As a business owner you may think that social media is something best left for children or at least outside work – After all you run a serious business in a serious sector.
Well just hold on a minute – while we appreciate that you’re unlikely to seal a multi-million deal in the comments of a facebook post, social media can still really help get you to that deal.
After all it is very likely that your prospects are among the 4.2 billion people that use social media everyday and what’s more they are in a more relaxed state of mind using it then they would be by if your contact them directly by email in the office.
So let’s look at the power of social media and get a start on how to maximise it’s benefits.
4.2 billion people use social media – here are the main social media platforms they use
– YouTube
– Tiktok
The Key Benefits of social media for your business
Help people get an awareness of your business
Even the most serious professionals in your sector enjoy some ‘downtime’ using social media. This is a great time to reach them and make them aware of you while they browse.
Put a human face to your brand
These days one important focus for any business is to build status as a trusted company to work with. Honest, authentic human content is a great way to do this.
Establish you or your business as a thought leader
Creating content on social media that contains your opinion or expert view on hot topics in the sector is a powerful way to establish your credentials as a thought leader.
Make Google happy by showing a complete digital footprint – boost website traffic
Google is looking for businesses that are organised and active. Those are the businesses that it will reward with greater prominence in the search results. Active and correctly linked social media platforms are a great way to achieve this.
Provide a powerful ‘listening’ channel so you can gauge sentiment around your brand
Even Social media is a great channel to use to understand what is important to your target audience. You can observe comments not just on the sector but also on your business. It’s really important to respond correctly – possibly in comments on social media or perhaps even changing the way you address topics on your website. A free market research tool!
Find allies and influencers to work with
Social media is a great way to find out who the important thought leaders and influencers are in your sector – it may be that a useful alliance can be formed.
Provide a quick chat channel
If appropriate social media can be used as a really great way to respond to queries quickly and easily rather than have someone filling a form and wait for reply they can get an instant message from you
Business Growth
All the benefits above add up to one huge benefit and that is business growth. Social media will help to increase the size of your audience and visitor numbers to your website. both of these are likely to lead to more sales!
Social media can help you connect with your target audience, increase brand awareness, humanise your brand, establish your brand as a thought leader and stay in the minds of your customers.
To grow your brand reputation online it is vital to include social media in your online digital footprint (link to digital marketing essentials here). Your brand needs recognition, a way to communicate seamlessly with online users and potential customers. Therefore, it needs a platform to create brand awareness, allow users to share their thoughts, reviews and/or ask their questions about your brand.
How to start to grow your social media presence. The journey starts, and now you need to source content. Where do you start?
Research and planning
Start by looking at your competitors, your trade publications in your sector and any notable speakers or experts. Observed which subjects that they discuss gets the most engagement on social media.
Remember you’re not here to copy them but to provide your own opinion or angle on subjects the more authentic your posts are the better. bland corporate waffle really will not drive the engagement you seek on social media
Implementation
Try to get expert help when setting up your platforms from the simple things like making sure you have the right header and profile image through to the more complex technical side of linking up your social to your websites all this needs to be done correctly so that your impact is maximised
Content Calendar
Is social Media platform that dies i.e. completely runs out of fresh content is something to be avoided at all costs so as social media calendar with all your post planned out for the month ahead is a great way to make sure that this doesn’t happen.
Try to organise a flow of images that are not stock shots but ones that you have sourced yourselves and relate only to you. Ensure that someone writing your social media posts is an engaging writer and allow them to have opinions and thoughts on the subject of the day
Linking and hashtags
Strategy around linking and hashtags is important but a game for the Beginner this can be challenging so either do do some good desk research or ask for expert support.
Communication on social media
On social media you don’t just get to see your users (potential customers) like, sharing and commenting on your posts. You can engage with your users, see what their likes and dislikes are. Ask what they would like to see and not see. This acts to fine tune and improve your content which will grow your audience steadily over time.
By managing your reputation online seamlessly, and being able to immediately address any compliments, complaints, reviews you not only grow your social media presence but build your brand.
People feel more confident and trust a brand more if they can engage directly with them from all online platforms. It humanises a business and allows you to be in tune with your followers. Engaging on these platforms also allows you to deliver exceptional customer service and customer support.
Don’t forget to measure your success on social media it’s an exciting metric
With all major social media platforms offering some form of analytics, you get to see how your platforms grow, what demographic of people they are growing by. Allowing you to tailor your social media marketing strategy for your real audience.
You get to target your advertising in an inexpensive way to promote your business and distribute your content. With social media integrating into other platforms allowing purchasing online to be seamless and allowing for growth and improving on your ROI.
Social Media planning and execution is something we love to do.
We would never recommend handing your entire social media over to an external resource but it can be very useful to have strategy and some of the implementation done by experts such as our team here at The Ambitions Agency lead by Liyana. We would always aim to amplify the authentic voice of the brand – your voice – rather than water it down. We’re experienced in doing this and to find out how this could work for you get in touch today.
