Social Media Marketing tips that can help you grow your business

Though you might be using social media regularly, you still would be unaware of its certain beneficial features.

Social Media Platforms have taken over a major part of our lives, and there is nothing to deny in it. While the majority of people use social media to share their thoughts and daily updates, you as a business can use these efficient platforms to promote your products and services, which ultimately can help to grow your business.

Though you might be using social media regularly, you still would be unaware of its certain beneficial features. In this article, we will discuss the same. So, keep reading to know how certain social media marketing tips can benefit your business.

10 Marketing strategies that you can utilize on Social Media

We have deeply analyzed social media and its behavior to create a list of the best marketing strategies. Here, have a look:

An excellent Content Marketing Strategy is surely going to win:

Content Marketing has been ruling the marketing strategies for a long time, and the scenario is not going to change any soon. That is why it’s important to stick to quality content while keeping an efficient content marketing strategy in hand.

Many businesses fail to link quality content with their services, thereby leading to slow business growth. However, you must know that a content marketing plan with the right use of SEO and hashtags can help your business grow by leaps and bounds. Therefore, before everything else, start working on a content plan. The best part is that it won’t cost you anything but offer huge benefits in return.

Quality Content is important

While content marketing strategy is extremely important for you, creating quality content is even more important. Content is said to be the king of marketing. Content is what you see on social media; content is what decides whether the visitor will stay on your site or leave.

Try to learn about your audience’s likes and interests. Invest your time in understanding what kind of content attracts your customers more. Quality content can help your business stand out amongst the others and can also help you receive higher engagement, click-through rates, heavy traffic, and social shares.

Engage with your audience on various Social Channels

Group of Hands Holding Speech Bubble Concept

Apart from posting quality content, you can use social media to engage with your customers. Reply to their comments, connect with them in direct messages when possible, and try to build a strong relationship with your customers. This way your customers would feel connected and special with your brand and can get converted into your regular customers, thereby growing your business.

Utilize different Content formats

If you keep sharing the same type of content, your audience will get bored of it and might lose interest in your products and services. So, it’s important to keep the interest of your customers alive by creating content in different formats. The various content formats you can use are:

  • Videos
  • Interviews
  • Podcasts
  • Case Studies
  • Lists
  • Ebooks
  • Opinion posts

Try experimenting with the formats and see what your audience likes the most. Get, free online video maker.

Use relevant hashtags

You would be aware of the hashtags and might have used them in your posts too. However, you must know that hashtags play an important role in increasing the reach of your content. Therefore, it’s crucial that you use the hashtags sensibly.

The pro tip is to search for hashtags that have the maximum following or searches but you should also take care that the hashtags are relevant to your posts. Using hashtags that have high followings but are irrelevant to your posts may create some negative impact on your posts.



Connect with your audience by going live

Use your social media handles to go live. People like to know more about the brands they are following. You can live stream and give them an insight about your business or some BTS about the products that you offer.

You may also introduce some of the people that are behind the services you offer. Focus on creating a personal connection with your audience.

Organize contests to create a loyal customer base

People are attracted to freebies or gifts. You can take the advantage of this fact to organize some kind of contests for your audience. Keep an attractive discount coupon or free products that you offer as a gift.

Ask your audience to take part in the contest by sharing your products or services in their story or across other social media handles. This way your brand would reach another section of the audience while your immediate audience can get a chance to win some attractive gifts.

Post content on a frequent basis

To keep your brand fresh in the mind of your audience, it’s important that you share about your products regularly. Let people not forget about your brand. Share creative and unique content about your services on a regular basis.

Make a proper schedule to post content. Try to share at least three posts per day. Social media users need constant engagement, so if you are not providing them with that, you are going to lose in the long run.

Conduct A/B Testing

Social media is all about experimenting. Never be afraid to experiment. Try new content ideas, make changes in the post timings. Explore new things on social media.

You can do A/B testing with everything you do on social media. From the head tags,  the descriptions, profiles,  giveaways, ads, anything.

You must know that some ads perform better than others but you could not know about it until you do the testing.

Make use of Social Media Calendar

A social media calendar is important to keep track and update of all the posts you are sharing. You can create a spreadsheet or excel sheet to make a social media calendar. That way, you would be having an idea of all topics you have shared or what you can share next, which posts got the best engagement, and how you can use this information in your further posts.

But don’t just fill the spreadsheet with content, make sure that each content gets at least shared by a few people.

Conclusion

With social media, you can do wonders for your business. All you need to have is the right marketing strategy to ace the social media game.

With these strategies, you are sure to create a difference in the growth of your business. Follow these simple strategies to stand out amongst your competitors. Hopefully, our article would help you drive the desired results for your business.

If you have any queries, drop them in the comments section.

Liked the article? Share it with others as well.

About the author:

Bhavik Soni is a Creative Writer at Auto Monkey. We provide an original analysis of the latest happenings in the social media industry. Connect with Latest Social Media Trends and News plus tips on Twitter, Facebook and other social tools on the web.



Social Media Marketing: How to choose the right channel to fit your customers and business needs

Top 3 things to consider before choosing which platforms to use for your business.

If you own a company or a marketing practitioner, then it’s a no-brainer: your business’ presence should, by all means, be felt on social media platforms. Every entrepreneur and marketer worth their salt understands the importance of having an online following to promote their products and services.

There may be a long list of social media marketing secrets in circulation online, but the main thing to remember is that having a successful social media marketing strategy lies in understanding which platform works best with your brand.

Top 3 things to consider before choosing which social media platforms to use for your business.

You should be able to identify three key factors, so you do not end up wasting a ton of resources (time is money, and money is time!) on the wrong platforms.

1. Identify the nature of your business

It matters whether your company is a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) operation or Business-to-Business (B2B) enterprise. Perhaps it is a mix of both. People still really do not use social media to buy things.

Social media users are generally at the topmost layer of the sales funnel, meaning they are mostly there just to see what’s up—this translates to them being at the very first stage of the buying process: awareness.

B2C companies have added visibility on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. You could take advantage of this by visually engaging your customers with on-brand content like targeted blog links or visual assets such as photos, short videos, or GIFs.

B2B companies, meanwhile, will reap great benefits from building personal connections with existing and prospective customers via LinkedIn. Lead gathering methodologies like publishing regular blogs, industry-relevant whitepapers, case studies or ebooks, should be cross-promoted on social media.

YouTube is also useful for both B2C and B2B when it comes to increasing Google rankings. Posting the right content on YouTube increases the authenticity of your brand because it encourages viewers to interact with you and share it on their own social media accounts.

2. Know your target market

Small-to-medium-sized businesses will get the best value for their social media marketing budget if they gain a genuine understanding of their target clients. Knowing your target customers’ profiles is the first step in accurately telling where you can find them. An accurate profile will help you optimize your strategies.

Spreading yourself too thin by trying to be in all social media platforms all at once at the start is a rookie mistake that wastes valuable resources. You want to be as specific as can be when it comes to profiling your target demographic so that you can maximize your digital marketing and advertising efforts and make your budget work for you.

Some of the data you should gather include your target audience’s gender, age range, location, average income, educational attainment, the challenges and problems they face and how they intend to solve them, level of technological aptitude, and relevant interests outside of your product or service offerings.

Having accurate data on your target market will give you the right insight into where your ideal clients spend most of their time online. Through diligent research, you will get to choose the right social media platforms where you can consistently run targeted ads to reel the right customers.

This way, the money you spent on running campaigns with targeted content will be taken full advantage of and make the biggest impact. Your campaigns will be seen by prospects who are looking for what you have to offer, increasing your conversion rates as they are turned into paying clients.

Search engine Google often gets the best return of investment in targeting content in most cases, and for other instances, photo-sharing platform Instagram or social media giant Facebook might do the trick.

3. Identify your goals and objectives for being on social media

Knowing what makes your target market tick is just one part of the equation. Once you have all the data you need, you will have to identify what your goals are for your prospective clients. This will allow you to choose the best social media platform based on your client’s social demographic profile’s engagement rates on every platform.

Companies use social media for two main reasons. The first one is to gain brand awareness to foster a friendly relationship with their target market. Other businesses use their social media platforms to supplement customer support.

Setting up an account for any platform is pretty easy, and you can even build your business’ social media presence with your smartphone, but you will be faced with varied creative content marketing challenges that will depend on the goals and objectives you set.

For example, social media management platform Hootsuite, a B2B company, uses Twitter for dedicated customer support where they encourage users to tweet them for how-tos and answers.

Meanwhile, those that operate in the travel industry or hospitality, such as hotels or restaurants, may benefit from having Instagram accounts to advertise their offerings using visually compelling photographs, Instagram stories, or short clips. For instance, Airbnb showcases lovely photos of their property listings in their main platform Instagram.

A guide to the seven most useful social media platforms

Now that you know of the top things you should consider before choosing which social media platforms to concentrate on, here is a handy guide on the seven leading social platforms that you can use to help get your business off the ground.

1. Facebook

With a total of over 2.23 billion users online, Facebook is indeed the leader of the pack when it comes to engaged users. Here comes the tricky part: figuring out how those individual users are using Facebook. It is mostly used to keep in touch with friends and family, by virtually all genders and age groups (mostly women, which makes up 53% of its total user base).

For all its many features that cater to brands and businesses, one thing remains certain: Facebook is an excellent channel for building relationships with your existing market base.

If you are looking to acquire new leads for your business, it might not be the best out of the lot because of its low organic reach and vast user population. But if your goal is to establish a following and nurture your relationship with them by keeping in touch with regular content (1–3 posts a day), then it can work wonders for building and maintaining brand loyalty.

2. Twitter

With over 326 million users, it is a fantastic platform for building brand awareness through industry-relevant news, press releases, customer support, or to get in touch with potential brand ambassadors. The platform is also widely used for real-time updates, and a lot of companies use it in combination with offline engagement efforts like events.

Twitter has also popularized the use of hashtags, which organizes conversations. With a simple search of a hashtag, you can keep your thumb on the pulse of your target audience so that you can create tweets and join in on popular topics. With the right, timely tweet crafted around a popular hashtag, your brand can be discovered by news outlets that often use the platform to search for trending stories.

3. YouTube

Viewing content on YouTube does not require an account, so it is truly one of the most powerful search engines and social media platforms. To date, it has over 1.9 billion users, but its reach goes well beyond that number because of the eliminated need for sign-ups.

Putting out quality content can be time-consuming and expensive, so it is best used by brands that can truly reap benefits from being there, such as service industry businesses. How-to videos and tutorials are huge on YouTube, as users often search for step-by-step guides to solve a variety of problems.

4. Instagram

Instagram is extremely popular among the young ones, mostly aged 18–29 years old. With over 1 billion active users, the image and video sharing platform is one of the fastest-growing social media channels. It works exceptionally well for more visual-based brands that are in the food, hospitality, retail, art, or beauty industry because it depends on images to spark conversations within the community.

5. Pinterest

There are over 250 million Pinterest users as of writing, which is dominated by middle-aged, female users. It is also a visual-based platform that allows users to save content by “pinning” images to their organized virtual scrapbook.

Pinterest is mostly useful for driving traffic for blogs and ecommerce retailers. Custom images are required, and photos with high engagement rates include style ideas, do-it-yourself craft projects, and recipes.

6. LinkedIn

With a large user base of people aged between 25–54, LinkedIn is a popular platform for older audiences that are searching for jobs or those who are looking to expand their professional network. This makes it a popular choice for B2B lead generation and recruiting companies and is a good channel to establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry.

Vigilance and consistency, always

Social media ecosystems can change in the blink of an eye, that is why you should always be up to speed when it comes to current best practices, trends, challenges, and upcoming platforms that are making waves in the digital sphere. It takes a perfect blend of timing, luck, and some digital analytics science to identify which platforms you should focus on.

You can leverage social media to grow your business exponentially by taking note of how active your target audience is in your chosen platform, how they use social media, and creating a consistent social media content strategy that allows you to maintain a steady stream of content to keep them engaged.

Infographic created by Clover Network, a credit card processing company

Author Bio: Chris Legazpi

Chris is a Content Writer at Globe myBusiness Academy and a contributing writer to various business and finance blogs.

6 Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing for startups

There’s much more to social media marketing than it seems and you’ll need a lot of preparation in order to get it right.

Everyone knows that social media plays a huge role in today’s business world. Every company, big or small, needs a social media presence in order to keep going. This is the case because social media is one of the best places to market your business. So, if you’ve decided to promote your company on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, you’re on the right track. Still, there’s much more to social media marketing than it seems and you’ll need a lot of preparation in order to get it right. That’s why we’ve come up with six dos and don’ts of social media marketing for startups, you’ll definitely want to take a closer look at.

DO understand your followers

When marketing on social media, it’s very important that you understand the users who follow your pages. Fail to do this, and you’ll have no idea what kind of content to share. But how do you learn more about the people who follow your social media pages? Basically, you’ll need to do a thorough demographic research and use the data you collect to come up with ideal posts to share on your pages. An important thing to remember is that no matter who your followers are, it’s imperative that you create a strong social media presence for your business.

Related Post: The importance of social media marketing for your business

DO have a plan

If you’re trying to promote a product or service on social media, you can’t just go and share promotional posts whenever you feel like doing so. What you need instead is an entire plan for promoting your product or service. This means you’ll need to come up with a whole set of posts your followers will find interesting and create a timetable for sharing them. If you’re new to social media marketing, this is probably where you’ll want to collaborate with an expert.

DO maximize your bio

When it comes to attracting new followers to your page, they’re always going to check your bio before they actually click that “subscribe” button. That said, you’ll probably want to maximize your bio. This means you should use your bio section to provide important info about your business. We recommend writing a short description of your business and including a couple of relevant facts. Usually, you’ll have some additional space left for a picture you’ll probably want to use for your company’s logo.

Related Post: 8 ways to expand your business via social media



DON’T ignore negative comments

One of the biggest mistakes many business owners make is avoid responding to negative comments on social media. When you market on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, there will always be some negative comments and it’s critical that you respond to them as politely as possible. This will show your followers that you have absolutely nothing to hide and that you’re open to suggestions. If you receive negative comments about the product or service you’re promoting, use them to improve your offerings.

Related Post: 8 beneficial social media marketing tools every company should use

DON’T use every social media platform

Today, there are just so many social media platforms you can promote your business on. However, if you try to use all of them to promote your products or services, you probably won’t be able to make it. Instead, what you need to do is figure out which social media platforms work the best for you and stick to them. If you’re struggling to figure out which platforms do the trick for your business, turning to experts in media monitoring is recommended.

DON’T post too much

What’s the point of having social media pages for your business if you’re not going to post regularly? Only if you’re consistent with your posts will you be able to grow your social media pages and attract more people to your business. However, this doesn’t mean you should just go and post everything you come across on the web. In fact, it’s quality over quantity, but you need to make sure you post on a daily basis. One or two posts per day during the week and one per day on the weekend should do the trick.

Related Post: 6 ways in which social media can benefit startups

Social media marketing is something your business simply can’t survive without. Have all the things we’ve talked about in mind and you should be able to enter the world of social media marketing with ease.





5 tips to get your first few thousand followers on Instagram

If you follow some basic rules, you can get a few thousand initial followers.

With growing digitalisation, the social media game is also growing at a break-neck speed which makes Instagram one of the most popular and sought-after platforms to explore and post on. However, getting followers on Instagram isn’t as easy as it seems but if you follow some basic rules, you can get a few thousand initial followers:

Consistency is the key

Post the images with a consistent theme because if you tend to post something psychedelic today and follow it up with a vintage movie poster, your followers will deem you as bipolar and useless and this can result in them un-following you. The consistency of your posts will keep your followers engaged.

Related Post: The importance of social media marketing for your business

Using Interactive Techniques to Attract Followers

If your Instagram account does not have many followers, one of the best ways to attract more audience and grow your page is to use interactive techniques. For example, following people, leaving likes and comments for their posts, or even like or comment on their posts under a specific hashtag, etc. This way, you will arouse people’s curiosity about your page and draw their attention to your page.

In return, these people visit your account out of curiosity and may do the same for you, that leads to an increase in the number of visits to your Instagram account. Many of these people will also get interested in your content and follow you.

To attract followers through interactive techniques, you need to find accounts that create and publish content that is close to or related to your field and interact with these pages by following, commenting, etc.

Obviously, if you were to go through this process manually, it would be almost impossible. This is when you feel the need for an automated tool to automate the entire process.

There are software or bots that can automatically perform interactive activities on Instagram without human handling. Such software will automatically follow your target pages, like their posts or leave comments to draw their attention to your Instagram account and persuade these people to visit your page and follow you of their own accord. One approved software to increase followers in Instagram is the v-User Instagram Follower Booster Bot, which includes various bots with amazing features. You can google this tool to get more information about it.

Use thoughtful hashtags

Instagram’s new algorithm, picks up the most popular and used hastags. So, you must aspire you enhance your picture with the best thought-of and the most attractive ones. You are allowed a maximum of 30 hashtags, so, make sure that the first ones completely relevant to the picture and follow it up with the common yet popular ones like #instafollow and #instaphoto for more recognition.



Use the geotag feature

The geotag option on the Instagram widget lets you tag location of your picture. This is useful as your followers can relate to the picture better and if people aren’t your followers but in the same location as your picture, they are able to locate the image and might start following you.

Related Post: 8 beneficial social media marketing tools every company should use

Post interesting content

Nobody wants to follow accounts which aren’t aesthetically pleasing or uninteresting. If you post interesting content which is relatable, more people will follow your page and stay engaged for more posts. Use an Instagram tracker to check the Instagram activity log of people and see what they like, accordingly you can plan your posts. Also, you try keep trying to upgrade the interesting factor of your posts with each new post.

If you are looking for social media marketing or digital marketing service for your business or startup, email us contact@ourownstartup.com. You can also view all our services here.



The importance of social media marketing for your business

This post will highlight the importance of having a presence on social media platforms for your business.

If you agree that the world is more connected than it was a few decades ago. Then I’d bet you would win tons of money with your million dollar answer –the world is virtually connected on social network(s). Strangely, though, the discovery has been gathering dust for a few years now; that businesses almost forgot the relevance of inhabiting social media sites.

The discussion still rages on, however, on the significance of social media sites. Plainly, some entrepreneurs have been fortunate enough with social media while others can’t seem to get it right. Of course, you and we know that mounting a social media onslaught is not rocket science. But how comes the statistics don’t favor the larger population? That’s a discussion for another day.

For now, we are going to discuss the importance of using social media as an extension of your marketing onslaught or rather incorporating social media sites in your marketing strategy. There are a number of ways that you can look at it depending on what you wish to achieve. However, the bottom line remains the same; increasing sales is the ultimate winner. Irrespective of the kind of trade you will be engaging in, at the end of the day we all wish to make ends meet.

Related Post: Top 5 marketing methods that will benefit your business in the long run

If you are not increasing conversions and sales, you need to reflect and redefine your social media campaign. Here lies the problem, technology is a fast lane, and there is no better place that this statement holds true than in Silicon Valley. We mean, they are churning out socially oriented startups as fast as you can say millionaires. Indeed, social media sites have made more millionaires than any other industry especially in the past decade. But can the profits be shared with businesses represented there as well?



Importance of social media marketing

As we stated earlier, we are going to refrain from getting into details on how to strategize on a social media campaign. Instead, this post will highlight the importance of having a presence on social media platforms for your business.

Increase brand recognition

What kind of business are you engaged in? It doesn’t matter whether you are leading a multinational or you are making your baby steps with your startup or like me, you are involved in online marketing. There is something for everyone on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, and Pinterest. With a presence in most if not all social media sites, you are bound to increase your brand recognition.

In the past, we have gotten to know of relatively new brands through my Facebook newsfeed. We are sure you too, might have learned of a new product and brand as well through a social media platform. Now can you imagine a scenario whereby you are placing your bet on million plus users? Of course, the numbers will be limited at first but as you grow; your brand recognition grows as well.

Improve brand loyalty

How do you improve brand loyalty on social media sites? You simply employ the tools provided by the social media platforms. In fact, if you approach the entire social media marketing strategy with optimism and business tactics, you will make the interaction more social for your customers.

You can introduce a helpline where customers can engage with the brand on a social level. If the social media campaign is effective enough, it will motivate customers to become loyal supporters of your profitable cause.

Related Post: 6 Reasons why new businesses should adopt branding

Conversions are imminent

Conversions are quite important when dealing with social media sites. If you post something on social media it will reach your existing customers, new customers, and potential customers. With that said, the aftermath is nothing short of notable conversions.

Of course, there are factors that will affect the outcome. However, any post, image or video should have a link to your website since a customer might end up there subsequently converting. Although, not all form of social media sites interactions will lead to a conversion but when they do make sure they are impactful on your business.

What about the brand authority?

Social media sites have a role in solidifying the brand authority. Typically, customers perceive any form of social media interaction as a show of good faith.

In essence, they have found a platform to expresses most of their feelings which extends to their favorite brand. Consequently, the customers will brag or invoke their confidence in a brand they are proud of on social media.

In effect, the brand they share among their followers would increase its authority. Now, it’s more advantageous to your brand if customers are willingly sharing of its excellence on social media. Increased inbound traffic In most cases



Inbound traffic

Tends to be limited without social media sites. How’s that you ask? Well, in the absence of social media sites, inbound traffic can only be identified to people searching on keywords you’ve ranked for or people who are already aware of the existence of your brand.

The more social media profiles you add to your resume, the more paths you create that can directly lead to your site. Furthermore, content is a major factor in inbound traffic. This means that the high-quality content you syndicate on your social media profile is another opportunity for new visitors.

With an increase in the syndicated content, the inbound traffic also moves in equal measures vertically –more traffic leads to more leads and more conversions.

Reduced marketing costs

In most businesses, marketing eats away at a large chunk of the budget but social media sites and maybe, just maybe there is hope. Obviously, advertising on Facebook is cheaper than on Google. Unpredictably, though the rates might increase as the urge to make more profits kicks in.

At the moment, however, marketing has become cheaper especially with the relatively free flowing following offered by the large numbers of people represented on social media.

In any case, the efforts required to mount a social media onslaught is less than in organizing traditional forms of marketing. Within a few hours, you can be able to create or source for content, as well as the syndication strategy. However, the universal rule of “starting small” still applies here, and you shouldn’t ignore this healthy principle.

Related Post: 6 Inbound marketing strategies every startup could adopt

Better performance with your search engine ranking

Search engine optimization (SEO) is entirely blamed for the success or failure of a search engine ranking. Of course, social media sites have taken up the space of the new kid on the block in this regard. How much effort can you channel into search engine rankings through social media? A lot actually; search engines are not blind of your social media presence.

In fact, a social media presence is in consideration during ranking. This strategy begins with optimizing your blog while the links to social media acts as strengthening factors. By now, you should be having regular parties with your search engine friends. While we are at it, it’s good to mention that the social media presence increase credibility, trustworthiness, and legitimacy.

Related Post: What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and why is it important for business

What about the customer experience?

We can’t reiterate further the importance of good customer relations to any form of business. How do you interact with your customers? There are a myriad of methods that can be used to communicate with your clients including phone calls, emails, and Social media. The social aspect found on social media sites is unparalleled. The customers’ expectations are supposed to be met and not the other way round.

If you are keen on satisfying your customers, you will lend them your ears especially on such platforms as these. From experience, it’s evident that most customers tend to vent their anger through social media sites. As such, you need to ensure that there is someone to receive this complaint as they take the action necessary in such a situation. In a different scenario, the customer might be commending your business and its right to thank them for the compliment.

Improved customer insight

You can learn a lot about what your customers think about you through social media sites. On social media platforms, customers are totally blunt on how they feel about something.

If they do not like one of your products, you will definitely know about it. In addition, you can be able to differentiate between the popular content and the boring content. You are also able to measure conversion through a myriad of promotions placed on your social media platforms. It is from such findings that you create the right channels for generating profits.

Conclusion As we are having this conversation, your competition is already represented on social media. In short, you need to start your social media campaign if you haven’t started already. Moreover, there is nothing to lose if you start out with the campaign. You can share your experience with the social media marketing in the comments section below.

If you are looking for social media marketing or digital marketing service for your business or startup, email us contact@ourownstartup.com. You can also view all our services here.