This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's the best way for a student to serve local small businesses with social media? This is definitely a need. You know, your local small business, I'm sure that they're on social media, but do they do a good job at it? And might there be somebody who could do a better job? Because that small business owner is likely pretty busy.
And, you know, if they've got social media skills, then that's great, but they're also trying to keep up with a thousand different things. So perhaps an aspiring side hustler who happens to be a student could come along and help out, help out and get paid for themselves, of course, and then not just with one business, but then go on to turn this into a business of their own. In this episode, we're gonna hear from Ivy. She is a marketing student from the Boston area. How can she, in fact, go from idea to income?
She's got her finger on the pulse of the latest trends, which, you know, is good, but actually I don't think you need to always be on trend for local social media. Mostly you just want to get the word out or share messages about what you're offering, connect with people. You don't always have to be super trendy, but let's leave that aside. Where should she start? What is the best way?
Her question and my answer coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hi there. I'm Ivy, a college student studying marketing in Boston, Massachusetts. As a digital native, I have a solid understanding of social media platforms and want to start working as a social media manager for local small businesses. I know that many small business owners struggle with creating content, engaging with their audience and staying up to date with the latest trends.
I want to offer my services to help them grow their online presence and reach their goals. However, I'm not sure how to price my services, create attractive packages and find my first clients. What should I do to launch my social media management side hustle and secure my first contracts? [Music]
Hey Ivy, sounds like you've got the skills and the passion, two good things. Let's see if we can give you a roadmap to launch this social media management side hustle.
First of all, define your niche and target market. Now, of course we're talking about small business owners, but the more we can narrow that down, the better. I would focus on industries that you are experienced in or that you have contacts in, just to kind of keep it simple. And then from there, identify the specific pain points and goals of your ideal clients. Are they trying to have more customers come in?
Are they trying to build more general awareness? Are they trying to create more sales? They probably want all of those things, but if you can think about how social media will work specifically for each of those categories, or at least for one of them, that will help you to develop your service offering, which is the next step. Create packages that address your target market's needs, content creation, community management, maybe ad campaigns, and then set up these packages. Say, okay, I've got this package that is going to do X number of posts.
I'm going to respond to comments. I'm also going to create engagement perhaps, maybe some kind of contest or something. And here is how much it costs. Like here are the prices for that. So research industry rates, consider your experience level.
Don't be afraid to offer an introductory rate to get going, but also don't be afraid to charge for your services because you're going to offer something that is valuable. From there, you want to start pitching. Attend local business events. You can just walk in and pitch. You can send an email or an Instagram direct message or some other contact to the owner.
Not everything's going to work out, but if you send 10 of them, probably a couple of them at least will get back to you. If you send 20 or 30, maybe one of those will become a client. You could offer a trial run to see how it goes. Do a few posts for them. You know, these things take time and effort, but the good thing about this kind of business is every small business needs something like this.
If they're not doing their own social media, they need help with it, or maybe they are doing it and they still need help with it. It is a customer centric business. The better job you do, the better relationships you'll build, the more relationships you'll build, and you can kind of take it wherever you want. You know, it may become like a bigger business. It may just be something to pay the bills while you are in school, but there's definitely lots of options there.
It's kind of like reselling. Reselling actually has a lower bar to entry than this, but a lot of people these days do have social skills, social media skills specifically, so a lot of people can do it. Let us know what happens. Listeners, love to hear from you as well. If you have a question or comment, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
This was episode 2,702. We've got much more coming up. Thank you for being out there. Lots of resources on the website as well, of course, in a new episode every day. Thanks so much.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
