Today, social media is one of the most powerful tools you can use to spread your business. The use of social media has the potential to increase recommendations, traffic to your website, and drive profits.
Statistics show that in 2019, there were 3.5 billion social media users worldwide, which is 45% of the current population– that’s a lot of people! Here are some tips to consider when using social media to grow your business:
- Know Who Your Target Market Is
So you have a product or service that you’re trying to sell. Now it’s time to think about market segmentation– in what kind of audience does this product or service do well? Conduct some research by analyzing past data from your business or look at some general statistics to see who your target audience is.
Once you have a clear understanding of who your audience is, you then want to target them through the careful selection of social media platforms. Below are some statistics from the Pew Research Center:
As of 2019, Facebook and Youtube seems to be the most widely used platform for adults in the US, with Facebook leading the charts in daily site visits.
On the other hand, Snapchat and Instagram seem to be the most popular among young adults.
Using demographic information like this can help us define what our target audience should be, and help us use social media to direct our content to that population.
- Connect With Others And Engage In Your Community
At the end of the day, your goal is to sell more services. However, on social media, you should not keep blatantly posting promotional content. You want to create more engaging content, and think of storytelling and giving resources, rather than selling. For example, I found this wonderful example on Bounty Paper Towels’ instagram:
On this instagram, Bounty keeps it’s followers engaged by occasionally posting recipes from other users. (You can find out more about influencers in #5) These kinds of posts give more of a reason to follow Bounty Paper Towels on instagram, while Bounty is able to subtly promote their paper towels– it’s a win win.
When you’re promoting your services or products to people on social media, make sure you create engaging and informative content rather than pushy promotional material to successfully resonate better with your audiences. Remember to use hashtags and tag partners to maximize your reach!
Similarly, you can also use social media as a platform to respond to your customers. Whether it may be positive or negative feedback, be open and communicate with them in a courteous manner. According to Sprout Social, 48% of consumers said that being responsive was what prompted them to purchase products/services.
This also gives your business a chance to show how much you value customer retention. If a customer has a negative experience, try your best to come up with solutions to fix the issue. If there was a mistake on your end, give discounts, freebies or coupons. Ask to keep contact with them for continued feedback and be responsive. Focus on how you can make experiences better for your customers. By showing that you value your customers’ happiness and satisfaction, you can create loyal relationships in the long run.
- Develop A Strategy And Stick To It
It could be a lot to manage your social media! What a lot of people don’t talk about is how to keep social media running in an advantageous way for your business.
You should most definitely create a schedule for your posts. Consistency is key to keep your social media alive. Some businesses like to use software like Hootsuite, later.com, etc. Using these different systems, you are able to manage your social media accounts all at once, and strategically schedule your posts so they achieve maximum mileage. However, if you are not looking to pay for these services and/or just starting out, you can do this yourself manually, although it would require a bit more effort on your part.
A good rule of thumb is not to post more than 3 times per day. Most research shows that posting on social media once per day produces the best possible results. You can get creative and keep yourself accountable by making reminders on Google Calendar, or creating a schedule on Google Sheets. There is a mountain of ideas on the internet you can share and repost, so you will never run out of content!
At Margot Corporation, we use three different kinds of calendars to help us organize and manage our content; planning, creation and posting/release.
The Planning Calendar will help you plan the type of mediums you will use for your posts. This includes information like how often the content will be written, by who, and when it will be published. This is especially helpful when you have a whole team creating content and you want to keep track of all of your different content outlets as a whole.
The Creation Calendar will include the topic, content, type of medium, and keywords. This calendar goes into the specific details of the content itself, and helps to keep track of what and when things are being created.
The Posting/Release Calendar will keep track of what, when and where you post, as well as the stats of the posting. This can be used to organize your different social media platforms, however, you can also use this for other marketing tactics such as mailings or even handing out brochures.
- Make It Easy For People to Buy
Your social media should not be your primary page. You want to make sure that you have a website or platform that people can easily access to find specific information about your services or product. In social media profile descriptions, make sure you post a link to your website as a main landing page. Most consumers who are interested to buy or find out more about your products/services tend to look there first to find out how they can make purchases. This way, if a consumer is interested in your product or services, all it takes is just one to few clicks and minimal effort.
On Bounty’s Twitter description, they linked their website which has clear information about their products and any completing resources consumers would need. Also I have to mention that they changed their URL name from bountytowels.com to quickerpickerupper.com just for this profile description. This makes the URL something more interesting for consumers to bring attention to and want to click on.
Pro tip: If you are trying to sell specific products or bring more traffic to your website, try Pinterest! Pinterest is a visual marketing tool and you can link images of your products to the product purchasing page, or an infographic to a blog article you shared on your website. Here is a helpful article I found on Sprout Social that goes into depth about how you can use Pinterest to maximize traffic and sales.
- Invest in Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a very popular marketing tool because it works. Some have said that it delivers as high as 600% in ROI. Social media influencers have the power to connect with thousands of people and with more reach comes more potential consumers for your business. Have influencers tell a unique and engaging story about your brand, and their followers are more likely to listen and trust your product. Another effective way to increase sales is to provide these influencers with unique discount codes for their followers to use.
The wristwatch brand Daniel Wellington, sold one million watches in 3 years through the use of online influencers. To this day, you can find top-tier social influencers and lower-tier influencers both sharing their watches on their page.
Here, @heybiblee is modeling one of Daniel Wellington’s watches. She has an 11 million follower base on instagram.
You also don’t necessarily have to use influencers to promote your products. You can also reach out to your existing customers to post a few photos of your products in exchange for freebies or discounts. Intimate people to people promotions are much more trusted and are more likely to bring in more interest in your product.
Conclusion
Social media is a superpower to get your product or service out there and raise brand awareness. With the right implementation of social media strategies, you can bring your product or service the maximum success it deserves.
Written By: Seila Chen