Are you considering using social media to benefit your business? Or, are you using social media but not sure if it’s helping you out?
Social media can be one of your company’s greatest marketing assets. It can bring your customers together, gather feedback, build awareness and funnel sales leads right to your storefront (digital or in-person)!
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is the use of social media channels to promote your product or service. It is the process of creating content – for example, a status update, link to a blog post, photo, or video – to drive an action from a potential customer. This could be in the form of engagement (like, comment, or share), click to your website, or filling out a form.
The question is not should you be using social media, but rather, how should you use social media for your business? Secondly, which platform will work best for you?
How Does Social Media Marketing Benefit Business?
After gathering over 1 billion users within the ten years of existence, nearly 1 in 4 humans have a Facebook account, so it’s safe to say that your customer is using social media.
Here are a few of the advantages of using social media to market your business:
1. Build Brand Awareness – Being active on social media helps you stand out above the rest. It also helps keep your brand on people’s minds. If you get in front of people enough, you’ll be top of mind when your customer needs the product or service you offer.
2.Connection – Being active on social media opens up a line of communication with your customers that did not exist before. Now, your customers can contact you directly to give feedback, ask questions, or even tell you how awesome you are!
3. Increase your SEO Score – Google likes websites with substantial social traffic. So by sharing on social media and driving users to your website, you’ll increase your page views. More page views = higher search ranking.
4. Build Your List – Social media is a great way to build your marketing list. By sharing exclusive content, you can lead people to a landing page that allows them to subscribe to your list. Your marketing list is your biggest asset!
5. Watch and Learn – Social media is a great way to check out the competition! In addition, you can use harness social listening to provide what your customers want. Social listening simply means you are “listening” to what your customers are saying about you on social media by monitoring channels for mentions of your business, competitors, and keywords related to your business.
Choosing the Right Social Media Platform
Listen, if you’re busy running a business, you’re not going to have time to be active on every social media platform. This means you will need to focus your energy on the ones that will give you the biggest return on investment!
Read on to learn how you can choose the best social media platform for your business:
1. Identify Your Audience
You will want to spend the most energy on the channel where your customers are hanging out. Makes sense doesn’t it? Put a pen to paper and ask yourself a few typical demographic questions:
- Who typically buys your products or services?
- What age group are they in?
- What is their income or education level?
- What are their interests?
Knowing the answers to these questions will help you figure out who you want your profile to cater to and what type of content people want to see. (Click here for more help with this exercise)
2. Define Your Goals
Once you have an idea of who your target persona is, you can then set goals. While you may feel your only goal is to gain new customers, sometimes thinking out of the box on social can help your business go beyond making the sale.
For example, depending on the social media channel you choose, consider objectives like:
- Brand loyalty
- Conversations
- Provide Education, “How-to”
All of these objectives can lead to gaining new customers, as well as build irreplaceable brand equity.
3. Find Where Your Audience is Hanging Out
Now that you’ve established your persona and your goals, now it’s time to find out where they are hanging out! To do this, you’ll have to look at the demographics reported on each platform.
For example, if your target person is a 17-year old girl, Facebook will not be the place to attract business from her. Instead, you’re better off spending your time on Instagram or TikTok.
Conversely, if you are a business catering to 35-year old soccer moms, you better believe Facebook is the place to be!
Using Social Media For Your Business
Now that you know where to set up shop, it’s time to have some fun with it! Here are some tips to help you be successful on social media:
1. Be Consistent
You would be surprised to see how positive your metrics will reflect simply posting on a consistent basis. While this may seem simple, it’s easy to let posting fall through the cracks.
There are several tools, including native tools within most social media platforms, that allow you to schedule your posts. When you post on a consistent basis, whether it be 1x a week to 5x a week, your followers will know what to expect from you and begin paying attention.
2. Do Fun Things
Followers love rewards! Share special offers, giveaways or fun games to keep your followers engaged.
You can also share live videos with updates or news.
3. Learn About Your Audience
Give the people what they want! When you study your audience’s behavior, you’ll start to learn the type of content they like best. Then what? You give them more of it! Doing this will go far in boosting your reach and engagement rates.
What Platform is Right For You?
The best social media platform is the one you can put to work for your business’s specific goals. While it may be exciting to jump on the TikTok trend of creating fun videos, your business may not see the influx of traffic to justify all the time and energy you’re investing. This isn’t because your content is good or bad; it’s simply because your buyer is not using TikTok.
Listen, no one knows better than we do how hard it is to come up with fresh content sometimes. But with time and experience, you will be able to come up with a system that makes your monthly planning a snap! To prove it, we’ve created 30 Content Prompts for your social media platforms. Click here to get it!
Don’t forget to follow GreenCup Digital on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn!
