Social Media Marketing for Business

All too often, we see small business owners staying clear of social media. Most of the time they assume that social media is unnecessary for brand and business growth. That sort of thinking couldn’t be more wrong. Reports from Statista conclude that 91% of U.S. businesses are using social media marketing in 2019. If you believe that there isn’t an audience in the world awaiting to discover your brand, then you’re wrong again.

Overall, social media can boost your standing in the industry, reach new audiences, and increase sales. According to SCORE, 77 percent of small businesses use social media for key business functions like sales, marketing, and customer service. After all, if your competitors are on social media and engaging with their followers and customers, why shouldn’t you?

Social media increases:

1. Brand awareness
2. Search engine ranking
3. Website traffic
4. Customer happiness
5. Reach
6. Trust
7. Growth

Every business needs a social media presence and we’re here to show you how to use social media marketing for business.

Social Media Marketing Tip #1: Define your audience

Social media is one of those tasks that need research and plenty of time and effort to bear the right fruit. Simply opening a profile on every social media platform and posting about your products isn’t going to do your business any favors. Frankly, it would be a giant waste of time. Avoid making that mistake, by following the rules below.

After opening your social media accounts:

• Define your target demographic
• Study your target’s online habits and activity
• Make quality content and relevant ads

Social Media Marketing Tip #2: Choose the right platform and make a social media plan

If you thought you could post the exact same content on all social media platforms guess again. Each and every social media channel is different and has its own voice. While Facebook caters to older generations, sites like Instagram have a younger audience. You may be able to sell your products on both platforms, but you’ll have to present your content differently.

Also, not all industries will benefit from social media in the same way. Your product/service may be popular on Instagram, and then a complete dud on Twitter. Find out where your audience is and if that channel produces high sales and engagement. For example, if you want to create a LinkedIn account, it may not be the best place to reach customers, but it’s useful for networking and B2B.

After you choose the right platform to talk with your audience, dedicate a lot of work and time to make a social media plan for your business. Depending on the platform, your plan needs to matches with your target’s online habits, likes, and dislikes. Eventually, this leads us to the next crucial step that will define the success of your online efforts.

Social Media Marketing Tip #3:
Focus on engagement and build trust

When you use social media marketing for your business, focus on audience engagement. You can measure your business’ social media engagement in likes, comments, shares, website clicks, and saves. Social media isn’t a one-way communication channel so if you’re doing this right, you should receive some interaction. It’s a conversation. Social engagement is about starting discussions and getting involved in what’s happening around you. Boosting engagement must affect business goals, otherwise, there’s no real benefit. Always make content around what your target cares about. If you do this, they’re more likely to engage with you.

If you want to grab your audience’s attention, here’s what you’ll need to do:

Establish Brand Trust

1. Interact with industry influencers
2. Add to discussions
3. Reach out to business partners

The goal at this stage is to build trust through social media. In the end, these efforts will show that you are credible and have an understanding of your customer base.

Social Media Marketing Tip #4: Create amazing content

Content is anything you want it to be and comes in many forms. For example, good content can be blog posts, videos, and how-to lessons, podcasts, quizzes, and engaging photos. Also, posting on a regular basis will lead to more website traffic, and in the end, more sales.

Use Amazing Images

It’s no secret that great pictures capture our attention. In fact, beautiful pictures attract audiences of all ages. You can download free high-quality photos from sites like UnSplash and Pixabay. Then, produce eye-catching pictures by using graphic design tools like Adobe Photoshop or Canva.

Social Media Marketing Tip #5: Invest in video marketing

Social media in itself is an investment, and if done right, can have a huge ROI. Don’t be surprised that you’ll have to invest time and money to create quality content for your business. That includes video. Since pictures and graphic designs are easier forms of content creation, many business owners avoid video marketing. We think this is a mistake.

Video marketing is growing as the preferred ad format for social media marketing for business. As a result, people have shown to prefer video content. Also, studies have shown that by 2020, video will make up 80% of online user internet traffic.

This type of marketing is an easy way to gain some extra eyes on your business and gives viewers exclusive insight. But, be warned. Simply recording a video and uploading it without editing may seem like the fastest thing to do to just get the job done. As a result, your video quality will suffer and trust us, your audience will take note.

Here are a few tips on how to get the most out of videos for social media marketing for your business.

Video Marketing Ideas:

• Product spotlights – Create how-to videos.
• Behind the scenes – Show your customers the day-to-day running of your organization. Introduce team members.
• Announcements – Also, you should let visitors know about current sales, upcoming events, or new products.
• Industry expert– Share your experience or comment on industry news.
• Testimonials – Lastly, encourage customers to post testimonial videos or share reviews.

Where you can publish videos:

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn

Fun Fact: LinkedIn boosts the content of users who post videos

Social Media Marketing Tip #6: Double-check quality

As talked about earlier, before you post any videos check the display and quality. Without doing some final testing, all of your hard work could go to waste.

Before you publish, ask yourself :

• Do my videos load and play smoothly on all browsers?
• Do they display clearly on mobile devices?
• Have I included a call-to-action button, and does it work?

Social Media Marketing Tip #7: Micro-influencer marketing

You may take an influencer-focused approach to content. As a result, your social media plan will include influencers with big audiences in all types of content. Generally, social media influencers make money by advertising a product or service. Target micro-influencers — influencers with 3-10 thousand followers — to widen your product/service reach. Also, you should offer micro-influencers complimentary samples or non-cash rewards.

Social Media Marketing Tip #8: Have a PR team

Hire a social media team

If you don’t have time to manage social media, hire a social media team. Many companies have teams that are in charge of social media. When you’re just starting out, you may want to hire only a couple of people. Start off small and expand as your company grows.

Respond to Reviews and DMs

Some people will visit social media pages to post reviews of the company. Whether those reviews are positive or negative, you should respond. Thanking people for a positive review of your company goes a long way. When you receive negative responses, approach it carefully.

Always respond in a timely fashion. If you don’t, then you give the impression that you don’t care about their business.

Social Media Marketing Tip #9: Create an SEO plan

Search engine optimization is important for reaching social media marketing success. However, many people don’t know how exactly it can be helpful in their marketing plan. If the SEO plan and social media are not in line, a business will not improve their online presence.

One can add in an SEO plan to social media in a wide range of ways.

Here’s what SEO can help:

• Content Planning – Increases the quality of online presence.
• Growth – A business can improve results if it combines the power of SEO and growth tactics.
• Website Development – Addresses knowledge sharing, speed optimization, mobile optimization, and technical audit.

Lastly, SEO overlaps with many important areas of social media marketing and should be added to all business plans. Therefore, having an SEO plan, helps your business reach its high-performance goals.

Social Media Marketing Tip #10: Track
marketing metrics 

Once you develop post-worthy content, measure the performance of your marketing efforts. It may be difficult to know what’s working when doing social media marketing for your business. That’s where marketing metrics come in.

Marketing Metrics enable you to keep an eye on how your marketing efforts are doing, so you can easily notice the ones that are doing well, and pull the plug on the ones that aren’t working out. This saves you a lot of time & resources and helps teach you how to use social media marketing to drive your business and lead you in the right direction.

• Brand Search Queries – This is the number of times people search for your business online. They can do this by searching your company name directly or similar products. This is a great way to measure the amount of interest people have about your business. You can track your brand queries by using Google Trends, Google Analytics, or Google Keyword Planner.
• Website Visitors – These are the people who visit your website. Each website visitor is a possible customer, so it’s important to keep track of them. Use Google Analytics to track this information. Also, Google Analytics shows you the amount of time people spend on your site and the pages they visited during that time.
• Conversion Rate– is the percent of website visitors who sign up, download or buy a product/service. The more conversions, the better. It means people are engaging with your business and that you are successful in achieving your marketing goals.