckets, you’re going to create content that’s under these pillars. And then two, it keeps you from going into your head about, am I sharing too much?
[00:14:02] Turiya: Because I know that’s another big question that people have when it comes to social media. What exactly, what do I share on social media? I don’t want to get too personal on social media. And so having your buckets, or I say your buckets serve as your guardrail. So you know that when you take a look at planning your content, you’re going to create content in either, one of these four to six categories.
[00:14:29] Turiya: And if you take a look at how I do it, I just say, I look at my calendar for the year. And if I have four content, actually, I have five. And so I have five content pillars. And I know that, this month I’m going to spend a whole month in this one content pillar. I’m going to spend the next month in this content pillar. And so that gives me the opportunity to plan out my whole year. So I don’t go into granularly like exactly what the posts are. But I know each month I know what I’m going to talk about.
[00:15:05] Paula: Alright, so I’ll stop you there. So in the pillars you put buckets.
[00:15:10] Turiya: Well, your pillars are your buckets. So it’s either your pillars or your buckets. Yes.
[00:15:14] Paula: Okay. And in those buckets, you put all, every individual, let’s say bucket one, you may be talking about consistency, bucket two, you may be talking about a calendar, bucket three, you may be talking about, how to break up what you just, your calendar, your content into, bits that, are probably relevant to seasons. Something like that?
[00:15:34] Turiya: Yeah, so I’ll share with you what my content pillars are. So I talk about shine all the time. So I always say my mission is to help entrepreneurs show up and shine online. And so when I take a look at shine stands for five specific things is showing up. And showing up consistently. It’s honing in, getting clear on your message, getting clear in your audience. It’s about creating impact and influence in the marketplace, nurturing and building relationships and overall creating a brand experience. And so I take a look at shine. Those are my content pillars. And so as I plan my calendar for the year, I know one month I’m going to talk specifically about showing up. So we are in January and we are kicking it off with showing up. So the whole month of January, I’m going to have these beautiful conversations about what it takes to show up. And then we’re going to move on to honing in, getting clear on the message, getting clear in our audience, et cetera, so forth.
[00:16:35] Turiya: What I’ve found when I’ve learned to plan my content this way, Paula, it took a lot of stress off of me because I knew or I know where I have to focus my energy on the content that I’m creating.
[00:16:55] Paula: Okay. Alright. Shine, showing up, going in, impact, and as well.
[00:17:04] Turiya: And it’s nurture. So now building relationships. And then E is creating an experience.
[00:17:11] Paula: Creating an experience. Okay! Absolutely love that. Okay. I think that’s doable. I can employ that in my own social media sharing. Okay. Alright.
[00:17:24] Turiya: And I know I just have to tag this on here because I know some people say, oh, my gosh, to be that’s still a lot of overwhelm because if I’m going to establish a social media presence, and I’m going to, commit to showing up every day on social media. That’s still a lot of work. You mean on Monday, I have to go ahead and create content, for showing up Tuesday and I have to do that for a whole 30 days. So that’s a lot of mental lifting. So one of the things, and I know you could appreciate this because I see you implementing this strategy in your business as well.
[00:18:04] Turiya: So one of the things that I share, and this is all about strategies, is Give yourself some ease and grace. I’m all about, not being overwhelmed with social media. So start to think in terms of creating what I call mega content. So can you commit to creating, one solid piece of content every week? And that’s what I share, with my clients. I share that with my tribe, commit to producing one solid piece of content every week, whether you do that in the form that you’re doing now with your chatting with the experts. I look at chatting with the experts as mega content, because I know for every episode, these episodes can be broken down into short little clips.
[00:18:51] Turiya: You could turn it into an article. It could be. You could pull quotes out of here. So you see the value. So you could get everything that you need to fuel your social media from committing to producing one mega piece of content. Now, I had the opportunity and I have to just use this example because I think it was so beautiful and it’s so relevant for our time. Had the opportunity to see the Kat Williams interview. Now with Shannon Sharpe. Now, for those of our audience out there who had the opportunity to watch the interview, I probably saw some different things and everybody didn’t matter to me what Kat Williams was talking about and all of that stuff.
[00:19:39] Turiya: What I saw behind of it was the excellent marketing. And so I said what I saw was one mega piece of content, meaning an interview for two hours and 46 minutes. And from that interview, they ended up with 35 clips from that interview that is circulating throughout the internet, building an audience and attracting people to the platform to this date. I think it was the third highest watched in views, interview ever put on YouTube or aired on YouTube and it’s just in its first week. So absolutely.
[00:20:22] Paula: That’s what I’m hearing from you.
[00:20:24] Turiya: Huh?
[00:20:25] Paula: I’m hearing from it and we can do the same.
[00:20:28] Turiya: We can and we can do it too. That’s what I want everyone to get away with it. So just imagine you invest an hour of your time and you produce a really solid, great piece of content. And you could use that solid piece of content to now fuel your social media. So instead of having to create from scratch, three pieces of content a day, for each social media platform, you could source that one piece of content for all the content that you need for your social media. Repurpose. That is the name of the game.
[00:21:07] Paula: The name of the game. Yeah. And, it’s with people these days who have, a shorter listeners span, attention span, would you say the shorter it is the better? Oh it has to be short and relevant, but.
[00:21:22] Turiya: Yeah. So it’s really interesting because once again, I think that’s a user perspective as we, as the brand owners we need to pay attention to. So even though I’m sitting here and I’m telling you to create that one mega piece of content. The reality is like people really do have short attention spans. Okay. But here’s what I know. I know when you have your brand ambassadors, your right fit clients, they will sit and they would watch an entire interview. They would watch an entire video because people are invested in brands on different levels and for the person who maybe are not familiar with your brand or they’re just getting to know you or they have a specific problem or whatever, their attention span might be a little bit shorter or it might just be when people are interacting on social media.
[00:22:16] Turiya: So it’s important for us to have both. So that’s what I mean by you could start by creating that mega piece of content and then having that content repurpose down into shorter video clips. You could turn it into memes. You could turn it into quotes,. You could turn it into a blog article. You could do all that. So you’re able to touch your audience members where they are. And this is so important. And I just wanted to share this, Paula, because I think there’s a big misconception in the marketplace about how to actually do things. And so I’m the type of person, like I gotta go try it, right? And so I have looked at both ways, creating the short form content, like the shorter videos versus producing the longer video.
[00:23:10] Turiya: I’m just using video as an example. And I’m going to tell you, you spend probably more time trying to create shorter video clips or shorter videos than you spend in preparation to doing a larger video and then having that video repurpose, right? So it’s all about the strategy and how you implement the strategy.
[00:23:32] Paula: Wow. That’s a great tip. That’s a great tip in the sense that, if it’s longer, then you can get more clips than if you’re deliberately doing short clips. That’s what I’m hearing from you.
[00:23:44] Turiya: Yes, exactly.
[00:23:46] Paula: Another question I have heard that I want to bring over to you is so how do you create authentic engagement with your audience?
[00:23:55] Turiya: Yeah. And so that’s another great question because one of the things I heard back in a day coming on with social media and it’s relevant in the age of automation. So we have a lot of tools out there in the marketplace that would allow us to put things on automation and free up our time. But 1 of the things that I’ve learned to be effective on social media isn’t a set it and forget it. And what do I mean by set it and forget it? You could create your content. You could have your videos repurpose into shorter video clips. You could create, other forms of content, your blog, whatever. And you could set those things on automation. So you could have schedulers that go out and post for you. So it’s very easy to put content out there in the marketplace. It has become relatively easy, but oftentimes I see people making the mistake of setting it and forgetting about it. So even though you’re using an automation tool, it doesn’t mean that you turn your back on social media or your social media platforms, because once again, social media is all about what it’s all about the conversation. And it’s all about building that know and trust factor. What I’d like to say is you set it and then you make time to engage with it. And then this is so important for busy entrepreneurs, just like you would set time on your calendar to do everything else that you deem important in your business.
[00:25:30] Turiya: You have to set aside the time for your social media. And so it doesn’t mean that you have to set aside hours, on end every day for social media. It could just be 15 minutes a day. It could be 30 minutes. Okay, so that’s my maximum time is 30 minutes. And so I know if I am giving myself 30 minutes to go in and check my social media platforms and I’m talking, specifically for business. Okay. Then I know that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to check to see who’s liking my content. I’m going to check to see if there are any replies and if there are replies, I’m going to respond to them. If there are people out there sharing my content, I’m going to thank them for sharing my content.
[00:26:15] Turiya: People are sending us inbox messages, DMS, all of that stuff. These are the things that move the needle in our business. So remember when I said social media. It’s not a selling tool. It doesn’t mean that the environment for sales isn’t created on social media. You just have to know how to have strategies that will allow you to take advantage of that. Number one, make time in your calendar. And you, once again, you have the ability to set aside and know what that looks like. for you. So if you could give yourself a half an hour a day, then you give yourself a half an hour a day. And so it might be not every day. It might be three times a week or twice a week. Just don’t let your content and your social media platforms go dormant because you aren’t engaging with your audience.
[00:27:05] Turiya: Okay, and then the second thing I want to add to that when it comes to being authentic and building authentic engagement in social media is have a strategy that you would take your conversations offline. And so 1 of the things that I love about how we met and how you work is always, after you met someone, they’ve engaged with your content. You’ve had an introduction on social media. Don’t be afraid to take that conversation offline to whether you’re having a phone call or you’re going to meet up in person. We were just talking about that before we started the interview. How are we going to get together if it’s possible? Because once again, that’s what it’s all about. It’s about building the relationships and nurturing those relationships.
[00:27:54] Paula: I liked how you always encouraged that. You don’t just say, but you carry it out because you made the effort to meet with me because we both are in Maryland and it made a difference. It solidified the friendship, the relationship, so much so that, every time I see you, I remember how we met in person.
[00:28:11] Turiya: Yes.
[00:28:12] Paula: What you’re saying really builds up authenticity, as long as, of course, the people that you’re engaging with are upright citizens. We wouldn’t encourage otherwise, but yes, I like that. As a business person, making that time to go on to the social media platforms, respond to the comments, the likes, thank people for sharing, because that does something to us as human beings. Whether it’s virtual, we don’t know each other, we’ve never met, but it’s still we do like to do business with people who we like and who we trust. And
[00:28:47] Turiya: Yeah that’s what it’s all about, because people always want to be in community.
[00:28:51] Paula: Yeah.
[00:28:51] Turiya: And so one of the things that I encourage, especially for our coaches and consultants out there is how can you build a community around your brand? And if you take a look at it, most brands, who are out there, who are successful. Whether they’re what we call mega brands or influencers, mega influencers, mid level influencers, one of the things that they understand is that Marketing is a conversation, and it’s all about who, we’re speaking to. And we want to attract like-minded individuals, because as human beings, we always want to be in community, and so who are our people, and social media gives us the opportunity to expand that.
[00:29:35] Turiya: So without social media, we’re just limited to our neck of the woods. With social media, we could expand that community globally. Okay. And so when you look at it that way, there’s no limitation as to what you can do with your business, what you could do, how your products and how your services can serve others. And so that’s the way I look at social media. And that’s the thing that got me excited about social media in the first place.
[00:30:05] Paula: I love it. So talking about people, how can people find you if they want to engage more with you?
[00:30:13] Turiya: Oh yes. So people can first of all, find me in our community on Facebook. And so you can go to our super achievers network. So if you go to Facebook and you type in storytelling for super achievers, that’s the name of the group, Storytelling for Super Achievers, just knock on the door and I would let you in. On all platforms, the business page is Turiya Hodge. On Instagram, it is Turiya Hodge, and on LinkedIn it’s Turiya Hodge. So it is my name. I could be found on those three platforms. Facebook, Instagram, and also LinkedIn.
[00:30:49] Paula: I love it. And you kept, I love your branding.Turiya Hodge is the brand. So LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram.
[00:30:58] Turiya: Yes.
[00:30:58] Paula: You’ll just search for Turiya Hodge. Turiya
[00:31:01] Turiya: Hodge. Yes.
[00:31:02] Paula: Yeah. So folks, that was Turiya Hodge. I thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of Chatting with the Experts. And if you would like to get in touch with me, you can contact me on my website, which is chattingwiththeexperts.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn, just search for Paula Okonneh or if you’d like to talk with me or engage with me on Instagram, my handle there is at chat_experts_podcast. I love everything I do in connecting with people. And so Turiya, thank you again for being again.
[00:31:48] Turiya: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
[00:31:52] Paula: Absolutely.
[00:31:59]