Social media proves to be a powerful tool when it comes to growing a business. It allows companies to reach out to their customers, to get exposure and traffic, and to sell their services and products.

Your customers are likely to spend a lot of time on social – be it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube.

Your customers are already interacting with brands through social media, perhaps even with your competitors. It’s nothing new that purchasing decisions are influenced by social media.

If you’re not taking advantage of social, you’re missing out on an inexpensive and effective way to reach your ideal customer base.

It is critical for any business to have a social media strategy.

Here are ten ways social media marketing can grow your business:

1.    Start with a plan

Set social media goals and objectives. What is it that you are trying to achieve?

Get more people to visit your website? Reach as many people as possible within your target market? Raise your company’s profile? All this and more is possible with social media marketing.

If you’re already using social media, conduct a social media audit, and evaluate your existing efforts. Create a social media calendar that will help you post the right content to the right channels. Use 80% of your content to educate or entertain your audience and use the other 20% to promote your business or sell your products.

2.    Decide which platforms are right for you

You don’t have to be on every social media platform. With so many channels to choose from, deciding which ones you should be on can be difficult. Knowing where your audience spends their time online can help. Do the research and join these social media platforms. If your audience is primarily on Facebook, then there is no point in posting content on Twitter.

3.    Know your audience

Do you know who your audience is and where they’re active?

To find and grow your audience on social, you first need to understand them truly. How old is your audience? Where they live, what are their interests, and behaviour specifications? Once you have a clear picture of who your ideal customers are, you can revisit your social media marketing strategy, and improve your targeting. This way, you will meet your prospects where they are.

4.    Develop trust with customers

Is it enough to post regularly and run ads? Unfortunately, it’s not. The whole point of social media is to be social.

Many brands come and go on social media, but the ones who inspire consumer trust and interaction– stay.

So, how to inspire that type of engagement? By encouraging user-generated content. Ask customers to review your company. Make videos so your audience can see the face behind the business. Talk to your customers! Answer their questions and make them feel heard.

5.    Paid social media advertising

One of the best and quickest ways to reach your target market is to use ads. You can drive traffic to your website and increase conversions. You can grow your social media pages or re-engage previous prospects with retargeting ads.

Paid social media advertising is cost-effective, efficient, and measurable. It can tell you which ads are working, how many people are seeing them, who’s clicking on them, where are they from, etc. You can also optimise your ad instantly if they’re not performing according to your social media objectives.

6.    Website and Social can work together

Did you know social media leads in driving traffic to a website? There are many strategies to boost website traffic, and social media plays a crucial role in it. Your website SEO will rank better if you add links to your social media profiles.

Promote your blog content via social media. Encourage your website visitors to share your web content by embedding a social media sharing tool.  Consistent interaction means better customer experience, which means – more traffic to your site.

7.    Go Visual

One of the best ways to get attention on social media is to use visual content. We’re more likely to remember information if it includes an image or video. Social media posts that include images are more likely to get more likes and comments. Showing is always better than telling.

72% of consumers prefer videos over manuals to decide on a buy. Create highly shareable visual content. Use images, emojis, GIFs, infographics and charts. A promotional video or an animation can go a long way to helping your content and your social media channels to stand out.

Stock photos are great, but it’s always better to hire a professional photographer or graphic designer to create custom content for your company.

8.    Create brand recognition

Brand recognition is the ability of a consumer to recognise one brand over other brands. It is a critical element of building brand awareness.

You want your customers to remain familiar with your company, so they consider your product or service when they make purchase decisions. If you want to be the first choice of your customers, then your social media presence shouldn’t look like everyone’s else’s. Don’t just post a picture or link and call it a day. Invest in increasing your brand awareness.

Organise giveaways and offer discounts. Take customer’s feedback seriously and learn from your analytics to form a better social media marketing strategy.

9.    Add a strong Call-to-action (CTA)

You need to be clear about what you want from your audience on your social media channels. It may be to “Read more”; to “Sign-up” for a newsletter; to “Download” something, or to lead users to a landing page.

Call-to-action is a stimulus to do something to achieve something.

CTA’s motivate your customers to interact with your content. If you get your audience to communicate with you, you are one step closer to the faster return on investment.

To add a strong CTA means to get more business. Customise CTA’s by the social media platform. Also, make the benefit visible. If you reader clicks the “Read more” CTA, what is in it for them? What value do you offer?

10.  Quality over quantity

Social media is about writing quality and useful content for your followers. It is a noisy space where consumers are getting bombarded with content from competing brands. Take more time to generate high-quality content instead of just posting because you think you need to. Posting more won’t necessarily give more brand exposure. The quality makes all the difference. If your social media posts are lengthy but fail to educate, entertain, and offer value – your work has gone waste.

Strategically planed marketing on social media can bring remarkable success to your business. Don’t sit on the social media sidelines! Reach new customers and educate them about your offerings.

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