Being socially shy is sometimes considered fashionable, even classy. But not when it comes to business. If your business is not on social media (SM), you’re leaving huge wads of cash on the table.
For starters, do you know that 60% of the world is on social media? That’s an unpardonable number of prospects to miss out on!
However, it’s not enough to salivate at the potential social media has for businesses. The real challenge is standing out in the sea of businesses scrambling for a bite of the cake.
The solution is simple – positioning.
If you’re not well-positioned, you’ll be a spectator while your competitors will be doing numbers you can only dream of. And to position your business, you must promote it. Yes, it’s easier said than done, as there are myriad tips on how to promote business on social media out there.
How do you choose a suitable approach for your business? What steps should you take to promote your business on social media? Are there mistakes you should avoid? These and more questions will be answered in this article. Take a front seat.
Why you need a social media strategy
You can’t just start promoting your business on SM without having a plan in place. You’ll be working in futility. Standing out among millions of competitors requires a solid plan. That’s where a social media strategy comes in. Social media has its peculiarities. Therefore, to promote your business successfully in the landscape, you must understand how it works and have a tight strategy.
In essence, a social media strategy is a concise plan that defines your goals, how you’re going to achieve them and the social media metrics you’ll use to know if your tactics are working. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate or complicated. Just ensure it’s simple, specific and meaningful.
8 steps to promote your business on social media
Finding your way in the ever-evolving social media landscape can be overwhelming. You’re faced with tens of options, leaving you at crossroads and not knowing which way to go. With this comprehensive guide, however, you’ll be able to successfully promote your business on SM.
Define your marketing goals
Creating a roadmap for social media promotion is no child’s play. If you’re aiming for the best results, you must start with a plan. Having social media marketing goals ensures you’re working in line with your company’s mission and working towards achieving corporate goals.
Setting goals before you start any project enables you to measure your progress and go back to the drawing board whenever you’re stuck or confused. Please, don’t skip this step. If you do, you’ll be like someone who goes to the mall with money but doesn’t know what to buy. When you state your goals clearly, mapping out a plan will be easier.
Do a competitive analysis
Any business that ignores its competitors is setting itself up for failure. There are companies doing better than you in your field. Ignore them at your own peril. If they’re getting more business, there must be something they’re doing right. Study them to find out.
The information you get from analyzing your competitors should be used as points of comparison with your business so that you’ll know your strengths and weaknesses and how you can improve. You can always perform sop for managed service template to improve the documentation of the data gathered.
Identify and study your target audience
True, 60% of the world is on social media, but not all of them are your audience. And speaking to everyone equals speaking to no one. Identifying your audience will let you know who they are and where they are on the internet.
Studying your audience will also allow you to know how they think and behave. This information will guide you on how to find your target customers and the kind of content to create for them.
A deep understanding of your target audience is very important as they’re the ones you’ll be marketing to and you must know what language to speak to them to win their hearts. Imagine speaking French to a non-French-speaking Italian over dinner, only to find out at the end that they haven’t heard a single word you said.
To understand your target audience, try the following tips:
- Create an ideal customer profile: people who will buy from you share certain characteristics; use these common features to build a buyer persona
- Leverage existing customer data: use information you have on your current customers
- Do market research: market research helps you know what your target audience thinks about your product or service
- Carry out competitive analysis: find out those who patronize or visit the pages of your competitors to get a deep understanding of your target audience
Select the appropriate social media platform
So you have this appointment at a mall and you didn’t ask where in the mall you’ll be meeting the person. You get there and can’t reach them on the phone. So, you start walking from store to store, checking out people’s faces to see if they’re the ones you’re meeting.
The scenario described above makes no sense, right? But that’s what you’ll be doing if you start posting on social media without knowing where your target audience is. You’ll waste time, effort and money roaming over social media platforms without reaching your intended audience.
Finding out where your prospects are before promoting your business on social media is a smart move. If your audience is on Instagram and Facebook and you’re on Tik Tok and Snapchat, you’re wasting time and resources. Likewise, if your audience is on Linkedin and YouTube and you’re on every platform, you’re spreading your resources thin when you should be focusing them in one direction.
Plan your content
What makes up social media or even the internet? Content. SM is like an open arena where you get to speak with prospects. You have to be sure you’re saying the right words so you can convert them to customers. That’s why you have to carefully plan your social media content.
Here are some tips for planning great content on SM:
- Define your brand voice and tone: this is necessary for uniformity across platforms
- Create content themes: depending on what industry you’re in, create themes for your content
- Decide on your formats: examples of formats are memes, to-dos, how-tos, nuggets, guides, videos, etc.
- Create a content calendar: schedule when and where to publish what content
- Have an engagement plan: strategize on how to make your audience engage with your content
- Share other people’s content: share useful and related content
- Repurpose content: reuse content from platform to platform
Run paid ads
Ads are a quick way of improving website traffic, generating leads, driving sales and building brand awareness. Practically all social media platforms have ad plans. Find out the package that’s suitable for your business on the platform you’re at and run them. Ads give you visibility even without many organic followers.
Build a community
People often ignore SM community-building when planning their social media strategy. Social media communities provide connection and support, which can greatly help your brand. When you build a community around your brand on SM, you develop interpersonal relationships among your audience and form a closer bond with them also.
A social media community offers valuable information and insights on how your customers and prospects think and behave. It’s an opportunity to know what they think about your brand and the areas you can improve. This information helps a lot in making business decisions.
Invest in transaction monitoring system software
An investment in DataDome’s transaction monitoring system will come in very handy when you start reaping the benefits of social media promotion. When you start getting a slice of the SM cake, you need effective software that will help you monitor transactions. This system will help you reduce the occurrence of payment fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing and other forms of crime.
Benefits of promoting your business on social media
Sowing and reaping is a universal law. Therefore, when you invest in promoting your business on social media, you reap loads of benefits. Here are some advantages of executing solid social media strategies.
Enhanced customer engagement
Business promotion on social media involves using surefire strategies. These strategies include posting content that will increase customer engagement. With the right content, your target audience will like, comment, and share your posts. This interaction with your content helps you answer their queries, resolve their issues and build relationships with your audience.
Better brand awareness
Social media strategies increase your reach. This means many more people get to know about your product or service as well as your brand. As you promote your brand through informative and engaging content, you boost your brand’s visibility. More people become familiar with your brand and your brand perception gets a boost.
Improved targeting
By promoting your business on social media, you’re tailoring your promotions to the right audience. On social media platforms, you have options that help you target an audience based on demographics, behaviors and interests. Therefore, instead of putting out content for a general audience, you refine it to focus on a specific audience.
Budget-friendly marketing costs
Marketing costs can be nerve-wracking – but not social media marketing. You won’t have to break the bank to promote your business. Several pocket-friendly options are available to select from. All you need to do is choose the ones that suit your budget and target your audience. Start small and increase your budget as you grow.
Valuable analytics and insights
It’s not enough to promote your business; you need to know if your marketing strategies are working or not. Social media promotion gives you access to valuable analytics and insights into how your posts are doing. You get useful data on your audience’s engagement and preferences. With this data, you can make informed decisions to improve your marketing campaigns and grow your business.
Increased web traffic and conversions
The ultimate aim of marketing is to get more sales, which is what social media promotion does. With search-engine-optimized content, you get more traffic to your website and landing pages. This traffic increases the number of your prospects and, ultimately, your customers.
Competitive edge
No business can compete favorably in today’s world without a strong social media presence. To achieve this, you need to strategize, which not all your competitors do. When you deploy time-tested social media strategies, you are at an advantage. It’s your product or service that the target audience sees the most and your brand that gets registered in their memory.
Enhanced customer loyalty
We all know of brands that have turned their customers into fans. Their customers have become self-appointed brand ambassadors. This is the dream of every brand. It is not an easy fit, though; it requires a lot of investment. However, social media makes the journey faster. The more your brand is in the face of your target audience, the better your chances of turning them into fans.
Promote your business on social media and get a seat at the table
Would you rather scramble for crumbs under the table or take a seat with the big players? If you’re opting for the seat at the table, only a solid social media strategy will do. And really, it isn’t a walk in the park; you must put in the work.
You must have a clear definition of your marketing goals, know what your competitors are doing right or wrong, understand your target audience deeply and choose a suitable social media platform.
That’s not all; you must also carefully plan your content, run paid advertisements, build a community and invest in transaction monitoring software. Only when all these are done can you be well-positioned for a slice of the social media cake.
A slice of the cake includes better customer engagement, improved brand awareness, targeted audience reach, cost-effective marketing, useful insights and analytics, increased website traffic and conversion, competitive advantage as well as enhanced customer loyalty.
