4 Ways To Grow Your Business Through Social Media

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Social media is used every day of our lives whether it’s voluntary or not, it keeps our world connected. Most people understand what social media consists of. Some use it to connect with their loved ones, others use it to bring in their weekly revenue via Instagram promotions and some utilize social media marketing to gain viewers or increase business engagement. It’s 2017 and social media has advanced now more than ever and if this isn’t a concept you’re taking advantage of, then I suggest you stay put and read along.

Create Brand Awareness The first step in utilizing social media in any business is establishing your brand. It’s important to create a profile that represents the brand you want to promote. From the category of content want to create, to the aesthetic and design of your profiles, up to the reputation audience members are going to associate with your brand. Social media is the perfect way to display a brand in a positive light, meaning it can also be the number one way you damage your image throughout the community. Your brand should convey a message and that is where social media does its number one job and brings that to the public. Through social media your mission should be to communicate, as clearly and direct as possible, what your brand and business stand for. An audience member or potential follower is not eager to share or give it a “like” if a business is hesitant or unclear of where they are trying to go. Consistent Audience Engagement If there is one thing to take away from social media marketing and incorporating that with your business is this: Engagement. Engagement. Engagement. I cannot stress enough how crucial it is to SHOW FACE and show audience members there is someone on the other side of the screen who CARES. It is 2017 and there is no doubt that technology has taken over, for better and for worse. Nowadays we never know if the phone number we are going to call or the email we send off will be reach by an actual human or a computer. Even with the notion that technology runs our lives, personable and genuine interaction from a company even if it’s online, is the most effective way to maintain client relationships. Absolutely no one wants to support a business managed by people who sound like robots. It doesn’t stop there. Yes, you need to create engagement between your business and your audience members, but you also need to remember to keep it CONSISTENT. I don’t know how many times I’ve come across a company’s Facebook page or Twitter profile that has not been touched in weeks, months and even years... YES YEARS. It blows my mind that any business aims to be successful if they only tweet once every six months! How are prospective clients and current audience members expected to support a following like that? Let alone know what is going on with a brand they are determining to do business with. Keep your followers in the know and build a relationship with each and every one of them, THAT is what social media is for. Whether you can reply to every comment in a day or not, your audience should feel comfortable enough to leave a message regardless, because they know they’ll be heard one way or another. Communication is a two-way street but the first move must be initiated from the source of your business or brand. Consistent interaction allows for growth of a dependable reputation, as well as a respected image across various platforms.

Focus Your Content

Posting and engaging with your audience means nothing if the content you're putting out doesn’t connect with them. You want to keep content fun, professional but most of all, relatable. Focus on your brand’s mission and translate that into posts that followers and everyday individuals are going to understand and find useful. For example, I took on a PR internship for an animal retail company with a focus on providing healthy organic pet food not only to household pets, but throughout the community as well. For every bag of food sold, they donated a bag to an animal, shelter, or organization in need. As the sole social media curator for the company I took it upon myself to spread the message and promote the brand’s goals. I choose to educate myself on the audience’s needs and interests by providing them with content they could utilize in their everyday life. I studied the comments, concerns and expectations of our followers and shared articles and posts that focused on essential life content in a pet or owner’s life. From pet health, weather impacts, adoption questions, volunteering, to heroic pet profiles, I wanted the content to mean something and keep an interest in every way possible. You don’t want every post you publish to be centered on advertising a product, trying to convince audience members to spend their hard earned cash. Keep your content organized, no one likes a mess. Chaotic and irrelevant posts will only confuse followers on the direction you’re aiming for. Consider content management systems like Hootsuite, which allows you to manage all your social media content in one place. No time to post a tweet yourself? Or want to see how structured your social media schedule would look for the day? Then this is where tools like these come into play. So, to keep things short and simple: know what you’re talking about. Do your homework and learn the ins and outs of your target audience. Build a relationship based on trust worthy content and compassion. When you think you have all the bases covered, go back and research it 10 times more to curate new and exciting content for the future. Social Media 360 Last but not least, it’s all about bringing your efforts full circle. Although you may be connecting with individuals and really getting into the groove of the whole social media thing, it’s important to analyze how well your marketing efforts are actually doing. Social media analytics is probably the number one-way businesses determine how effective their efforts have been online and a huge factor towards their next business decisions. Analytics allows businesses to see what social post, marketing campaign and even which Instagram picture is leading over the others. Analytics put the numbers and statistics out in front of you, but it is your job to research and strategize why content is more successful over the other and take that into account for future business ventures. This is when social media auditing can come into play. If you want your company to stand out on top as a brand then you must check out the competition. Spend time studying what trends are relevant, what global crisis you can offer some support to, how other companies are utilizing their social media day to day and if there’s a way you can create organic ideas based off the information you collect. Finally, one thing a lot of people forget to do is utilize your business social channels with one another. Meaning promote your latest Instagram post on Snapchat, hold an Instagram contest with hashtags and announce the winner on YouNow Live stream, or announce the latest company blog post on Twitter. There are so many ways social media outlets connect, that choosing not to is nearly impossible to do!

When a lot of people think of social media they think it’s just a way to post pictures and videos online for everyone to see, when in fact it can be so much more than that. Strategy is the name of the game. If you can organize, implement and review your social media plan, any business is guaranteed to be on the right track to a more innovative and successful future.

Written By: Vanessa Leon

vleon1226@gmail.com