Alternatives to Popular Social Media
Social media has emerged as a powerful marketing tool for businesses. 90% of brands apply social media to boost brand sensation. Whereas, 77% of them depend on social media to manage their brand reputation and 61% of them use it to drive sales.
Information technology'due south clear that social media, for businesses, is now an essential part of their marketing strategy. But do you lot know why?
A majority of consumers use social media for product research and to connect with brands. Co-ordinate to a written report by GlobalWebIndex, 46% of 16-24 year olds conduct product inquiry on social media.
Therefore, non being active on social media is no longer an option for brands. The question is how you can practise it effectively.
How to Use Social Media For Business Growth
There is more to social media than sharing the latest updates nigh your life. Social media for business concern is a whole unlike ball game. If you're new to using social media for business purposes, you may feel similar a fish out of water. Merely we've got some tips and tricks to go you started.
Let's accept a look at some of the best ways to leverage social media for business growth.
#1: Diversify Your Social Media Presence
When you're using social media for business purposes, you need to be proactive.
You should build your presence on multiple social media platforms to enhance your make's reach. Beingness active on just ane social media platform may limit your achieve in terms of audience demographics.
Secondly, your business organization' presence on various channels can help you lot enhance your online visibility and strengthen your search engine rankings.
Some of the well-nigh popular platforms that a majority of businesses use include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Pinterest is also gaining traction these days.
While each platform has something to offering, it is most impossible to manage all of the platforms effectively. As they say, in that location'south no bespeak beingness a jack or jane of all trades, master of none.
And then, you should choose the social media platforms that are best for your business and build a strong presence on them.
To observe the right platforms for your business, you lot showtime need to answer some basic questions such as:
- Which of the post-obit categories does your business fall in – B2B, B2C, or both?
- Who is the target audition of your concern?
- Which platforms does your target audition use?
- Do your competitors also use these platforms?
Once you learn the answers to these questions, it will be easier to effigy out which social media platforms you should target for your business.
Co-ordinate to Statista, Facebook tops the list as a preferred platform for both B2B and B2C marketers. LinkedIn is another major platform B2B businesses should focus on.
The below graph tin help you lot understand which social platforms B2B and B2C businesses should use.
Image via Statista
If y'all are doing B2C marketing, say for instance in the eating house industry or style industry, Instagram and Facebook are ii ideal platforms. Besides, if you take a business bureau or an institution, LinkedIn could help.
Yous should build and maintain your online presence on platforms where your target audience is active.
According to a survey by the Pew Enquiry Center , 73% of US adults use YouTube. The survey segregates social media users by their demographic groups.
Image via Pew Inquiry Center
#ii: Define Social Media Goals
The cardinal to social media marketing success for your business lies in setting up appropriate social media goals and KPIs. Without a clear agreement of your concern goals, it is difficult to measure out and optimize the effectiveness of your social strategy.
You should conspicuously state what you want to accomplish from your social campaigns. Some of the most common social media for concern goals include:
- Building make awareness
- Managing brand reputation
- Increasing community engagement
- Increasing sales
- Driving more traffic
Epitome via Hootsuite
Setting goals is crucial to social media success for your business. So, yous should focus on setting goals that are South.K.A.R.T., which means:
-
- Specific: Your aim should be specific and you should focus on a single goal at a time. For case, y'all want to grow your Instagram followers.
- Measurable: Define goals you tin can measure. For instance, you want to double the number of your Instagram followers.
- Attainable: Is is practically possible to achieve your goal? Think realistically whether it is possible for you lot to double the number of your Instagram followers under the nowadays circumstances.
- Relevant: Your social media goals should exist aligned with the objectives of your business.
- Time-based: E'er ready a borderline for meeting your social media goals. For instance, you want to double the number of your Instagram followers in two months.
#3: Competitor Analysis
Information technology is always wise to perform a competitor analysis to identify which strategies are working well for your competitors. You lot can analyze which strategies they apply to concenter customers on social media, what kind of content they mail, and which keywords they target.
As it is a fourth dimension consuming task, I recommend that yous use appropriate tools to make the job easier for you. SpyFu is a nifty tool for competitor analysis.
Image via SpyFu
SpyFu gives you access to the list of keywords your competitors utilize to attract traffic. You tin also figure out the search terms they are ranking for.
In one case the data becomes handy, you will be in a position to create a amend content and social ads strategy for your concern to generate more traffic.
#4: Plan Your Social Media Content Calendar
When considering the significance of content on social media, information technology'due south important that you realize "content" is a holistic term. Content includes text posts, videos, images, GIFs, infographics, memes for marketing, and more.
It plays a crucial role in executing business concern plans and achieving social media goals. You can create and share social media content for:
- Driving sales
- Improving brand recognition
- Educating your target audience
- Encouraging audience appointment
- Inspiring the community
- Improving customer service
Engaging social media content tin can assistance bridge the gap between your brand and customers. It can assistance yous create long-term relationships with your audience that will ultimately help you see your goals.
Here's how yous can create an effective social media content calendar for your concern.
1. Figure Out the Types of Content You Want to Use
Y'all should decide what type of content is best suited for your business' social media campaigns. Though image and text posts are the most common forms of content brands post, videos are condign increasingly pop.
According to Wyzoul, about 81% of businesses currently apply videos as a marketing tool. Effectually 85% of organizations consider videos as an important office of marketing strategy.
According to current statistics, YouTube is the most popular video sharing platform among marketers. More chiefly, it is also the second most popular social media platform with over ane.9 billion users.
Furthermore, US advertisers are likely to increment their video ads spending to Us $ 22.xviii billion by 2021.
Epitome via Statista
Additionally, businesses are also leveraging Instagram Stories for social media success. 64% of brands have already used Instagram Stories or are planning to incorporate them into their social strategies.
Image via Hootsuite
2. Use the Power of Storytelling
You can boost your social media engagement past using the power of storytelling. Artistic storytelling can be a powerful tool to attract and engage users. Information technology can likewise help yous build your brand's reputation.
Storytelling is an art that gives your brand a meaning and a reason to remain in the business organization. You should create and share powerful stories nigh your make, products, and services that can strike a chord with your audition.
Here'south how Dawn, a dishwashing brand, nails their social media marketing through storytelling. They highlight the fact that their dishwashing liquid is tough on grease, only their brand is considerate towards wild fauna.
Image via Dawn
3. Optimize Your Social Content with Keywords
Information technology is of import to optimize your social media content for relevant keywords. This can help you better the visibility of your content in relevant search results. In turn, information technology shines a limelight on your business.
But keyword optimization strategies differ for video content and text-based content. They as well differ based on the platforms you use.
- If you are posting a video on YouTube, you lot should utilise the target keyword in the championship. You also need to add a video clarification that is optimized with keywords and includes relevant hashtags.
For instance, I searched for "how to make french toast" on YouTube. The pinnacle two results listed videos with crisp titles with the target keyword, "french toast."
Image via YouTube
- For video posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you should write engaging captions with properly-placed keywords.You should also add together relevant hashtags to make your posts and Stories more visible.
The aforementioned applies to the times when you post images, infographics, and all of the other types of social media content.
Quality content coupled with properly-placed, relevant keywords can help increase organic reach. You can use Google'south Keyword Planner, Keyword Tool, and other keyword enquiry tools for this purpose.
four. Decide on Posting Frequency
How often should a business organisation page mail on social media?
At that place is no definite answer to this question. It totally depends on how much content you create, whether you are running a thematic campaign, and if you already have a prior posting schedule.
You can mail daily if at that place is relevant and useful content readily available. Whatsoever you decide to practice, make sure that you follow a schedule and endeavor not to stretch the fourth dimension gap between your posts.
Posting regularly on social media favors their ranking algorithms and helps your content gain more visibility. It also reflects that you are agile and gives your consumers a positive impression about your business concern.
I understand that posting regularly is not equally easy as it sounds. It requires proper planning and adherence to a schedule. That's why yous should consider using social media marketing tools to schedule your posts.
Some tools that tin help you lot schedule social media content for your business organisation include:
- Hootsuite
- Buffer
- Later
- Rignite
- Meet Edgar
- kuku.io
With the help of these tools, yous tin can create posts, upload videos and images, and schedule content for publishing on multiple social media profiles.
#five: Appoint with Your Followers
Being active on social media ways fostering deep relationships with your audience and it all starts when you lot engage with your followers.
Consumers' behaviors are evolving. They want to connect with real people who will listen to them. And the all-time place to connect with your followers and make them feel valued is social media. Your business needs to make an endeavor to be responsive on social media.
When you answer to comments or hit like, your gestures create an emotional bond betwixt you lot and your followers. This can help plough them into loyal customers.
76% of people expect brands to reply to their social media comments and 83% adopt to receive a answer within a 24-hour interval or less.
Image via Clutch
Too, ninety% of millennials look businesses to respond to their social media comments inside a day.
Image via Clutch
The below sequence of tweets shows how Buffer responded to their customers' comments.
Image via Twitter
Information technology can get difficult to filter notifications, track comments, and respond to posts quickly when you lot take other important tasks to manage. This is specially true if your business concern is operating with a limited workforce.
To make the procedure easier, you can use tools such as Spredfast, Sprout Social, Social Report, and SocialHub for help.
These tools enable you to rails and monitor brand mentions, likes, and comments. You can also employ them to filter messages and respond to them based on priority. This tin help y'all ensure that late responses don't hamper the reputation of your business organization on social media.
Engaging with fans and followers is non limited to replying to their comments. Along with posting relevant content, you lot can also host contests, polls, and live sessions on popular social networks to engage with your audience.
#6: Promote User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) refers to the content created by your customers, visitors, fans, and followers. Some common examples of user-generated content include retweets, make mentions, comments, and product reviews.
UGC can make your brand more attractive and valued. Moreover, it tin can help you to build your brand'southward trust and credibility. Since user-generated content isn't promotional or paid, consumers find it more trustworthy and authentic.
Consumers are 2.4X more likely to consider UGC as more authentic than the marketing content created by brands. The same report by Stackla likewise showed that user-generated content impacts the buying decisions of 79% of consumers.
Daniel Wellington is one of the most successful brands that has mastered the art of leveraging user-generated content.
They encourage consumers to utilize the hashtag, "#danielwellington" and post pictures with their watches. Then they pick the best pictures and repost them as part of their "#DWPickoftheDay" campaign.
Prototype via Instagram
You demand to amplify user-generated content to increase your brand's reach and credibility on social media. The post-obit strategies can aid you encourage users to create positive content about your brand:
- Engage with your consumers, fans, and followers regularly.
- Create campaigns with dedicated hashtags and inquire followers to use those hashtags when they post content on social media.
- Be honest and transparent with consumers.
- Allow them to share their views independently.
- Thank your fans when they share reviews.
#7: Rails Your Social Media Performance
Just the way businesses track their progress routinely, it'south necessary to keep a tab on your social media performance also.
Having a strategy to track your social activities is critical for your entrada success. Whether you are a B2B or B2C marketer, you should proceeds insights nearly the overall performance of your social media content and activities. This will help ensure that you reach your goals inside fix deadlines.
58% of marketers cite assessing the effectiveness of their social media activities as a top claiming.
Image via Hootsuite
Evaluating your entrada performance helps y'all measure your social media marketing ROI.
Y'all can identify the type of social media posts and ads that bulldoze the most traffic, leads, and sales. You can likewise identify challenges that hampered your business organisation' growth.
This data can and so assist you optimize your future social campaigns to achieve better results.
You can easily determine how your customers are reacting to the content your share. If needed, you tin can change your social media marketing strategy.
If you are struggling to runway results for your business' social media strategy, the tools mentioned below might help:
- Google Analytics
- Buffer
- Facebook Analytics
- Twitter Analytics
- Hootsuite
- UTM.io
#eight: Paid Social Ads and Campaigns
It requires a lot of time and try to keep upwards with the competition and stay on elevation of social media with organic posts. Organic posts might not be enough for your business if yous want to heave your social visibility.
Paid social media ads, campaigns, and promotions tin can aid you stand out from the contest. It tin can assist ensure that your message reaches the right groups of people at the right times.
The social media advertising industry is the 2d largest in the field of digital advert. The worldwide social media ad spending is expected to achieve $187.6 billion by 2023.
Paradigm via Statista
Simply paid ads and promotional campaigns come at a cost.
Here is a quick summary of the average price-per-click (CPC) of ads on various social media platforms:
Image via Falcon.io
Simply you tin can reduce the cost of ads without restricting their reach and views. You only demand to follow the below tricks:
- Always postal service relevant and high-quality content. This metric is known as "relevance score" on Facebook. It impacts the functioning of your social ads and it can also touch on their CPC.
A college relevance score tin significantly cut downwardly the CPC of your ads and ameliorate their click-through rate (CPR).
- Cap your bids and avoid setting a daily budget for your Facebook and Instagram ads.
- If possible, start with manual bidding on Twitter and then gradually heighten the bid prices when y'all gain more traffic.
- Select "Matched Audience" when you use LinkedIn ads to increase ROI. This volition assistance ensure that your ads reach highly-targeted audiences who are more than likely to visit and convert.
Conclusion
With evolving social media algorithms, brands are improving their social media strategies to grow their businesses. I promise that our in-depth guide will help you unleash the full potential of social media.
Do you have other tips on how to use social media for business growth? Delight feel free to mention them in the comments beneath.
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