Social media is a world of endless possibilities for businesses. From reaching out to new audiences, to selling your products, and finally to building a visible brand online, social media can send greater opportunities your way.
To begin, you will need to have strategies in place to ensure you get the most out of your social media accounts and gain profit from your efforts. Read on to learn more about how you can utilize social media to support your business’ growth.
Create a social media plan
Social media can be extremely beneficial for your business, but only if you have an idea of what you want to get out of it, and what kind of image you want to put out there for your business. If you don’t have a plan, what you post can start to become confusing and repetitive and you may start to lose the essence of your business.
If you can take the time to work out what you want to get from using social media, you will be able to set goals and see if what you are doing is having the desired effect. If it isn’t, you will be able to adjust your methods as you go until you find what works for you and your business.
It can also be useful to set up a calendar where you can plan your posts ahead of time. That way, you can get the right mix of educational, informative, and entertaining material, as well as beautifully-designed promotional posts that showcase your brand. Planning posts will ensure that you aren’t posting about the same things over and over again and that you have a good mix of posts that will keep people interested.
Understand your audience
An essential part of running a business is understanding your audience, and it is no different on social media. If you know who your audience is or who you are targeting, you can tailor your posts to them. Knowing your audience will help you to come up with ideas for the informative and educational posts, which will help to keep your customers entertained. It will also allow you to adapt the language you use when communicating with them on these platforms.
Once you have started to build up an audience on your social media platforms, you will be able to do a bit more research into your audience. Social media analytics will help you to inform you of a more in-depth image of who is following you and interacting with your posts.
You can find out things like the age-range and gender of your customers, but also things like the amount of engagement with your posts and a lot of other useful information.
Choose what platform to use
Even if you want your business on multiple social media platforms, there may be one that you use more than the others. This could be because you get more engagement on your posts or that the platform allows you to work towards your goals better.
It can be better to choose because, even though you can post similar posts on each platform, different social media platforms can require a drastically different marketing strategy.
For example, if you choose Facebook to be your primary platform, it is a good idea to ensure that the posts aren’t too serious because they will be appearing on a newsfeed with posts from friends and family. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a place where you can post more business orientated posts as it is a place where companies and other professionals go to network online.
Instagram is excellent for businesses that want to take advantage of more visually orientated content. You can post on your main Instagram feed, but also post more informal content on your stories that will help you to connect with your audience.
Each platform has pros and cons; you just need to decide which one will work best for your company.
Hire help
Social media seems simple enough to get up and running, but it can actually be a time-consuming job requiring a lot of thought and upkeep. Many people don’t understand that running social media accounts is often a full-time job.
This is why it is a good idea to have a dedicated social media person or team, depending on the size of your business. It also frees up the rest of your team’s time, so that they can focus on other aspects of your business.
A social media strategist will be able to keep an eye on the progression of your goals, come up with new ideas to engage your audience, and start developing an understanding of the content that works and the content that doesn’t. They will also know what tools they need to use to get the best results.
Social media is also heavily tied to email marketing because new followers often become subscribers and want to learn more about your brand. Using email is a fool-proof way to get your information in front of an audience so you can build trust, credibility, and sell your products.
Many tools exist (ActiveCampaign, Sendinblue, GetResponse…etc) that help you communicate with your followers and fans through email effectively. That being said, you still need someone with great copywriting skills — something you should consider when hiring your Social Media Strategist.
When hiring, look for those who can create eye-catching graphics or captions that can help your business to stand out, understand what a quality post is, and be able to curate the content that your audience enjoys and interacts with.
Wrapping Up
Once you’ve kept in mind the above strategies, using social media could be a new step forward for your business. What’s next?
Potentially, your business could look into social media as a means of communicating with and updating your customers. You can even expand into eCommerce and sell products across a variety of platforms. Whichever social media platforms you choose, tailor these strategies to fit your business’ needs and they could be communication channels and revenue sources in the long-term.
Author Bio
Vlad Shvets
I’m a growth marketer and content writer at Paperform. I love writing about product marketing, technology, and workplace productivity.