When you want to grow your business and get more customers without spending much money, social media marketing is a great option. By just spending a little time creating content, you can stay connected with your customers, make sure they have all the information they need, and post news and updates about your business.
Why Does Your Business Need Social Media?
Social media is where many customers, especially younger ones, get much of their information, so it’s a key place for your business to have a home and a communication hub. When customers have accurate, consistent information about your business, it builds trust and creates a positive relationship between your business and your current and future customers. Often, it can be something as simple as updating your hours for holidays or temporary closures – when customers can check whether you’re open before coming to visit your storefront, they avoid disappointment and confusion. Also, it can help get people excited about your products or services. A simple social media post could be the driving force behind getting more people in your doors. If you’re a tax professional, reminding people that filing season is coming up could motivate them to pay you a visit; as a food or retail business, a special discount offered to people who have seen your post or a photo of the weekly special could really boost your sales. Social media is also a key part of building a consistent brand identity – read more on that here.
Especially during COVID, these updates are important – increasingly, shoppers are unsure whether physical locations will even be open and operating, and people are eager to get back to in-person shopping and restaurants. Staying connected with businesses on social media is the best and easiest way for them to get news in realtime.
How Should You Choose a Social Media Platform for Business?
Once you decide you want to start posting on social media for your business, you might wonder exactly where you should do it! Since the average person has over 8 different social media accounts, it can be hard to know where to begin. Here are some tips on choosing the right social media home for your business.
What’s the Most Popular Social Media Platform for Business?
Facebook remains the most popular social media platform for business promotion, with over 90% of social media marketers worldwide saying that they use the tool. Instagram is a close second, with over 70% of social media marketers saying they rely on the platform. This appears to be for a couple of reasons, partially because these two platforms have the most active users and partially because they are generally considered the easiest to use.
There’s also something to be said for how many businesses already use Facebook to interact with their customers – it is the social media equivalent of having a storefront located on Main Street. People expect to see and interact with businesses on Facebook, so it’s a good idea to have an active Facebook presence even if it’s not the platform you use much.
Where are Your Customers?
Hands down, the most important question to ask when determining what social media platforms to use is which ones are frequented by your clientele. If you have an amazing Twitter where you post every day, but all of your users are hanging out on Instagram, you will have a hard time building engagement and finding your ideal customer online. There are lots of ways to figure out where your clients live online. If your target market is young adults, you might be more likely to find them on Twitter or Instagram than on Facebook or Instagram. If you want to target executive-level professionals, you might want to try LinkedIn. The best way to go about this is to draw up a few customer personas and then figure out where those people would hang out on social media.
What Kind of Content do You Want to Post?
Almost as important as reaching your ideal customer is posting content that shows your business off to its best advantage. When you use social media, what value do you hope to offer? If you have a physical product you want to showcase, Instagram and Pinterest are probably the best options for you. If you have a great blog where you post amazing information and value-adds, LinkedIn and Facebook might be the best choices. If you want to interact with customers and mediate any issues, Twitter and Facebook are great for privately engaging with someone who wants to ask about your products and services. Beyond this, there are dozens of niche social media platforms where you can find a home for your business and build a community.
Good luck on your business’ new direction (and congratulations on the subsequent growth)! What other social media topics should we cover?
