If you are still thinking of why you need to promote your business with social media, here is a statistic that will help you make an informed decision.
According to Smart Insights,
There are 7.5 billion people in the world of which 3.1 billion people are active social media users.
Need we say more? Whether you have a small or established business, there are a number of reasons why you need social media.
Some of which include:
- Brand Awareness
- Customer Service
- Brand loyalty
- Lead generation
- Social media listening, influencing and monitoring
- Increased sales
This is why it’s imperative to use social media to promote your business. If used effectively, you are well on your way to achieving your business goals.
In this article, we’d like to share 7 ways you can use social media to great effect. Let’s get started.
1. Share contents on the right platform
There are many social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. But your target market is not on all these social media platforms. The very first step you should take before promoting your business with social media is to find out where people who might be interested in your business can be found.
Who are the people you are targeting? Are they on Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat? Which kind of content will they prefer? Are they business professionals or students?
All this information will help you make an informed decision about the best social media platform to use. For example, if your target market is students, LinkedIn isn’t the best place to promote your business. However, If you do more videos, then Instagram and YouTube should be your go-to platform.
Do your research and find what works!
2. Provide Value
This cannot be overemphasized enough. The best way to win over people on social media is by providing them with value. Plenty of it!
The mistake many businesses make is to sell sell sell! Social media is not a place to sell.
There are 3 reasons why people use social media.
- To get Information
- To get Entertained
- To get Connected
Focus on giving them something that will benefit them. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t promote your product. However, don’t overdo it.
You can obey the one-in-seven rule where 1 of your post is promotional and the remaining 6 are content-based. You can also follow the 70-30 rule where 70% of your posts are content-based while the remaining 30% are promotional.
Contents can be fun facts, trivia, questions, tips etc. Get creative!
3. Engage! Engage! Engage!
Has someone ever called you only for the person to remain quiet on the phone?
This is what happens when you post contents without engaging your customers.
People want to communicate with people, not brands. So you have to be interactive. Answer questions, reply comments, use light humor, attend to inquiries or complaints promptly.
Doing all these will endear you to your fans. It’s not rocket science!
4. Tell stories. Lots of it
One of the things that have been consistent since the beginning of time is stories! People love stories. They get fascinated by it.
This is why you should make it part of your marketing strategy. Share stories about your brand, clients, employees, etc. and watch as your customers become your advocates.
5. Give away freebies
We all love free things. Don’t you?
We understand you want to make a profit and rightly so but giving away freebies every now and then can quickly help you get more customers.
Freebies can be discounts, coupons, ebooks, free trials, etc. Anything that is free, relatively cheap and beneficial.
You can even run contests and give winners freebies. It makes it more engaging and they’ll stick to you like glue.
6. Build a community
Rather than trying to gather plenty of followers, concentrate on building a community of people who are interested, engaged and loyal to your business. What shall it profit you to have 100,000-page followers and only about 100 of them like or share your posts?
Also, in as much as you are trying to build a community, you should also try to join other communities that are related to your industry.
There are many of them on LinkedIn, Facebook, Whatsapp, Quora, etc.
Contribute, offer pieces of advice, solve problems, answer questions and share your knowledge.
If you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your field, people will naturally be interested in what your business has to offer.
7. Leverage Employee Advocacy
It’s no secret that the internal customers (employees) are the biggest brand advocates. They help increase word of mouth communication for your business.
Chances are they are already sharing your contents but you can get them to do more simply by creating an employee advocacy program.
You can reward them by praising their actions or by offering incentives and watch as your business flourishes.
Conclusion
We’ve shared 7 effective ways you can use social media to promote your business. If you apply them to your current strategy, you are guaranteed to see greater results, regardless of your goals.
As a recap, we talked about;
- Sharing contents on the right social media platforms.
- Providing value is very important.
- Engaging with your customers.
- Using stories to build your brand.
- Giving away freebies.
- Building a community and joining as many as you can.
- Lastly, getting your employees to be your brand advocates.
We really hope you’ve found them helpful.
If you need help or guidance in using social media to promote your business, simply Contact Us. We’d be happy to assist.
Do you have questions or comments concerning social media? Please feel free to leave a reply below.
