Using social media for business goes beyond having a large following on popular social media or making a few posts once in a while. Specifically, it involves these steps and more;
- Commiting more time social media usage
- Working on a target audience
- Using relevant hashtags where necessary
- Posting engaging comments
Advertisers, producers and entrepreneurs see the gold mine in using social media as a tool to reach the target audience around the world.
Many individuals fundamentally use social media to network and stay in contact with loved ones. A 2020 report by smartinsights.com indicate that an estimated 3.6 billion people worldwide are social media users, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide; with over 2.7 billion monthly active users.
As a business owner, it is imperative to have a presence on all famous social media platforms as a means of promoting your business.
Listen to customers rather than promote
Great social media platforms are built around listening to customers, not promoting to them. The manner in which we like to think about it is that social media offers an incredible, open-ended platform that businesses can use to communicate and engage with customers.
Social media is becoming a customer service platform and people are generally expecting it. The tricky part is, the better you get at social media the more engagement you will get, and in turn, the more comments.
The opposite side is that your customers are the best source of motivation for content. Lots of businesses are sitting on a never-ending gold mine of content ideas by simply looking at their frequently asked questions, or what what people are asking on social media. If you are stuck on what to post, look to your customers first for ideas before anything else. You can also listen to competitors’ customers as well, as funny as that sounds.
Focus your efforts on a select networks
Social media networks are like shiny new objects. We want to be everywhere at once and try everything because we are sure that this network will be the one for us. But the fact is we are all strapped for resources. So if you try to focus on lots of social networks then you’re setting yourself up for a long road ahead.
We tried; At one time we were everywhere. We were on all of the standard networks along with lesser-known networks like Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn. What we found was that we were getting average results across the board. Not to mention it was taking full days to post content to each platform. It wasn’t sustainable.
It might appear to be illogical, but focusing all your efforts on the two to three platforms which give you the best return on investment; crafting content unique to each platform is critical.
For example, let’s say we write a blog post about social media marketing. Writing the copy that will get attention and clicks on LinkedIn is much different than what works on Facebook, which is dramatically different than what works on Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter.It’s an obsession-like focus on a particular platform that allows you to hone in on successful tactics.
Remember that success follows passion
Remember that passion helps generate truly great and memorable content.Success on social media is a long road. As I mentioned before, it can take minimum eight months of hard work to get to a point where you feel good about your social program.
Imagine if those 8 months were filled with posting content that you didn’t care about; The only way to ensure long term commitment and that social media doesn’t become a burden is to follow your passion. The nice thing about social media is that your content doesn’t have to be directly related to your brand or industry. Meaning it doesn’t have to be what everyone else is doing.I suggest that as business owners you pick a topic that you love and are truly passionate about.
Make a commitment to social media
The first thing that businesses can do to find success is to make a commitment to social media. Like any other type of marketing, social media for business can be a real challenge. It’s difficult to grow an audience, create great content, and increase engagement. Very frequently we see brands abandoning social media after only a few of months.
It takes eight months to one year to truly get the hang of social media. Not exclusively to get a reliable content stream moving, yet to make sense of what your audience resonates with and what they don’t.
Everything starts with planning. Create a social media strategy and write it down in order to hold your business accountable. Your strategy should incorporate an essential company mission statement, content plan, and goals. And most importantly, a powerful statement on why individuals would follow you on social media, what kind of content you plan on creating and posting, and what you want to accomplish.
Show off your personality
The second social media tip for business is to consistently (genuinely) be you on social media.
Take a second to think about the brands that you follow on social media.
- What makes them unique?
- What makes you follow them?
Odds are that there is something extraordinary about the content they post or the manner by which they post it. I am speculating they have a personality and are not simply brand robots pushing out content.
Creating a great social media presence isn’t just about showing the value of your product or service to your audience. It’s about connections and experiences. The best brands out there share a common perspective with their fans.
Boost organic content to a targeted audience
What’s great about social media for business that you don’t have to be an expert in order to see success with advertising. Unless you have a team running your social ads or you’re able to invest a lot of time running experiments, you could end up wasting a lot of money on paid advertising.
The way I like to think about it is that organic social media posting (traditional posting) is the perfect testing ground for paid ads and boosted posts. In other words, you’re using organic reach to determine what posts you should put money behind. The best part is that you can target specific users within many of the social media platform ad managers.
Related posts
For example, let’s say your goal is traffic to your website and you’ve identified a top performing post. You can create an audience that is most likely to also enjoy that post. That could be a lookalike audience that is similar to your website visitors. Or maybe it’s an audience who has shown interest in your competitors. It also could be an audience based on demographics like location, age, or mobile device type.You can then exclude traffic to your website in order to eliminate people who are already familiar with your brand.
Use keywords and hashtags
When using keywords for social media, focus on using keywords related to your business. Use words that are commonly searched for on Google. Also, using trending hashtags related to your business on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn will attract more users to your social media platforms. However, do not overuse hashtags.
Your audience will look forward to your posts if they are captivating and engaging. Posting regularly at consistent intervals will give your audience content to look forward to. You can publish your posts at regular intervals, such as once daily, two times weekly and so on. You can schedule your posts using automation tools to save more time and make your postings appear regularly. Therefore, a regular pace of posting will give your audience and customers reason to connect with you on your social media.