Here, you’ll learn how to use social media to attract potential customers, allowing you to grow your brand and revenue.
Using social media for business is no longer an option. Instead, it is necessary for gaining valuable business insights whether you want to find new leads, build brand awareness, or expand your reach.
Social media is an excellent online space for marketing your business because it is open to a vast and engaged audience everyone. It allows you as a business owner to discover new trends and ideas and gain insight into your potential customers, their behaviors, preferences, and dislikes.
Once you know your customers, use social media to boost your business and to build, craft, and enhance your brand through engaging content. If your content manages to reach a portion of the 4.48 billion active users on the platform through shares and likes, it will enhance your business recognition and brand much further.
Engaging content additionally has the benefit of creating connections between potential customers and your business. The more individuals feel connected to your business, the better the chance they’ll purchase your products or services or recommend your company to other potential users.
The bottom line: the more you engage with customers on social media, the more your business becomes visible to potential customers.
This, in turn, enhances your reach and customer pool, brings an increase in sales and return on investment (ROI), helps your business reach new audiences, builds authority and trust, and expands your brand personality.
More than half of the population in the world is on social media, making it the perfect place to reach new target audiences and expand your business customer pool. For instance, at least 80 percent of users on Instagram discover new products on the platform.
This makes social media the perfect tool for enhancing your business brand awareness. Additionally, social media allows you to build lasting connections with customers. For instance, introducing your employees to your customers through social media platforms like Facebook live or TikTok makes your business brand trustworthy.
Posting live customer reviews or customer feedback provides the same effect. Another human element to use to enhance your brand's trustworthiness is to show that you put the interests of your employees and customers within your operational aspects.
And if you manage to show your audience that the information you provide is accurate and helpful, your customers will trust you and consider you an authority in your industry. Achieve this by offering educational and relevant content that helps the end-user. Besides, the more you post on social media, the more relevant you remain in the minds of your audience.
Ads, live videos, and regular (organic) posts are excellent ways to increase your business brand growth because they can be used to increase the traffic to your website, generate leads, and increase sales. For instance, you can post snippets of your article on social media pages and redirect interested users through links to the full article on LinkedIn for further engagement.
This increases your LinkedIn traffic. Or engage with other users on social media and direct them to read an article you posted on your website with further information about the topic of discussion. The more you engage with the audience, the more likely you will immerse potential customers interested in your products or services.
Also, ads on social media can work well for increasing your click-through and conversion rates. Such tactics, in turn, increase your sales conversions, which increase your ROI.
One other booming trend to consider for growing your business brand and reach is to partner with social media influencers who recommend your products and services to their audience.
Content is crucial for businesses because it helps enhance brand awareness, inform audiences about product and service use, and meet customers' needs.
For instance, if you own a cosmetics company and you are about to launch a new product, you can use content to promote the product, inform your customers about the benefits of using your new product, and tell your audience how the new product fits their needs.
When done correctly, content creation has the power to make your business go viral, tap into new target audiences, and increase your sales through multiple likes and shares. Social media is excellent for sharing this type of content with the world.
And the best part about using social media for business content creation is that you can ask your audience what they want to see on your social media pages.
For instance, use Instagram stories to ask your audience what they'd like to know and use their answers to develop content ideas.
For instance, many companies use Twitter as a network for offering the best customer service and support to customers.
As such, if a customer has an issue with your products or services, they can reach out to your team on Twitter, where they get almost instantaneous support. Never remain silent if a customer raises an issue about your business. Always resolve it as fast as you can.
Additionally, remember to thank the customers who appreciate your services and products. Active communication keeps your business reputation clean, encourages engagement with your target audience, and maintains customer loyalty.
You can tell your customers about your business on social media, but you can also use the same platforms to learn more about your current and potential customers. Knowing your customers is crucial because it allows you to create products and services that meet their needs and make better-informed business decisions.
For instance, every social media platform you use for your business has an analytics feature to collect and analyze audience data. You can use this data to learn more about your audience's needs and pain points. With those insights, you can tailor your social media content to cater to those needs.
Also, track your business mentions on social media and determine what customers say about your company. Remember to communicate for both positive and negative comments. Look at business trends and news and your competition to stay informed and aware of the movements in your industry.
Advertising
Social media platforms now offer ad targeting options that help businesses reach their customers based on age, gender, and demographics. And because ads on social media are cheaper than traditional forms of advertising like television, they are accessible to all business sizes.
Another benefit of social media for business advertising is that you can retarget your ads to encourage customers interested in your products to purchase from you. For instance, you can curb cart abandonment rates using retargeted ads.
The best part about social media ads is that your ads will only reach the relevant customers, meaning the customers that are interested in buying your products. This reduces your ad spend and increases your chances of conversion.
ROI
We've mentioned that the analytics tools on social media platforms track customer data. They can also track your engagement and conversions and help you determine the amount of ROI you get from every platform, post, and ad.
A social media strategy documents your social media objectives, tactics, metrics, and accounts. It also includes all the members of your organization and their role in achieving your social media goals. In essence, a social media marketing strategy should align with your business goals and aim to enhance your business's reach and presence on social media.
SMART means specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. For instance, use Facebook to enhance customer support by reducing your response rate by a given amount of time, like one hour.
Additionally, ensure the metrics you track are meaningful for your business. For instance, if you use LinkedIn to increase your lead generation, track your click-through rate because it is relevant to get more leads at a cheaper cost specifically from Linkedin. But if you use Facebook for advertisements, track your cost per click more than the click-through rate to measure the success of your ads.
The primary goal should be to align your metrics with your marketing goals to determine the actual value of your social media strategy.
Knowing your audience, the type of content they like, and their spaces will help you create a relevant social media strategy and enhance the conversion of potential leads to high-quality customers. Learn about your audience's interests, location, age, career, and average income.
Find out what your customers need and want using social media analytics. Refrain from making any assumptions when collecting data. For instance, instead of assuming that your target audience prefers Facebook, look at the statistics of users in their age range.
If you learn what your competitors are doing, you can determine your industry expectations and opportunities to exploit for better performance. For instance, if your main competitor uses Facebook ads, you can use Facebook and Google ads to reach a wider audience.
You might also determine new trends you can adopt for your business from keyword analysis. Competitor analysis and social listening are tools that provide this type of information.
An audit allows you to determine what's working and what's not, which helps you put tools and efforts into practical use. For instance, if you determine that your Facebook efforts are not working, it could be because you are using the network for the wrong reasons.
Say, for instance, you use Facebook to reach young audiences. Chances are it will not be as successful as TikTok or Instagram.
Find out the customers that engage with your business, the networks that most of your audiences use, and compare the performance of your social media efforts to that of your competitors.
Once you’ve reached thousands or millions of followers, remember to look for imposter accounts since they might be taking a portion of your customer pool. Also, work on getting verified on all your social media platforms to enhance your credibility further.
Having a mission statement for each social media network helps categorize different platforms for different purposes. For instance, Facebook is great for ads, LinkedIn is good for lead generation and brand recognition, and Twitter is excellent for customer support.
Start improving your social media profiles by determining the platforms you need for your business and their roles. For example, if you sell a product that requires tutorials, consider using Instagram and Snapchat to share the video tutorials.
Then revamp each network for its mission; use your logos, images, and brand colors on each network. Remember, you don't have to use all the available networks. Stick to the relevant ones for your business needs.
Case studies, award-winning campaigns, and some of your favorite brands can offer you the inspiration you need to develop a winning social media strategy. An excellent example is Shopify- the e-commerce giant uses Facebook to showcase studies and customer stories, a strategy that pulls in significant customer engagement.
Another source of inspiration is your users, who can tell you what they would like to learn about your company, brand, products, or services.
Relevant and engaging content is the key to successful social media campaigns. But you must remain consistent with your posts to keep your users engaged with your business. As such, you need a social media content calendar to help you plan your content.
In the calendar, indicate the dates and times to publish content for each of your social media platforms. Also, show the type of content to post and the interaction time you'll spend on each platform. For instance, you can set one hour to share a blog post on LinkedIn and interact with your connections at least three times a week.
Include a daily Instagram post for your business with consistent interactions on Twitter for ample customer support. Social media analytics helps determine the best time to post and engage with users on the different platforms you use.
Additionally, determine the objective of each type of content on your calendar. For instance, create educational blog posts for LinkedIn and website but focus on business promotion on Instagram and Facebook.
Remember your content should align with your business objectives, but it should also engage your users. Also, stick to posting relevant content for each platform. If you've decided Twitter is for customer support, only post content that offers your users help.
If you've determined Facebook is best for brand awareness, this is the type of content you should share on the network.
You should always track and audit your strategy to determine its success and make relevant changes. Performance metrics are an excellent indicator of your social media performance. Once you've done your evaluations and changes, retest and reevaluate your strategy after a short period to ensure your changes perform better.
Successful marketing requires reaching the right people at the right time and in the right place. This is why you need to choose the best and most relevant social media platform for your business. While your buyer personas tell you the platforms to use, you also need to know how to use each platform successfully.
With more than 2 billion active users, Facebook is one of the most influential social media platforms for businesses. Use Facebook Live to share your business broadcasts with the entire world. For instance, behind-the-scenes content, live business events, and employee Q&As are becoming a user magnet on the platform.
Use image or video content and posts to connect with influencers in your field and shape the way users think about your industry. For instance, start to share news articles about the trends in your industry and start conversations with users in your industry to build your influence and network.
Ensure you share relevant content so that Facebook's algorithm can share your posts with users.
Additionally, Facebook ads are very successful at increasing website traffic and converting high-quality leads into buying customers.
Instagram for business is an excellent idea if you sell products or services that sell well with visuals like images and videos. Examples of this include cosmetic products and apparel. This means you must use incredible visuals to build influence and networks on Instagram.
Use hashtags to make it easier to be discovered and use the proper tags on relevant accounts. Additional features like Instagram stories and Reels help expand a business reach through storytelling. Keep the 24-hour timeframe in mind when you share your stories as well.
For instance, if you have an ongoing weekly sale, post the story every day until the sale is over instead of posting it on the first day since you will lose it after 24 hours. Also, consider whether Instagram ads are a viable option for your business since they expand business audiences.
You now have 280 characters to reach the 328 million users on Twitter. Therefore, incorporate conciseness, videos, and images to share your ideas and thoughts on Twitter. Use retweets, replies, and quote tweets to comment and share your users' posts.
Use the DM messages to connect directly with potential customers or business partners. You can also use the live video feature on Twitter to share and interact with other user videos on the platform. Answer your customers aptly and use Twitter Polls to get the results of your engagements.
The professional use of unique, simple, and straightforward hashtags will help you become part of the conversation and build your business brand. Twitter also has an ad platform to advertise your products or services and reach a broader audience on the platform.
For Twitter, use excellent grammar and punctuation to make a good impression and take advantage of conversations to build connections that turn into face-to-face business opportunities. A clear profile bio will also help you make better connections.
Pinterest is perfect for small businesses with a bigger target audience of millennials and women. Pinterest Ads bring in an ROI of $4.3 for every $1 spent. Thus, it is cheaper than both Twitter and Facebook.
Consistently share interesting and creative pictures on Pinterest, and you'll drive traffic, views, and pins to your business webpage. Also, use Pinterest to redirect users to your website where you can engage them with the most relevant opt-in campaign for your business.
If your target audience is mainly millennials and younger people, then Snapchat should be a consideration among your social networks.
The best feature to use on Snapchat to expand your business reach and influence is the paid ads feature that helps to promote businesses.
LinkedIn is a professional social media platform best used for boosting your career. But it is also excellent for making B2B connections for your business and high-value lead generation. If you find, approach, and connect with the right people, you will succeed on LinkedIn.
Use the recommendation feature to connect with people you would like to join and recommend people you can vouch for. Assess the advertising features on LinkedIn and determine whether you want to use them to get potential leads or build your community.
Use the LinkedIn search features to know people, jobs, and companies in detail and build your network by forming connections where you see opportunities. Use a personal note to invite people to connect with you and your business. Also, consider investing in a premium LinkedIn account to get a better reach and features.
TikTok is also a great option for promoting your business to a younger audience. . Create a TikTok channel and share relevant, funny, and creative videos - partner with comedians or other successful influencers on TikTok to increase your brand awareness further.
The health facility joined TikTok to create informative content about COVID-19 during the pandemic. The videos were successful in encouraging young people not to spread the virus.
They featured local stand-up comedian Danica Thibault doing things like dancing while posting COVID symptoms and things not to share with family and friends to stop the spread of COVID. Some of the videos have over 30,000 views.
In India, the Uber-like service called Jugnoo used Facebook analytics to determine that 90 percent of the customers who referred other users to use their services were between 18 and 34 years old.
They also determined that 65 percent of the group use Android phones. This information became helpful in creating targeted ads, which, in turn, resulted in a reduced rate of cost per referral by 40 percent.
The channel uses Instagram to post very high-quality images about animals worldwide. In the caption, the photos outline the photographer, the animal and its location, and a bit of history and information about the animal. This type of educational content encourages massive engagement for the channel.
The company uses Twitter for customer service by solving any arising issues that customers or users raise. They do this in a playful yet useful and relevant voice and style that keeps users happy and engaged with the company
Once you've identified a home-based business opportunity to start, you'll need a way to interact with customers, and social media provides an affordable platform to reach your targeted audience. For instance, if you've been wondering how to start a painting business and get your first customers, you can use social media platforms to increase your brand awareness and lead generation.
Another easier option is to contact Hoist, a business community platform that will help you start, run, and grow your business locally and on social media. Hoist will help you train for and own your painting business at an affordable cost, get you customers, and market your services to potential customers.
Sources:
How Many People Use Social Media in 2022? (65+ Statistics) | Backlinko
Facebook IQ: How Instagram Boosts Brand and Drives Sales | Facebook
Demographics of Social Media Users and Adoption in the United States | Pew Research Center
Social Media Listening: What You Need to Know to Get Started | Sproutsocial
Facebook: number of monthly active users worldwide 2008-2021 | Statista
12 Pinterest Statistics Every Social Media Manager Should Know | Heropost
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