It’s common knowledge that social media has transformed the way in which the world operates, and the business world is no different. Social media has been growing rapidly for almost 2 decades, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
Social media platforms are not only a way to keep up with friends, family, or the latest news. It is also offers an opportunity for businesses and brands to make deeper connections, create an impact, and discover new opportunities for growth.
As of recent statistics, there are currently 3.78 billion daily active social media users which is about 48% of the global population.
So many of us already know how to use social media for personal purposes, but do we know how to effectively use it in a professional capacity? Let’s find out.
How To Use Social Media For Your Business: The Basics
1. Start With A Why
In many ways, business is what leads our society into the future. This means that your business idea is much bigger than you alone and should require careful thought, reflection, and consideration. Take the time to gain clarity about the reason that you want to launch this business, product, or idea.
It’s important in the realm of social media, that businesses be more transparent and engaging than they may have been capable of or comfortable with in the past.
Social media puts you in a place of leadership and influence over your audience, so it comes with an added responsibility for their well being too. Which is why it’s important for a business to lead with it’s why, before it tries to sell it’s how or what.
That will really be the difference maker whether or not your content is inspiring or manipulating your audience on social media.
2. Design your content strategy around your customers
This falls in line with establishing your why (purpose or desired impact) before establishing a how (strategy or system) or a what (product or service).
According to Simon Sinek in his famously valuable book “Start With Why” he says that: “A WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions we take to realize that belief, and WHATs are the end results of those actions. When all three are in balance, trust is built and value is perceived.”
This is the best way to grow your audience, by building trust and providing value first. So in order to do this the right way you will need to know who your audience is, what they stand for, and what they need most.
It’s interesting that social media forces business owners of every size to learn ways to relate more closely with their customers, as if they were a local small town shop. When in reality a great number of interactions are done online and through social media.
This has given businesses the ability to stay at the forefront of their customers’ mind at any given moment, which understandably has its pros and cons.
3. Find the right balance of quantity and quality
A common concern among business owners about social media is whether or not they are posting enough, or too much, and if what they are posting is good enough to “work”.
The effectiveness of your content can really come down to many factors. So you have to decide what is the best balance and strategy for you, your business, and your audience.
Ultimately one of the biggest deciding factors in this is: good intent. If your intentions are good, it will show and that alone will draw the right people to you.
Consumers are more able now than ever to recognize a company that has bad intentions or hidden agendas. It’s important to get to the core of what your intentions are with each piece of content before dedicating the time to creating it. Is your goal to get someone to “click through” or is your intention to make a meaningful connection and provide as much value as possible?
Social media is a real and exciting opportunity to unleash the power of word of mouth, but you have to give people good things to talk about. Your audience will be happy to see more quantity from you if your content is quality but more importantly created with good intentions at the core.
4. Keep track of your progress
There is a common phrase stating, “what gets measured, gets managed”. Which is understandably true because results do in fact count, and trackable results are in fact usually desired.
So in order to measure our progress, we should try to develop an understanding of the metrics that are easily quantifiable, and those that aren’t. For example, things like company culture can’t exactly be quantifiably measured but are still just as significant. It’s good to make sure that we don’t neglect the things that aren’t easily trackable, but are still essential to the brands and businesses overall success.
Let’s Break Down The Important Social Metrics That We Are Able to Monitor:
There Are Basically 4 Different Types of Trackable Metrics:
- Awareness: These Metrics highlight your current and potential audience.
- Brand Awareness
- Audience Growth Rate
- Post Reach
- Potential Reach
- Engagement: These metrics show how your audience is interacting with your content.
- Applause Rate
- Average engagement rate
- Amplification Rate
- Virality Rate
- Conversion: These Metrics show the effectiveness of your social engagement.
- Conversion Rate
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Bounce Rate
- Cost Per Click (CPC)
- Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
- Social Media Conversion Rate
- Consumer: These metrics help you understand how your active customers perceive and feel about your brand.
- Customer Testimonials
- Customer Satisfaction (CSat) Score
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
For full descriptions and how to track these metrics yourself click here.
5. Experiment and mix up your formats
Social media really follows social trends and human behavior, so it’s best to stay flexible in your strategy and execution.
Experimenting with different styles and formats can help you get familiar with what may connect best with your audience and find ways to more effectively communicate with them.
This can also include playing around with a variety of hashtags for your posts. Hashtags are like SEO for Social media. If you don’t really understand what SEO is, that’s okay. SEO is essentially related to what we search for on google and the same goes for Hashtags on social media.
The goal is to intentionally use relevant keywords and hashtags so that your content can be more quickly accessible for your audience.
Does your brand know how to use hashtags in a way that gets the most value out of them?
Let’s find out.
10 Types of Hashtags To Use On Your Social Media Posts
- Industry Related Hashtags
- Niche Specific Hashtags
- Brand Related Hashtags
- Image, Visual & Design Related Hashtags
- Caption Reference Hashtags
- Community Hashtags
- Target Audience Hashtags
- Event Hashtags
- Celebration/Holiday Hashtags
- Trending Hashtags
According to a recent Instagram statistic, posts that include at least one hashtag, attract significantly more engagement than those that feature none at all.
This just means that followers really do engage actively with hashtags. If you can dedicate some time to specifically researching hashtags on platforms like Instagram, you could seriously boost the potential impact of your social media presence.
Utilizing hashtags and doing some research into which tags are best for your content can make a massive difference to increase the effectiveness of your social media efforts.
So to wrap this post up, many of us clearly see that that there is a lot of information to take in when it comes to social media marketing for a brand or for a business. So this is quite literally just the tip of the iceberg.
Brands are continuing to develop their social media strategies, and they absolutely should. There are an abundance of options when it comes to content marketing, and businesses are trying it all in order to discover what works best for them.
Social media isn’t a one size fits all kind of thing. It can take a significant amount of time and energy to maintain. Which means that it is helpful to be clear on what your foundation is, and what vision for the future you are hoping to inspire before you click post or publish.
Would you like to learn more about social media and content marketing tactics for your business? Let us know!