Each of us has always dreamed of owning their own business and be their own boss, most people want this so they can retire early or buy expensive stuff. Whatever the business may be, you need social media to make it work! You might be after opening your own clothing brand, a bakery or flower shop, whatever that dream maybe you need one thing – Harness the power of social media for your own benefits and use it to market for your business.
Social media offers an easy and a very low-commitment way for potential customers to express interest in your business and what you offer, social networks offer advertising formats specifically designed to collect leads based on the users search preference and automatically pop up your add – lets say you are looking for croissant recipes on the internet, after scrolling endlessly through many recipe pages (I am guilty of that) you decide to open Instagram to check your latest feed and boom there goes an ad for a local bakery that sells that croissant. That is guaranteed to drive some traffic to your business
Using social media for business is no longer optional. It’s an essential way to reach your customers and grow your business
Social media sites have become a massively important part of our day-to-day lives in the recent years, and even more so in the Covid era in which social distancing is more important than ever.
Our social media accounts provide us with a way to stay in touch with our friends and loved ones without putting anyone at risk of infection
It’s been obvious for a while now that social media sites are a vital part of our lifestyle, and social channels show no signs of slowing down any time soon.
In other words, this means that you can expect them to remain an essential part of the puzzle if you plan to grow your business in the years to come.
You likely spend a lot of your time trying to dig up the latest social media marketing tips and why wouldn’t you there are now 4.2 billion active social media users—almost twice as many as there were just five years ago.
Those users spend nearly 2.5 hours on social media channels every single day.
Social media present great marketing opportunities for businesses of all sizes. You can use social media to:
- promote your brand and business
- tell customers about your goods and services you offer
- find out what customers think of your business and see reviews
- attract new customers
- build better relationships with existing customers.
Let’s take a look at more advantages of using social media
Social media marketing has many advantages, here are just the main ones:
- broader reach — social media can reach millions of people all around the world
- Option to target particular groups — many forms of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) allow businesses to target specific groups, often in particular locations or based on a combination of keywords in a particular location
- free or low-cost — many forms of social media are free for businesses to advertise, even if you choose the paid option, it is still low-cost compared to traditional advertising in newspaper, radio, TV or someone standing in the street with a sign (chicken custom rings a bell?)
- personal — social media allow you to communicate on a personal basis with individual customers and groups – a personalized approach is always a winner in advertisement
- fast — you can quickly distribute information to many people with just a click of a button
- easy — you don’t need high-level skills or computer equipment to participate in social media. The average person with a standard computer should have no difficulty. Nowadays it can be done through your phone
- Informative – depending on the platform, you always can see how many people you reached, outcome of the advertisement and recommendation
How To Use Social Media For Business
- Find influencers to work with
- Find Affiliate Partners
- Run Competitions
- Have giveaways
- Go Live on Facebook
- Use Stories in Instagram
- Run Ads to Your Ideal Audience so it pops up when they use their favorite platform
- Check the analysis and learn from it to target a better audience
- Make social media An Essential Part of Your Business.
Create content with the customer in mind
Your content should be useful, relevant and add value to people’s lives and most importantly – attractive to your target audience
Once you create your content, publish it to one or more platforms and share the links with your followers on social networks, talk about it in a live broadcast or add parts of it to your story to attract audience to read the full content
Search engines such as Google use social media shares to determine how useful content is to an audience. So, building your presence on social networks can also improve your search ranking.
Digital training
Google Digital Garage has free short courses to help you make the most of online opportunities. There are modules to help you decide which social media platforms are right for your business, set goals, get noticed on social media, measure your success and avoid pitfalls.
Coursera has a course that explains in depth what is social media and how to use it for marketing
Udemy also has courses on how to write online content
Lets not forget – YouTube
Now let’s start living our dream and planning for a better future, and who knows we might retire earlier than you think!