In today’s digital world, more and more businesses utilise social media strategies to showcase who they are and attract new customers. With 4.26 billion active users worldwide (Statista) who spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes on social channels every day, being social can help to increase your business’s reach, sales, and expand your professional network.
Put simply, social media has become an increasingly important element when it comes to promoting your business.
While traditional marketing can be limited depending on your budget, social media on the other hand is relatively low-cost and gives you a direct line to current and prospective customers. Which is why 71% of small-to-mid-sized businesses use social media to market themselves.
The more you’re online, the more chances you have of people finding your business. That’s why our new guide explains how you can stand out from the competition and what content works best to attract people to understand more about you and what you do.
There’s no point in setting up social profiles if you don’t understand who your audience is. Do you know their age, gender, interests, profession, etc? Once you know that, then you can think about how to engage with them. It will also help you to find out which social networks your audience prefers and choose the best platforms to reach them – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
Once you know which platforms you want your business to be on, it’s time to set up your profile page. They will become the foundation for your branding, so getting it right at the start will mean less time later on.
To create a ‘stand out’ social media profile, you should think about not just what you can post about, but how it looks. That means the right profile picture, as it’s how people are introduced to you and forms their impressions from the start. Then the second visual element is your background photo (banner) at the top of your profile page to grab people’s attention.
Next is making your headline more than just a job title to say a bit more about what makes you tick, then turning your summary into your story. It’s your chance to tell people who you are and what you do, so try to bring to life why your products or services matter and the difference they can make.
Here’s some top tips when you’re creating you profile pages:
Once you’ve set up your profiles, you might wonder how many times you should be posting content. According to HubSpot’s 2022 State of Marketing Report, businesses vary their posting frequency based on the platform. For B2B companies, that shows as being:
Remember; consistency and relevance are key. Posting often is important, but creating quality content that encourages engagement from your audience is more important. Stick to what’s relevant to you and your audience.
From company updates, testimonials, tutorials and beyond, social media is a prime place to show off your products and services. Make sure that posts focus on one idea with a clear title or key message, so the reader can easily and quickly identify if it’s relevant to them with images, gifs or videos. Ask questions or create a poll to prompt conversations and encourage customers to create content about your product or service. And, don’t forget to include Hashtags and @ mentions for broader reach.
The Sprout Social Index™ has found that the most popular types of content are:
There’s lots of information about the performance of your page and posts from the insight’s tabs or the analytics section of any social media scheduler that you use. This will show you information that will help to understand what works, and what doesn’t, such as; what times people interact with your page, what posts had the best reach, how many people watched more than 10 seconds of your video content and much more.
According to Hootsuite, these are the most important social media metrics to track:
The amount of marketing budgets spent on paid social media campaigns has been steadily rising and it’s clear it’s becoming a staple in marketing strategies across both small and large businesses. That’s down to the fact paid social media helps to target specific audiences, is quicker to reach your audiences with the aim of driving more sales. Compare that to organic social media, which takes much longer to build due to the algorithms working behind the scenes.
To create a paid social media campaign, do your research to understand your customers needs and behaviours, which will help to shape your objectives. Are you trying to increase brand awareness? Are you trying to promote a new service or product? Are you trying to capture prospect contact details? Then map out important dates in a campaign planner to keep everything on track. Once the campaign is complete, look at the results to see how well it performed and if your objectives and goals were achieved so you can adapt and make improvements going forward.
One way is through automation using online social media tools provided by different platforms, where you can plan multiple posts in advance. There are paid for and free scheduling tools that you can also utilise. You can also reuse or link previous content so you get the most out of all the content you’ve already created. And there’s also the option to promote user-generated content.
If you think about these facts… then you can clearly see why your business should be on social media.