One of the best free tools a business has at its disposal in the modern age is social media. After all, any business can set up pages across all platforms and begin to build an audience. Whatever you want to post, the message will be delivered to your followers instantaneously.
But are you getting the most out of your social media pages? Whether you’re new to the technology, or simply lack understanding about social media marketing from a professional standpoint, now is the time to brush up on your skills.
Here are our top tips on maximising your business’ potential through social media.
Follow up on business leads
Social media can help you get more leads to your business in so many ways, from comments on your posts to messages to your inbox. Once the leads come in, the trick is to follow up on them promptly and professionally.
If you’re the type of person who ignores their pages for days at a time, expect your customers to head elsewhere. It’s not always easy to find time to simultaneously run a business and manage your social media pages. That’s why it’s a good idea to set time aside at least once a day to go through any interactions.
Even a seemingly standard comment on one of your posts has the potential to lead to long-term business. So make sure you’re regularly interacting with everyone who takes the time to stop by your pages.
If customers aren’t yet linked to your social media pages, follow buttons can help redirect them to your business’s accounts. For example, if you have a Twitter account for your business, you can add a Twitter following button to gather more followers. Access to your social media accounts lets your clients get updated with your posts and easily interact with you.
Collect user-generated content
User-generated content refers to anything that the public posts about your business online. It could be a review they leave, an image they post or a check-in at your venue. When used correctly, user-generated content is incredibly valuable because instead of marketing yourselves, people are doing it for you which can give your business more integrity.
Additionally, using user-generated content on social media can provide several benefits to your business. For instance, it can spotlight your customers who have helped build and improve your brand by letting their voices tell your company story on your behalf. It can also serve as social proof of how you do business with your customers. Having content from your customers can help build your credibility and make your brand more trustworthy. Incorporating a LinkedIn widget for website can further enhance your social media strategy by showcasing professional endorsements and recommendations.
As part of your social media strategy you can post, share or retweet user-generated content. You can even have the image designed so it doesn’t appear as a boring screenshot and it's more in line with your brand.
There are many other ways you can use user-generated content to your advantage. For example, say somebody leaves a glowing review of your beauty salon. You can post their comment, an image of the service they had along with a telephone number to book in with the stylist. Whatever your industry, you can tailor this technique to suit your niche.
Design custom content for your feeds
Anyone can repost existing images, but this doesn’t always come across as unique, let alone interesting. If you want your social media pages to stop people scrolling in their tracks, you’re going to need to get creative with custom messaging, graphics and videos instead.
Doing so is a great way to promote your products and services. So, leave the stock images on Google and give your followers an insight into your business instead. If you do great work, be proud and show this off. Before and after style images go down a treat on social media, too.
Use paid advertising
Latest figures reveal that almost 60% of the world’s population now uses social media. While you should always aim for healthy organic content, there’s also a huge potential to market your business through paid advertising on social media too. Platforms such as Facebook, Google and Instagram have dedicated portals to allow you to run your campaigns and measure their performance.
There are many ways you can use paid advertising. But one great example is a short term product or promotion that you want to spread the word about quickly, rather than waiting for traffic to build organically.
Similar to PPC, paid advertising on social media allows you to select the audience and even the location of where your adverts will be distributed, giving you full control over your campaign budget.
Take geotagging seriously
If your business has a local reach, then social media gives you ample opportunity to connect with people in your community. In many cases, any efforts you make will get picked up by search engines too, boosting your SEO in the process.
Let’s say you’re a plumber who works within a 30 mile radius of your city. If you list each city, town and village you serve, you can use these place names as hashtags on social media. Furthermore, on your pages you can add a visual map for customers to automatically see plumbers in their area.
Additionally, geotags allows customers to easily find and tag your business in their social media posts, involving you in various online activities. For example, adding location-based data can help search engines connect your users’ posts, such as location photos, to your physical business location. This enhances your online visibility and searchability, ultimately increasing your revenue over time. That said, geotagging is crucial to your social media marketing efforts.
To sum up
Social media is where your customers are spending an increasing amount of time these days. So it pays to maximise your marketing efforts across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Tik Tok.
If you lack the time or knowledge to keep up with your own social media pages, then hiring a marketing expert to take control is the next logical step. Take the time to compare profiles of professionals to find the perfect fit for you. After all, with such a big audience available, you cannot afford to ignore social media if you want to grow your business.
