How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Business: 22 Must-Know Strategies and Hacks for Growth
If you’re a brand owner or marketer there’s a high chance you’re already using social media to grow your business. If you’re not… It’s time to fix that; in 2022, almost 92% of marketers are using social media for their businesses.
According to the latest statistics, there are 4.65 billion social media users worldwide in 2022—a 4.8 percent increase from a year ago. Each user spends an average of 2.5 hours per day on different networks.
But it’s not enough to simply be on social media and post for the sake of posting. In order to grow organically, stay ahead of the competition and convert your target audience into paying customers you need a rock-solid strategy in place.
How to Promote Your Business on Social Media
According to a 2020 report published by Datareportal, We Are Social, and Hootsuite, social media users are spending an average of two hours and 24 minutes per day across an average of eight social networks and messaging apps. Of those networks, Facebook continues to be the most used, followed by YouTube and Instagram [1] .
In short, there’s a huge advantage to learning how to promote your business on social media—if done successfully, you’ll be marketing your business to your target audience and drawing people to your website or location, hopefully resulting in more sales, and consequently, increased revenue.
1. Properly circulate—and cross-promote—your social media profiles.
When you’re figuring out how to promote your business on social media, one of the first steps you’ll take is setting up your profiles on the various platforms that you think best-suit your business—whether Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Once you’ve set up your profiles, however, they’ll do no good in helping promote your business if no one knows they exist. Therefore, one of the best things you can do is promote your social media profiles across your business website, email communications (as shown below), and even in your physical store.
In addition, it’s also worth cross-promoting your social media profiles across different channels. In other words, this means you can use your Instagram profile, for example, to promote your business Facebook page.
If you start to gain a particularly large following on one platform, you might use that platform to market your other channels as well—and therefore, reach the different audiences that frequent those particular channels.
2. Use a content calendar and schedule your posts.
One of the most difficult parts of learning how to promote your business on social media is staying organized—especially if you’re using multiple channels. Therefore, in order to streamline your social media efforts, you might consider using a content or social media calendar to plan your posts ahead of time.
Depending on your schedule, you might make your calendar a month, or a few weeks at a time—but either way, planning in advance will help you stay organized—plus, it will give you the opportunity to think about your social media marketing strategy and put additional thought into your processes.
Although you can certainly make a calendar in Google Sheets or Excel, you might also opt to take advantage of a social media scheduling platform, like Hootsuite or Buffer, which allows you to create your calendar within their software. Even better, these platforms give you the ability to schedule your posts ahead of time, which can be a huge time-saver for busy business owners.
3. Capitalize on trends, especially those that relate to your audience.
When you’re learning how to promote your business on social media—a great way to get started if you haven’t necessarily gained traction yet (and even once you have) is to capitalize on social media trends, popular hashtags, and even social media “holidays.”
As an example, if you’re building a social media strategy for your restaurant, you might capitalize on trends like “#thirstythursday,” or “National Pizza Day,” or even simply “#Instafood.” All of these trends will not only help you connect to your existing followers, but place your business amongst the larger community that’s participating in those hashtags or holidays.
Of course, you’ll want to capitalize on trends that relate specifically to your business, your audience, and the particular social media platform in question. With those examples we just mentioned, you would want to incorporate them into Instagram posts, as opposed to Facebook or LinkedIn posts.
Additionally, like with restaurants, you’ll find that your industry has its own trends that you can participate in. As another example, if you’re a fashion business, you’ll be able to post “#OTD,” or, outfit of the day, as well as “#fashionfriday.” A simple Google search, or search on your social media platform, will help you identify trends and popular posts that may work well for your business.
Grow Affordably
Yes, social media isn’t a place to be overly salesy, but after all, it’s a marketing channel and you need not ignore the opportunity to make sales, should it present itself. Sponsored info on timelines, videos with CTAs, cross-channel retargeting and shoppable posts are the mainstay of social media.
Marketing costs add up, and not every business can afford huge campaigns. But you can get a lot of value for your dollar with social media advertising. Your business, regardless of size or budget, has an opportunity to grow your audience and reach your objectives through ads on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Even if platforms such as Instagram are primarily geared towards engagement, there are established ways to increase sales on them.
Most businesses are data-driven, but social media isn’t a set-in-stone science. For example, you can scroll by an ad that has a picture of a huge scoop of melting chocolate ice cream topped with a mound of whipped cream. You may not think twice about it, but three days later, you may stop by Baskin-Robbins because you were craving a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Social media can contribute to the buyer’s decision-making process like that.
“Social media, unlike other kinds of advertising, can be notoriously difficult to track,” said Steve Pearson, CEO of Friendemic. “Most consumers say it takes many touch points in their customer journey before a purchase. A lot of those are undoubtedly on social media and online review sites, but customers aren’t necessarily citing those when they walk into a business as the last touchpoint that brought them in today.”
When building an ad campaign, know who you’re trying to reach and what goal you want to achieve so you don’t waste any of your budget on unhelpful advertising. Avoid overly salesy ads, and opt for content that educates or entertains (or does both at the same time).
Provide Support
Social platforms have successfully broken down barriers between companies and their customers. Now, instead of calling a customer service line, many people turn to Facebook or Twitter to solve problems or find information.
Social media is a crucial part of your business marketing, but it doesn’t have to be stressful to manage. Take the first step, create a profile, and start engaging with your customers.
As it continues to weave itself into the daily patterns of our lives, more consumers will go to new and upcoming social platforms for purchasing decisions. Those who have a strong social media presence and branding will increase conversion rates, while those without active social media campaigns could lose potential customers. Which company do you want to be?
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Sources:
https://www.kontentino.com/blog/use-social-media-to-grow-your-business/
https://www.fundera.com/blog/promote-social-media
https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/why-social-media-is-important-for-business-marketing/