12 Oct 5 Tips on How to Grow Your Business using Social Media
The evolution of the Internet and social media has changed the way we do business. However, despite knowing the importance of social media for business growth, there are still many business owners who are hesitant to harness the power of social media to the benefit of their businesses.
Digital marketing is an evolutionary process. Managing your online brand has now moved from the showground of pure SEO into the territory of social media and content marketing. The old marketing practices have lost much of their importance now. Instead of investing all of your resources in the traditional marketing approaches, you should take your business social.
According to Statista, there will be 2.67 billion worldwide social network users by 2018. Currently, there are 2.3 billion active social media users globally. This indicates that your potential customers are already using social media.
So, how can you grow your business by using social media? Below are some valuable tips to help you get started.
1. Set Your Objectives
Knowing what you really want to achieve is very important when using social media for business. Without specific objectives in place, you would not know where you are heading and how you are going to get there. So, the first step in your social media-marketing plan should be setting your objectives.
Be sure to have your objectives follow the SMART acronym – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.
Below are two examples of SMART social media-marketing objectives:
“To achieve 4000 Facebook page likes from June to December and increase Facebook page engagement by 25 percent for the same period.”
“To generate 20 percent leads and 10 percent sales through the Facebook page and Instagram account combined.”
2. Use the Right Social Networks
Using all the available social networks is not a judicious choice, especially when you are just starting out. Instead, you should do some research on what social networks your potential customers use and what they talk about before creating your business accounts/pages on those networks. For example, if your target customers are teens, you can find them on Snapchat and Instagram. Remember, Instagram boasts a huge 68 percent of regular brand engagement.
3. Don’t Attempt to Sell Directly to Your Followers
If you think that you can directly sell to your social media followers, think again. Social media users are very savvy. They want to buy, but they don’t like to be sold to. Instead of trying to sell, give your audience some cool and fun stuff to consume.
For example, a short video providing your audience a sneak peek into how your products are manufactured can impress your audience, which will in turn help your content spread. A viral content can yield leads. The video doesn’t need to be professionally made, though. People want to see real things.
Remember, visuals are more powerful than words, so make sure to include as many videos and images in your content as possible. The importance of videos can be ascertained from the fact that in September 2015, 1.5 million small and medium businesses shared videos on Facebook that boosted user engagement and sales.
4. Use Promotions
While attempting to sell directly on social media can boomerang on the seller, promotions can entice prospective buyers to take certain natural actions. Social media promotions are powerful in that they attract prospective and existing customers. Some examples of promotions include discounts, deals, sales, and prizes. However, you should be cautious when offering discounts, because it can leave your business in loss and customers would get into the habit of buying only at discounted prices.
Instead of offering direct discounts, you should use the reverse discount method, whereby you announce to your followers that the price for a certain product or brand will go up by a certain percentage after 10 days. Doing so creates urgency. Potential buyers don’t want to pay more for a product, so there are chances that your sales will increase.
5. Intensify Your Overall Marketing Efforts
Social media can intensify your overall marketing efforts. It will reinforce your integrated marketing communication in a social and favourable way. Of course, you must have a widespread marketing plan, with social media as one component in it. But your social media efforts can make your overall marketing plan robust and practical. Social media is very affordable, yet very effective.
For example, you can share on your Facebook page a TV commercial that you made for your product. The good news is that it will generate a lot of discussion and engagement on social media. Remember, unlike the traditional channels, social media is all about two-way conversations.
If you don’t have the time to create and manage the social media presence of your business, you may outsource the task to a freelance social media marketer, or to a social media-marketing firm. Get in touch with me if you’d like help getting started or need some extra advice! Tweet me or contact me here!
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