According to Hootsuite, social media platforms gained 490 million users in 2020, doubling the rate of growth from 2019. That’s 15.5 people joining social media every single second! Long story short, social media marketing should play a big role in your brand strategy and success. Here are a few ways to use social media marketing to grow your small business.
- Choose the Right Platforms
If you’re interested in using social media marketing to grow your business, know that not all platforms are created equally. Each one serves its own purpose and they all have strengths and weaknesses. The social media sites you choose to use should be determined by your industry and audience.
For many small businesses, the right networks to invest in our Facebook, Instagram Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter
Facebook
Facebook is a great way to connect with local community groups and your personal network. Engage with them by commenting on posts related to housing or local events.
You can also spread the word about your open houses and other in-person and virtual events.
Consider sharing news from key neighborhoods to establish yourself as a thought leader.
Instagram
A purely visual medium, Instagram is the place for sharing your most interesting photos and videos. This makes the platform a great opportunity to build authenticity for your brand.
Target specific groups of buyers by tagging high-value points of interest near or around your listings. Use Instagram Live to tour properties and answer questions in real-time.
Pinterest
Pinterest is where people feel safe to explore new ideas and try new things. They’re looking for inspiration—and they’re looking for you. To get started, you’ll need a Pinterest business account. It’s free to sign up, and you’ll get access to special content formats, custom analytics, and more.
LinkedIn
While you can share photos and videos here too, LinkedIn is at its best when used for networking and building your industry reputation.
Make sure you’re joining and participating in groups relevant to your industry and connecting with VIPs. You can also post-professional tips, share interesting thought leaders, and any info that your audience would enjoy.
If you’re unsure what platforms are right for your business, look up your competitors. If they all seem to be using Pinterest or Twitter or even Tik-Tok, include those in your plan of attack.
Twitter
Businesses come to Twitter to connect to our culture and see what's happening. And because people are in a discovery mindset when they’re on Twitter, you’re likely to make a lasting impression.
Brand involvement in culture is especially important among consumers between the ages of 18 and 35, and those on Twitter vs. the general population are more passionate, informed, and feel more strongly about brands aligning with culture.*
Your audience is already here, and they're listening. Bring your business on Twitter and connect to our powerful and passionate audience, make an impact, and drive results.
- Identify Your Audience
Identifying your audience provides a clear focus of whom your business should serve and what they need.
Once you pinpoint who your target audience is it’s time to find out where they’re most active. For example, older generations are spending more time on Facebook than ever before while more than half of Instagram users are under the age of 34. Twitter also caters to a younger demographic with 38% of Twitter users being between the ages of 18-29 and Tik-Tok has become the biggest social network for Gen Z.
If you’re really struggling with fleshing out your target audience, look at your competitors. What brand voice are they using? What content do they produce? What social media platforms do they consistently use? Analyze their engagement rates, comments, and hashtags as well to get some insightful inspiration.
- Plan in Advance
Whether you’re starting from the ground up or want to identify any gaps in your current social media strategy, having a defined direction and plan in place will make sure you’re making the most out of your social media presence.
Find your brand’s voice, tone, and messaging
Different people will relate to different messaging so it’s important to understand your audience and speak their language. Once you figure out how you want your brand to be portrayed you can move on to creating content
There are five main types of content most businesses use for social media: videos, images, re-shares, written content, and quotes. And though video content tends to outperform every other medium when it comes to engagement, it’s important to strike a balance and use a ratio of posts that your followers can get accustomed to.
Facebook is the largest social media network with over 2.3 million monthly active users and while it’s tough to decipher exactly what content works best on the network, businesses generally use Facebook to share user-generated content, memes, giveaways, and polls.
Instagram is a visual social network whose algorithm prefers video content and rewards engagement. Businesses have also seen great success with using Reels for sharing relevant tips, going behind the scenes at their business, and featuring their employees. (Learn more about Instagram scheduling in Kontentino .)
LinkedIn is used primarily by whitecollar professionals. Uploading infographics, videos, industry news and research, blogs, and in-depth how-to’s work is a surefire way to cement your brand as a thought leader.
- Set Realistic Goals
This can be tricky. Sure, you’d like to have 100,000 followers on your Instagram account within the next six months. But is that really possible? And do those followers equate to true success?
When you’re just getting started on using social media marketing to grow your business, it’s hard to gauge what is feasible and what’s a pipe dream for followers. You might slave away creating a valuable piece of content that only gets a share or two. You may spend hardly any time on a tweet or Facebook post and see tons of engagement.
Don’t spend too much time and energy worrying about your follower count. 100 followers who are engaged and enthusiastic are worth more than 10,000 random follows and bots. This is especially true if your business is highly local, like a real estate agent or a retail shop. Focus on acquiring relevant followers who live in your community, not just anyone on the platform.
Speaking of bots, or “fake followers,” buying followers to boost your numbers is a quick fix to see a larger number, but it’s not a long-term solution. It’s a bad way to represent your brand and it often leads to social platforms penalizing brand pages and businesses.
Let your brand organically grow and gain the right kind of followers.
- Track and Measure Progress
How you measure your progress will depend on your goal. Using social media marketing to grow your small business is, as we’ve already explored, very individual.
And as we discussed earlier, follower count is not the only metric that matters. You should also be keeping an eye on:
Likes
Mentions
Impressions
Clicks
Shares/retweets
Comments
Direct messages
You can pick one of these metrics and set a growth goal, or you can watch them all and see whether you’re trending in the right direction. Whatever your goal is, make sure you check in at regular intervals.
- Share and Engage
You can work with social media marketing software like Outbound Engine or you can take the DIY approach. If you’re posting your own content, you also need to take time to engage.
Most people think that replying to comments is all you have to do. The truth is, the focus for each social account should be to build a community. This community should allow people to engage with both your brand and each other.
How you go about doing that is your choice, but the first step is creating a space for them to find each other. Your audience might be car enthusiasts looking to trade upgrade tips with industry experts, or first-time homebuyers in need of mortgage advice.
Whoever they are, make sure you put in the time to get to know them as individuals. Find new ways you can help them, then create the content they’re looking for.
If you do all of this, over time you’ll build a consistent group of fans who love your work and be able to use social media marketing to grow your small business.
- Produce Out of This World Content
Content is king. But consistently churning out scroll-stopping content that resonates with your target audience isn’t easy.
To create attractive videos, animations, and images without a big budget or a large team you need some tools.
For standout images – Canva, Adobe Spark, BeFunky, Fotor
For fun animations – Biteable, Boomerang by Instagram, Powtoon
For stunning videos – Animaker, iMovie, Lumen5, Soapbox
To increase your content’s longevity be sure to take full advantage of repurposing. Content repurposing is the process of splicing and reusing all elements of existing content to piece together something new. For example, if you’re recording a podcast, be sure to take a video of the recording so you can use short snippets for Facebook, the full clip for a YouTube video, and outtakes for Instagram stories.
- Post Consistently
Consistency is arguably just as important as quality. Even if you create great content, unless you can churn out enough of it to stay relevant to your followers and to algorithms that content will go to waste.
The more social networks you try to master the harder it becomes to manage everything manually, especially when you’re trying to cater to different time zones. Lucky for you, we have just the solution.
Kontentino’s powerful scheduling tools let you create, plan and queue content to all major social media platforms with the click of a button. We also enable seamless team collaboration but more on that later. Once you have your schedule squared away you’ll want to allot time to creating content, create a posting schedule and batch your content to avoid unnecessary hiccups along the way. Check out this article for more information.
- Pay Attention to Trends
We’re not saying you should leap on every meme that goes viral. (Please don’t leap on every meme that goes viral.)
But it is a good idea to pay attention to trends in social media, so you understand what people are looking for when they sign into their social channels. This helps you create appropriate content that resonates over time.
State Farm Insurance has an ongoing Pinterest campaign that provides informative content tied to major life changes like buying a car or having a child. Since these moments tend to impact insurance needs, it’s an obvious fit that has helped the insurance giant connect with millennials and Gen X.
The top five reasons people use social media now are:
To stay up-to-date with news and current events
To find funny or entertaining content
To fill up spare time
To stay in touch with friends
To share photos or videos with others
Always keep your audience’s current needs in mind. What worked last year might not work today.
Social listening is a highly valuable information gathering tool, helping you understand what your audience (and potential audience) might want to hear from your brand.
- Experiment with Live Videos
Using live streams is a great way to boost engagement and interact with your audience in real-time. While pulling off a successful live stream may seem like a daunting task, especially for those of us who aren’t natural actors, with the right roadmap in place you’ll be a bona fide pro-streamer in no time.
Before you go live:
Set up your lightning, spiff yourself up and if you’re doing a stationary live session remove anything distracting from the background
Draft a simple script. You don’t want to write out anything too fancy or complex but having the general structure of your live stream mapped out on paper can keep you from veering off-topic
Live stream ideas:
Share live events happening at your company
Host interviews with industry thought leaders
Go behind the scenes of the creation/development of your product
Showcase your employees and company culture
You can get creative with the platforms you choose to put out video content on, in fact, you might as well start with some of the best live streaming platforms and apps for putting out short-form video content.
Conclusion
Using social media to build your business isn’t as easy as one might think. However, if you implement the strategies we listed in this article you’ll be well on your way to making more sales than you know what to do with.
- And there is easy way to go https://bit.ly/36QYgFD (copy and paste on browser then realize what is the easiest way grow your business all over social medias.