Growing Your Business Using Social Media
The importance of social media in business strategy cannot be overstated. If you’re hoping to start or to grow a business in 2021, social media must be at the heart of your plan. Whether it’s targeting influencers, utilizing viral marketing campaigns, or listening to the concerns and demands of your demographic, if your business doesn’t have a strong social media presence you’ll struggle to find a foothold in an increasingly competitive market. Here are 10 ways you can grow your business using social media.
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Growing Business: Develop a unique strategy
If you’re approaching social media just like your competitors are, then you’re never going to manage to distinguish yourself from them. It’s crucial to develop your own unique strategy that works for your consumer base, your brand, and your business’s location. Let’s say you’re running an Aylesbury-based e-commerce firm or growing any business.
Your best option is to look for a social media management company such as NeonSocial.Media that can help you to grow your business in a way that’s specific and unique to your geographic location and your demographic. Your strategy shouldn’t just be the same as everyone else’s.
Understand your demographic
In order to effectively use social media, it’s important for you to know who you’re actually targeting. Who are the people who use your business? How can you make sure your campaigns are tailored to their social media habits? Let’s look at Facebook, for example. A Facebook user is likely to be between 25 and 34.
If your business is targeting that demographic, that’s probably where you want to focus your social media presence. Similarly, Instagram users are mostly below the age of 35, so it’s important to build an Instagram presence for your brand if this is where your focus is. Check the major differences between the Millennial Generation and Gen Z.
Improve your SEO
Improving your SEO is a beneficial loop. By strengthening the SEO of your content, you’ll attract more readers and increase the social media share rate of your page. As the social media share rate increases, so does your domain authority.
If you’re making sure your content is consistently optimized for SEO, then you’re only making your business’ online presence better. Lots of consumers will probably check out your social media before they actually buy from you, too, so it’s good to make sure your brand is consistent. Learn how to use Instagram for business.
Research your competition
If you don’t know who you’re up against, you’re going to struggle to tailor your campaigns and brand messaging to compete. Researching your competition is definitely a skill you need to acquire; it’s not necessarily easy to do, and you might feel like the task ahead is too large for you. Still, if you want to stay competitive, you’ll need to make sure you know who you’re up against.
Check out the techniques and social media strategies they’re using and ask how they could work for you. Don’t steal methods and ideas, but do adapt and work around them to create a superior approach.
Create authentic content
Social media users these days are incredibly savvy. You won’t be able to sneak commercial content past them if it doesn’t feel authentic, unique, and relatable. Think about the last time you were browsing your newsfeed or checking out a friend’s Instagram story.
Has there ever been a moment where you’ve noticed an influencer promoting a product and they’ve tried to appear natural but failed? You don’t want that to happen to your business. Make sure the content you’re putting out is genuine and your readers will appreciate it. You’ll get more business if your image is good.
Build a strong brand
Your brand needs to be consistent, on-point, and memorable. Everything from your graphic design to your content informs how people think of your brand. If you’re on social media and you’re not reinforcing your brand, you’re not going to increase business.
While it’s true that creating engaging and relevant content is crucial to growing your business via social media, you still need to make sure you’re communicating your brand identity, because otherwise you just become a place to go for good content. Your posts and social media presence should always remind people what your business is all about.
Emphasize call to action
Part of reinforcing your brand identity is creating consistent and galvanizing calls to action (CTA). With a good CTA, you’ll encourage your social media platform visitors to convert and buy your products.
Make sure it’s not too overt; nobody wants to be halfway through a passage of relevant content only to hit the brick wall of “buy my product now”. Slip your CTA organically and naturally into your content and you’ll subtly guide your visitors to your products without ever coming across as needy or desperate. It’s all about hitting that sweet spot.
Hold regular giveaways
Your audience likes to feel involved and engaged with your brand. There’s no better way to ensure they feel that way than holding regular giveaways. These will increase your engagement rate since people like to feel as if they’re participating.
Free stuff is always appreciated, and by handing out your products you’re increasing brand awareness and putting your products in more homes.
The giveaway doesn’t necessarily need to be related to the product itself; you could give something else away that your audience would appreciate in return for a product or social media engagement, for example.
Build relationships with influencers
Marketing nowadays is all about influencers. These social media presences generate engaging, organic content regularly, and their followers love them for it. If you contact influencers and build relationships with them, you’ll be increasing your engagement massively. Influencer marketing isn’t dissimilar to old-school celebrity advertising, but there’s a more grassroots sense to it thanks to influencers’ home-grown authentic appeal.
If you can make contact with successful influencers and persuade them to endorse your product in some of their content, your social media presence will grow hugely. Here are the top three YouTube Influencers who are owning the Internet.
Keep your social media presence felt for Growing Business
Every single piece of content you create should always link back to your social media in some way. Are you creating a YouTube video? Make sure you include your social media links so people know where to find you. Building an Instagram story? Use your bio link to cross-pollinate and take people to your site.
You need to integrate social media into your wider business strategy, not just take it on as a separate entity. Check the leading digital marketing influencers transforming entrepreneurship this year for more amazing ideas.
You also need to ensure that your social media presence is constantly felt; include icons on your website, show people where they can find you when you’re promoting yourself outside the internet, et cetera.
