As of today, from pre-teens to retirees, billions of persons worldwide are using social media platform for one reason or the other. Social media is not a hobby or sideshow. It can be the number one method of communication in the world. Everyone uses it, presidents, parliament members, business owners, students, churches, companies, military, politicians, all use social media. Social media is not just limited to personal use; it has now become a major source of business marketing and promotions. In this post, we shall be discussing impressive ways you can use social media to grow your business overnight.
This article is a detailed discussion of the use of social media for business growth. No matter what you are doing, whether a small or large business, you must engage in social media marketing to get more exposure in the market and access large customers. If you want to build a solid brand image and create good relationships with your customers, you need to make good strategies.
There are many social media platforms that you can use to fulfill your business marketing needs. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are some of the most used social media platforms that can be used profitably for the digital marketing of your business.
With your presence on social media platforms, you can easily access any social media influencer to help promote your brand. Social media has become a major part of our lives in this era of digitization, the demands and needs of the customers are continuously changing every now and then thereby making it necessary for businesses to use social media as a marketing tool.
Are You Using It to Its Full Advantage?
Many social media users feel at home and thrilled, they love social media because it made the world a global village, they also love the connections and opportunities to share their stories, and feel like a part of a larger group. On the other hand, some others persons shake their head in anxiety that social media may be destroying “real” relationships.
Yet, there are those who smile and rub their hands together because of the profits that can be made through effective use of social media marketing. The truth is that, anyone who cares can generate a lot of profit by effectively using social media platforms.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Without wasting your time, and confusing you with all manner of grammar, social media marketing simply means the act of using various social media platforms to bring more customers’ attention to your business, thereby increasing sales for more profits. However, those who are just entering this social media game may be wondering how ordinary “likes” and “followers” can translate into earnings.
The truth is that it is a bit more complicated than just making a page and posting some attractive videos. That is the way amateurs and casual users does it. Real marketers understands that social media is a deep sea of opportunities to connect with a huge and targeted market. They also know that converting sales is only achieved through careful planning and development.
Content is Key to Social Media
If you ever believed that social media as a perfect recipe for your business success, you’ll need a few more critical ingredients. First, you’ll need a platform, or oven, to fully develop your finished product. “Preheat” your oven by making an account and letting it age a bit as you figure out the more critical ingredients.
Remember, social media marketing is not about preaching to a captive audience. It is about making the right connections. Nobody wants to hang out or follow a pompous blowhard. Therefore, choose the right content that does double duties for you. A content that speak to your audience, and also bringing them closer to what you do and what you are selling. However, it is not a chance to blast them with unnecessary and irrelevant ads. It is a more subtle connection. Just give them what they like and they will in return like you.
Finally, ensure to follow the social marketing strategies that work best for you as closely as you can. Just like in baking, you’ll need to carefully combine ingredients and then wait. But unlike cooking things for hours in the oven, in the world of social media, you won’t need to wait long. Be rest assured that most of the most dynamic changes can happen overnight.
Impressive Ways to Grow Your Business With Social Media:
Listed and discussed below are 18 most beneficial social media techniques that you can use to market your business.
1. Make a Solid Plan
To create an effective social media market, it is very important to make a solid plan. A failure to plan often leads to a failure in business. If you do not have a solid marketing plan, you’ll be seeing a disorganized and expensive experiment with no defined variables. You should identify your business goals to make an effective social marketing plan.
For making a plan, you should have all the goals and objectives of the business clear in your mind. It is advisable to create a social media mission and vision statement, and track your target customers for an effective marketing plan.
2. Focus on Your Audience
From the company perspective, make honest conversions the bottom-line of your social media efforts. Do not make your content appear like a typical sales pitch. Let your audience on social media feel that your conversation is all about them. So, give them what they really want. Think in terms of what your customers want and make it your content and posts more relevant to the demands and needs of your target customers. The more effectively you know your target audiences, the easier it is for you to do social media branding.
3. Showcase Social Media on Your Website
Another very effective thing you can do to grow your business through social media is to show your connections on your website. You might notice the social media icons on the footer of the website that allow you to have direct access to their social media accounts. If you give your site visitors visible links, they can follow them to your landing page. So, adding links on your social media to your website is an effective way of getting your website visitors to your accounts, and allowing them to get more information about your products and services.
4. Link Your Profile Back to Your Website
Every social media website and account requires a profile. This is your chance to connect the social media accounts back to your website. You can give your website link on your social media profile. It would help you to attract swarms of traffic to your website through your social media accounts. Just ensure that all your social media profile carries a linkback to your website. If do not do this, you will be missing a lot of opportunities. So, it is a good idea to provide your website link in your social media profile.
5. Share with Everyone
One of the best things about social media platforms is that they are free to join and use. Unlike PPC, social media doesn’t cost anything to share. So, you can share your posts with huge target customers, post your message to relevant groups, and ask others to continue to share your messages.
6. Cross-Brand Your Social Media Accounts
For instance, is your Twitter and a Facebook accounts connected? They should be! This is true for every social media account you have. When everything is connected correctly, you should have a web of accounts all hard at work for you. Facebook and Instagram are the most popular social media platforms, many businesses connect both of these networks to improve their social media followers. Interconnecting the accounts would allow you to drag the traffic of one social media platform to the other.
7. Use Audio
While some like to read, others like to listen. Videos and podcasts with good audio can be very compelling on social media, especially if you have something educative and interesting to say. The busy customers who don’t have enough time to read your long posts or blog can listen to the podcasts that are less time-consuming, and you don’t have to read long posts.
8. Make Short Videos
Vines and other short videos can create a lot of impact in a short amount of time. Short videos can be entertaining, educational, or instructional and they don’t tie up a lot of time for viewers, so they are very popular as well. You can also ask your happy customers to make mini testimonials for you. These small videos might be interesting for new visitors and they become your future customers.
9. Include Reviews
Reviews are one of the driving forces of the internet. the people must search for the reviews on the internet about the company before any product from them. The more positive reviews you have on the internet, the more you are likely to get more buyers of your products and services. Including reviews of your own, especially honest and unbiased reviews will give customers more of what they want.
10. React to The Posts of Others
Connecting with your customers is very important. Rather than just doing your marketing on social media, you should react and respond to the comments of customers. It’s a big connected world out there, and you’re now a part of it. Link to others, retweet, share, and join conversations. Being connected with readers and others in the industry can be powerful.
11. Encourage Engagement
Your accounts shouldn’t be a one-way show. It’s not just about you telling other people about your product. Ask them to tell you things in return. Be engaged with your readers and encourage them to be engaged in return. Social media is an effective tool to build effective relationships with customers, so you rather than just selling your product also make an effort to engage with customers.
12. Start Conversations
Engagement can be as simple as retweeting or sharing content. To maximize the social aspects of your accounts, start conversations. Post links to articles or share insight and then encourage readers to respond, much like you would on a blog post. Try to communicate with your customers more often to build trust.
13. Add More Images
Everyone likes to look at the pictures, especially if the images are necessary to understand the post. Always look for new, interesting, and relevant images to share on your social media pages. Top social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat are known for their attractive images. Many marketers use these platforms for branding purposes. Ensure you are sharing more illustrations, and images about your product and business.
14. Mobile-Friendly Blog
Please be reminded that a higher percentage of online readers are checking social media accounts on their phones and tablets, not their desktop computers. Therefore, ensure that you have made your blog or website mobile-friendly; especially those linked to social media accounts. When you connect your blog to social media platform, it should be mobile-friendly enough, so that the users accessing your blog from social apps on mobile will not find your blog irresponsive.
15. Rework Your Old Content
It is expected that if you have been in business for a while now, you should have a ton of content by now. Old blog posts, eBook chapters, graphics. Why not refresh and reuse some of those? Do a quick revamp and post your old content online as new material. So, revisit your old content and renew them by optimizing their keywords, and updating the posts. For instance, you previously may have created a lot of content with the year 2019 or 2020 in the title, now it is the time to change that year to the current year by updating the content.
16. Encourage Community Responses
It is true that your readers and followers are individuals, it is also true that there are other community members out there keeping an eye on your activities. With this in mind, endeavor to encourage a bigger response by engaging a full community, or large audience. Who knows? You might shake up the industry.
17. Ask for Feedback
It is highly unlikely that you will be perfect from the beginning. Therefore, ensure to always ask your professional network for feedback, and ask your followers as well. This isn’t just feedback on your posts, but feedback on your account, style, and offers as well.
18. Offer Helpful New Tools
Through your social media accounts, along with your website, introduce new tools. Or you can use your social media accounts to showcase some very helpful online tools, browser addons or plugins you have found, so that others may benefit from them as well. Keep sharing something new with your followers and customers, it is not compulsorily about the product but about you, your business, the world, or social media.