Social media can be used in many ways, it’s not only about marketing a brand and its products directly.

Often, when a brand is a person or service like a coach, or professional expert such as a lawyer, therapist, or consultant, the best way to use social media is to position themselves as an industry thought leader.

This requires a different approach to social media, instead of focusing mostly on awareness, the focus is on creating a conversation in which the brand is putting out new information to drive it.

It’s more of a soft sell, there’s very little promotion of products or services if any. However, that doesn’t mean it requires less effort, usually it requires more.

Platforms that offer hashtags usually make this endeavor easier because a post can interject into an ongoing larger conversation. Live chats are also quite effective in this arena.

Finding groups dedicated to your brands industry, joining them and then answering questions asked in it is another way. The important part though is to not push your services, people won’t want to come to you if you they are afraid you will just sell them something, they want someone who will answer their questions.