Small businesses cannot shun away from the fact that social media is here to stay. Unfortunately, there are still some entrepreneurs who don’t know the value of social media, and they don’t know the right strategies to place their brands ahead of their competition.
What they don’t know is that it is now impossible to grow a customer base without a substantial social media presence.
If this is hard to believe, look at these figures – there are 1 billion Instagram users, 335 million Twitter users, and a staggering 2.23 billion Facebook users. In total, there are 3.8 billion social media users across the globe.
These figures communicate one thing – your target market is on social media!
As you research on things that matter in your life, such as how to bet on the Kentucky Derby or how to live a healthy lifestyle, you also need to find out ways that can help you build a strong brand on social media.
To help you improve your social media profile, below are a few ways no one will tell you about;
- Create a plan that has clear goals
Failing to plan is planning to fail. This is one old saying that you should remember before you start using social media for your business.
There are lots of benefits you can draw from social media, including engaging customers, providing support, expanding your customer base, boosting web traffic, getting insights and feedback, generating leads, and much more.
However, the truth is that you cannot delight in any of these benefits if you don’t create a perfect plan.
Ensure that the plan you develop has clear and well-defined goals. By knowing what you want to accomplish, you will be motivated to work on your social media campaign; thus, your social media presence will improve in no time.
- Develop audience-oriented content
One of the biggest mistakes that most business owners make is to create a content creation or curation plan that is not audience-oriented.
If you want to find success with social media, you need to identify the needs and interests of your audience, which will ultimately determine the kind of content you need to share.
People are always interested in brands that offer solutions to their problems. Therefore, regardless of the industry, you are in, do thorough research about your audience. Find out about their age, genre, location, interested, needs, challenges, pain points, and behavior.
With this information, develop top-quality content that focuses on fixing their challenges and fulfilling their needs. In return, your target market will perceive you as an authority in your niche; thus, they will be more inclined to your business. With a strong social media presence, you will eventually delight in more leads, conversions, sales, and profits.
- Choose the best tools to schedule and automate posts
Staying active on social media requires investment in time and dedication. Thanks to technology, there are a host of automation tools that can help you schedule and automate posts in advance.
There are many tools available in the market, but some of the best include Buzzsimo, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Buffer.
These tools will not only save you time by automating your posts, but they will help you respond to messages quickly and make it super easy for you to monitor multiple networks.
- Actively engage your audience
Even if you post the most valuable content on social media, you will not get the best out of it if you post and walk away.
To improve your social media presence, take time, and engage with your audience. As you create a connection with your audience, you will foster strong relationships and build a concrete foundation of trust with the prospects.
Some of the ways you can use to engage with your audience include;
- Starting and actively participating in conversations
- Replying to comments
- Sharing user-generated content
- Posing and answering questions
- Appreciating clients
- Addressing constructive criticisms and complaints
- Minimize the time you spend on promotions
Using social media is different from other channels when used for marketing purposes.
Marketers who use social media as a promotional platform don’t get as much success as those who use it for communication and engagement.
To boost your social media presence, use your platforms to meet the needs of your clients, and make sure promotional messages only take 20% of your content.
- Be consistent
If you treat social media as a one and done deal, you will be in for a rude shock.
Remember, it takes a lot of time and patience to cultivate a robust social media presence. Even with the right automation tools, you will still need time to monitor various platforms and respond to questions, messages, and conversations.
The number of times you need to post in a day to create effective engagements depends on the platform you are using.
For Pinterest, it is recommended that you post a maximum of 11 spins a day. For twitter, you need to post as many times as you can. For Facebook and LinkedIn, don’t post more than once a day, and limit your posts to five in a week.
This consistency, coupled with the strategies outlined above, will, without a doubt, reward your business with a reliable social media presence that will place it ahead of the competition.
