How To Grow Your Business With Social Media
Saturday, September 17, 2022This post contains sponsored links, but all opinions are my own
With over 3 billion social media users, now is the time to get your business online. If you're looking to boost your sales and increase your small business presence, you need to be on social media. If lockdown has taught me anything, it's that being online is the key to business success, especially with the majority of shoppers turning to online shopping. Whether you're managing one account or five, social media marketing is vital to lift your business off the ground. Here's how to grow your business with social media.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is where you use social media to promote your product, business or service. Whether you're a freelance or selling a product, social media marketing is crucial as it differentiates your business from others' and gets your name out there. There are lots of reasons why you should use social media marketing for your business. Here are some of the reasons why you should make an account today!
- You'll have increased brand awareness
- It can help direct more traffic to your website
- It allows you to build relationships with consumers
- You can showcase your products and create sales
- You can create a positive brand identity
- Live and fast support can be given to customers
- You'll have improved communications between brand and consumer
Use Multiple Social Media Accounts
With most social media accounts being offered for free, it would be silly to not sign up to them all. Each social media channel has a different audience, so it enables you to create targeted campaigns for each market. Instagram is photo-based and has a younger audience, typically aged 14 to 29. You'll want to create campaigns that feature influences, idealistic lifestyles and share videos such as recipes, DIYs or even TikToks. Pinterest has a mainly Millennial aged female audience, and Twitter has a more inspirational vibe.
You want to make different content for each channel and be active where possible. Link all of your social media sites together, especially if you're offering a giveaway. It means your followers can migrate between the channels, giving you a bigger following. It's good to have multiple social media accounts as they each will help in different ways. If you want to learn more about social media marketing, I'd recommend this eBook!
Invest in Your Setup & Business Equipment
It’s important that you take the time to establish the right setup and invest in the business equipment you need to succeed. It may be time to move your office to a larger space and make your company official and look more professional. Selling products to consumers means having the right setup and equipment in place so you can deliver on your promise and have happy customers. It may be having items such as more computers, phones, and industrial printers with the right thermal transfer ribbon for the job. If you require more of these then you can view more thermal transfer ribbons here and make sure you have them readily available. This will help you grow your business as you'll have all of the thing you need to take on more demand!
Be Consistent
When you're posting on social media, you need to be consistent. You shouldn't spam 20 posts on one day and forget about your following the next. Update your followers regularly with consistent posts as this will increase your following and help you to connect with your customers. Businesses rely on consistency for growth. You could also look at having specific posting times or themed days like "Motivation Monday". It gives your customers something exciting to look forward to.
Be original with your posts as this will attract more traffic to your social media and website. If you're busy and don't have time to regularly update your feed, I'd highly recommend scheduling your content. I schedule all of my blog posts and tweets as I don't have time to post every day. There are numerous scheduling tools, such as Hootsuite and Tailwind. It's better to spend a whole day scheduling content, than to not have anything being sent out. Promotion drives you sales, so you're missing out on all the days you don't share something.
Drive Traffic To Key Pages
Social media is a great place to redirect people to your website. You should promote links to your external pages as this will drive your following to your website which will grow your business further. In between your typical product promotion, don't forget to promote your newsletter, showcase a product launch or share some news. It will allow your customers to connect with you. When choosing what pages to promote, think about what you want your customers to see first. For my business, I like to share my advertiser's page and my backlinks page, as those are ones I require customers for.
If you're going to direct your following, you need to have clickable content. To do this, make sure your posts are noticeable. Using the right pictures, fonts and colour schemes can attract potential customers to click onto your pages. If you've got 1000 followers, make sure they're not just inactive followers. Encourage them to click links, sign up to things and purchase your products.
Engage With Your Audience
One of the best ways to grow your business is by engaging with customers and other small businesses. Make sure you reply to any comments and messages you're sent. Most messages will be potential customers asking questions, so if you don't respond, you could miss out on sales. Similarly, if a customer has a complaint, you need to show that you've got good customer service by resolving it.
Engaging could be commenting, answering messages and talking to other small businesses. As a small business, it's important to support others in your position. There is also the potential to gain more followers from the other accounts you support. If you engage with your audience, you have the potential to grow your following by 25 a day, minimum. The more followers you have, the more likely they'll click your links and purchase your products. Simply engaging with people can grow your business immensely.
Provide Valuable Information
Followers look for content that is new, exciting and valuable. If you want to grow your business, you need to put out social media posts that attract your target audience and provide them with something different. Content should be unique from your competitors and something that can't easily be recreated. When growing your business, you should provide content such as business tips and motivation, along with updates to your business and your products.
By providing information that others aren't, you can increase your following. With so many social media users, you need to stand out, so providing valuable information will allow you to be different. The more valuable content you provide, the more likely you are to make sales. People buy more products when they trust the owner! I'd recommend coming up with a content calender for each social media account you have. For example, on Monday, you can share your goals for the week while at the weekend, share how you relax. People love to get personal, so if you show that you're a real human too, potential customers will find you relatable and start to show more of an interest. Followers love to know who is behind an account, especially as a small business!
Increase Engagement with Influencers
Bloggers are influential people, usually with a highly engaged audience. They already have a dedicated following, so if you're looking to grow your business, you should collaborate. Whether you're commenting on their posts or doing a collaboration, you should engage with influencers that match your niche. Social media allows you to engage with bloggers all over the world, so you can find one that is perfect for your blog.
Collaborative posts give the bloggers a chance to try out your product and promote it on their blog and social media. It gives your brand more recognition, growing it further. It also gives you honest reviews, so that you can improve your business further. You'll find that the blogger's followers will end up on your website or social media, generating potential customers. The power of an influencer is immense, so don't underestimate your interactions with them!
Social media has unlimited potential for promotion, you just need to utilise it the right way. Growing your business takes time, but the rewards can be amazing. Make sure social media is helping you to grow your business. It's one of the only free marketing tools out there! There are so many customers to attract and help you grow your small business. If you see a small business, give them a follow. If you're looking for something, try to purchase from an independent. Just remember, they're trying to make a living too. What would you add to this list? Let me know in the comments what works for you and your website!
3 comments
Thanks for sharing, it is important to grow on social media :)
ReplyDeleteNic | Nic's Adventures & Bakes
Wonderful post, thanks
ReplyDeleteI keep coming back to this post. It's very helpful and has some great links.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Em