How can you use Social Media to help grow, engage and ultimately sell to your audience?

As more and more businesses learn to use online marketing to help build their digital presence, it is important to think about your business’s social media growth strategy.

As more and more businesses learn to use online marketing to help build their digital presence, it is important to think about your business’s social media growth strategy.

It’s time to start focusing on how to grow your business online using social media. If it’s something you’ve not done very much of yet, it can be a little daunting.

Here are three points you need to consider:

  • How do I come up with a strategy?
  • What platform would be best to help my business?
  • What content should I post?

How do I get started?

Try not to overthink it. Using social media for your business needn’t be a chore, and can be a lot of fun once you have decided on, or planned a strategy.

If you already know which platform is going to be the best and most beneficial for your business, then you’re in a great position. If you’re not sure:

  • Have a browse through the platforms
  • Search popular hashtags for your industry/business type

You’ll be able to see where other similar businesses are and how successful their presence is on the various platforms. This will give you a clue as to where you should start focusing your efforts.

What content should I share?

Traditionally, and even in the present day, businesses are encouraged to be completely squeaky clean and professional. There is nothing wrong with this approach and can be a good strategy.

Obviously, it has its place, however social media is called social media for a reason. To grow and be successful on any social media platform, you need to include some level of personality and interaction.

  • People love to see a face
  • They love more than anything to read or be told, or shown a story

All of these things can be interwoven into your content that talks about your business.

When you make followers and potential customers feel like part of your story by reading about you, or seeing you, and understanding your products/services and your WHY, they will naturally want to help and support you.

Sharing content that is a little more entertaining than sales post will almost guarantee that followers are more likely to stick around to see what is next, and it ‘warms up’ your potential customer by keeping you at front of their minds when they need to make a purchase of your product/service type.

The two posts here show the difference in engagement between a relatable, humorous post and a post showcasing a product.

                             

How do I grow my platforms?

Growing your platform takes some work, dedication and patience. It is not going to happen overnight, however there are numerous ways in which you can start to build your following, and customer base.

  1. Initially, ask friends, family and other businesses to like and share your content.
  2. Share relatable and engaging content – it is much more likely to inspire people to share your posts, which means your page will get more reach and followers.

These two steps will ensure customers see your profile picture so you need to make sure that it is your brand and synonymous with your business. Some of those people may also check out your page and decide to follow.

  1. You can partner with a business that compliments yours, and run a competition, giveaway or some kind of offer.

For example, one of the rules could be that the entrants follow your page, or comment on the post etc. (Please always check the platform competition rules to ensure adherence, each platform varies). This way, more people will be coming to your page and seeing and potentially ordering your product or service.

  1. Run ads on Facebook and Instagram.

This is fairly simple to do and can be very cheap. There are lots of websites that offer very reasonably priced and even free courses on how to set up an ad. You can choose from various objectives, whether you want to gain more followers or get more traffic to your website.

Your platforms are your online shop window!

Show up and be the virtual sales assistant for your online visitors, and:

  • Remember to reply to followers’ messages and comments
  • Encourage customers to leave reviews on your Facebook page

This will help other potential customers to feel like they can trust your business and may then inspire them to purchase.