Fact: Today, most brand owners and marketers use social media to grow their businesses. In fact, 92% of marketers will be using social media for growth purposes in 2022.
So it’s important to know how to grow your business with social media.
Social media will have about 4.7 billion global active users in 2022. This represents a 5.1% annual growth; on average, every user spends at least 2.5 hours daily on various platforms.
According to a report, at least 71% of social media users will purchase a product based on social media referrals. Therefore, regardless of your industry, you now have a chance to connect with billions of motivated consumers that love online shopping.
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However, you should do more than just post to maximize social media’s value. You’ll first need to come up with a rock-solid strategy. This will help you stay ahead of your competitors and convert your target audience into paying customers.
Regardless of your business you can leverage this strategy to grow your business. Let’s say you’re selling apparel, sunscreen products, or prescription sunglasses, the strategy will help expand your following and create an active community and devoted customers.
Here’s how to grow your business with social media.
Create a Plan in Advance
There’s nothing complex about using social media for commercial purposes. This is because we’re familiar with social media since it has become part of our daily lives.
But remember, you need to have a solid plan for any business strategy to work. The truth is, you don’t need to pay a dime to use social media platforms. However, you need to consider the time and effort you put into your social media as an investment.
You need a clear direction and plan to maximize your social media presence. This is essential even if you’re just starting or looking for gaps to fill your current social media strategy.
If you’re selling eyewear, finding a unique voice, tone, and messaging is vital to represent your brand.
Ensure you understand your target audience’s language and use it in your messaging. For instance, in 2020, 14% of adults purchased eyewear online. Try and figure out why this demographic purchased their eyewear online.
- What was unique about the messaging?
- How are the brands positioned online?
- What content did they use on their website and social media?
Understanding all these will help you produce customized content for your potential audience. Most brands use five types of content creation for social media. These include:
- Photos,
- Written content,
- Videos,
- Quotes,
- And reshares.
Before creating any content ensure you know what your potential audience likes to consume and where they hangout more. Prescription sunglass is all about visual appeal, so you need to ensure you create more visual content than written content. Moreover, you need to study and leverage the platform your competitors and potential audience use regularly. This will give you clarity on the type of content your eyewear audience enjoys.
But ensure you maintain balance even if one type of content performs better than others. Additionally, at the planning stage, you need to establish a posting frequency that your audience will get used to.
Identify Your Ideal Audience
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Understanding who is your target audience is vital for the growth of your business. Once you can identify your target audience, it becomes easier for you to understand their needs for your company.
You can learn the phrases your potential client uses to find groups on Facebook, Quora, Reddit, and Discord with a keyword strategy. Start by finding the frequently asked questions in these communities and the favorite brand that they like to mention.
This is an excellent place to start as it gives you clarity on the relevant type of content you need to create. Besides, it helps you understand customers’ journeys and opinions about your business niche.
After determining your target audience, you need to identify where they hang out the most. For instance, statistics show that the older generation uses Facebook more.
While over 50% of Instagram users are 34 years and below, also, Twitter is a favorite to the younger audience. 38% of these users are between the ages of 18 and 29. In comparison, Gen Zs are more inclined to use TikTok.
You can also study your competitors to identify your target audience. Look for their frequent hang-out zone. What’s their brand tone? What social platforms are they leveraging?
So if you’re selling prescription sunglasses, you might find that your competitors hang more on Instagram than on other sites. This might be true because of the IG’s nature to focus on pictures more.
You’ll need to show off the frames and lens on how they fit on consumers. So knowing where your target audience is most active will help you personalize the content to accommodate them.
Customize Your Content for Different Social Media Channels
Each social media platform has a unique demography. So when using social media to grow your business, you need to keep this in mind.
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Here are some of the different content that you can leverage for various social platforms:
Facebook has about 2.3 million monthly active users. It is one of the largest social networking platforms. Most people find it challenging to develop well-performing content for this platform. Often brands use Facebook to publish user-generated content, surveys, giveaways, and memes.
Instagram marketing is essential for brands. You need to understand its algorithms to maximize its potential. Since it’s a visual platform, its algorithms mostly favor short videos and photos. Most brands using Reels have realized excellent success. Reels help them share behind the scenes at their operations and helpful industry markets, among others.
On the other hand, TikTok is slowly becoming a giant among other social media platforms. You can create brief video content for or a 10 minutes video content.
So ensure you create different content for different platforms. This will help you maximize the potential of every platform.
Boost Your Search Rankings
Most people doubt if social media can help boost their search ranking. The truth is social media platforms can help raise your search engine rating. Your website’s domain authority rises with every increase in social media shares. Therefore, it will positively impact your page’s search engine rating.
There’s more to it than just the social shares. Most people will check your social media pages before visiting your website. They first want to learn more about your brand and products.
So ensure you optimize your website and social media with the same brand tone and messaging. This helps your target audience to notice the brand consistency on all digital platforms.
Moreover, consistency in messaging and high page visits helps to establish your brand as an authority in its niche. You can leverage free programs to monitor your social rankings.
Build Relationships
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Social media is more powerful because it allows you to communicate directly with your clients and followers. So ensure you develop strong relationships with your audience before you request a sale.
According to a study, about 44% of internet users use social media for brand research. They are mainly interested in understanding you as a brand and your core values.
To maximize the potential of your audience, ensure you interact with your audience. You need to leverage their mentions on your organic and advertisement content. This is vital as it helps build trust and cultivates a devoted following.
Most people like it when brands mention them or reply to them. It’s surprising to see how many loyal customers you gain by engaging with them on your content.
This is vital since every new follower, share, and like on your content help to boost your social algorithms.
Engagement in social media posts helps the algorithms to determine what users will see first. The only way to attract your potential audience is by building a relationship with them.
After gaining loyal followers through relationship-building, you will notice an increase in continuous revenues. Everyone loves new customers, but you need to have creative ways to retain old customers.
Most brands claimed that social media helped them to sustain customer relationships. Here are a few ways you can cultivate lasting relationships with your audience:
- Establish a relationship with other entrepreneurs and influencers in your niche
- Create a valuable Facebook group
- Engage with your followers through mentions on your posts and stories
- Leverage the built-in interactive tools on your social platforms
Track and Refine Your Performance
Studying what works and doesn’t is vital once you roll out your social strategy. However, the results should not discourage you, as you can constantly adjust your efforts.
You can leverage social media analytic tools to gain insights into your metrics. The tools will help you keep tabs on the most crucial metrics on your social platforms.
After tracking your performance, you need to find the most suitable ways to improve your plan. The A/B testing is a perfect strategy to help you make small changes that will impact your success.
For instance, you need to know what call to action works for your eyewear business. What made people buy prescription sunglasses on your social media platform? Is it when you asked them to learn more about prescription sunglasses or when you asked them to visit our website to buy?
This is essential to understand as it will guide you on the right content and call to action to create. You’ll learn whether the type of call action you use helps your potential audience have a complete conversation or not.
So ensure you track your performance and adjust the content for social media to be successful for your business.
Knowing how to grow your business with social media
Social media is a powerful tool for every business. It helps you interact with your audience effectively, attract new clients, and raise brand awareness.
You don’t need to implement all the strategies to maximize its potential. Start small if you find some of the plans overwhelming for you.
Increase your efforts and audience as you understand the most effective strategies for your brand. The beauty of social media is that you can always customize it in the best way it works for you and your budget. And also, you can use different strategies if the results are not pleasing.