10 tips to promote your business on social media

This is 2022, and there are 4 billion + people on social media who spend an average of 2 hours online daily. That’s two hours of opportunities out there waiting for you to grab.?

In this digital age, social media is a must for any business, and many struggles to find the right ways that social media will work for their brands.??

Here are ten tips for marketing your brand on social media with the bigger picture of driving sales.?

1. Plans?

I believe we all use social media daily, so it will be easy to start using it for business purposes.?But before creating a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn account for your business, make sure you have a plan and clear goals on what you want social media to do for your brand.?

Take your time to set goals. You may decide to go for building your brand awareness, growing brand trust and influence, thought leadership, lead generation, or providing top-notch customer service.?In all you do, make sure all your efforts moving forward are tied to your goals.?

Check out your competitors and other businesses for what they’re doing online. It will help you learn what’s working, their strengths and weaknesses and how you can implement them for your brand.

If you’re already using social media, you should evaluate and analyze all your marketing efforts up to this point.?Questions you should find answers to along the way are whether your content aligns with your goal. Kind and type of content? Your best and worst performing content.?

2. Platforms

As much as you need to build a presence on the major social media platforms, you need to focus your attention on the ones that effectively suit your brand.?

Choose based on where your target audience spends their time online, the popular channels in your industry, and among your competitors.

If you’re starting or feel overwhelmed with keeping up with the many social media platforms, you can start with one and move to others one by one as you get used to them.

3. Audience?

Your target audience is basically a group of people defined by specific parameters who most likely need your product or service.

Not defining your audience is one of the mistakes I noticed a few businesses make. Why will you think your brand is for everyone or be upset when your friends are not patronizing you? What if they’re not just your audience??

A food brand in Lekki that thinks its target audience is everyone. How will they serve people in Bauchi or those who prefer home-cooked meals or people who can’t afford overpriced Lekki lifestyles?

Suppose you haven’t defined your target audience. In that case, it’s time to dig deeper and understand your current and potential customers so you can develop tailored content, product, and services for them.

4. Relationship and community?

50% of consumers say when researching a brand, they check their socials. They check who you are as a brand, what you stand for, and how responsive you’re online.?

You need to start paying attention to who’s engaging your content, engage back, and repost their content. Reply and acknowledge comments, likes, saves and shares.

When your followers feel they have a relationship with your brand, they readily engage with your content and share it with their network. Make sure you nurture these relationships well. It can help you build a loyal community that will bring sales in the long run.

5. Content

Content is king. Content is royalty. Content is as essential in today’s digital world as our system needs oxygen.?

Content is what we consume daily on our screens, from YouTube videos to Instagram Images to Twitter texts to podcasts to TikTok challenges.

When you post new content on your platforms, you remind your followers that your brand is still alive. Make sure you post quality content that will provide value to your audience.?

Create something they didn’t know before, something beneficial, inspiring, entertaining, or that will make them laugh after a long ass day. It will encourage them to follow, engage, visit, and purchase whatever you sell. You should also share or repost your audience content that resonates with your brand.?

6. Trends?

Start paying attention and capitalizing on social media trends and popular hashtags. They will help you understand what’s happening and what people are consuming at the moment.

Engaging trends and relating it to your brand helps you connect with a larger audience and community.?

For example, A fashion brand can quickly jump on the styling and wearing 15 outfits in 30 seconds challenge or use the popular hashtag #OTD (outfit of the day). You can encourage your customers to make their posts and tag you.

But please, in all, you don’t jump on every trend or meme that goes viral.?

7. Features and mix up?

Whichever social media channels you have chosen for your business, you need to take advantage of all features on those apps to help you know which format works best for different forms of content.?

Twitter has thread, twitter space, tweet storm. Instagram has posts, stories, reels and Instagram live.?

Also, make sure you mix up your post formats. If you usually post pictures with long captions on Instagram, switch it to Carousel. If you post a long-form text on LinkedIn, switch it to video.?

8. Ads and influencers?

Increase your reach on social media by running ads. It will help you reach new audiences and monitor how they receive your business. Ads are usually tailored so that the algorithm will focus on your target audience.?

Research shows that social media users respond better when ads are tailored to them.

Influencing and brand ambassador are officially a career now. Get influencers and enthusiastic customers to influence, endorse and act as brand ambassadors for your brand.?

This will help your business reach their large audience, build word-of-mouth buzz about it and drive sales.?

9. Tools

The secret to not getting overwhelmed with promoting your business on social media is to use the right tools to simplify your work and increase productivity.

Design: Canva and Crello help you to create high-quality designs using layouts, templates, and design elements to create stunning graphics without a lot of design knowledge

Writing and Editing: Grammarly and Hemmingway help you write error-free copy and content.?

Video editing: Inshot and viva videos help you create and edit videos

Audio: Anchor allows you to create and distribute your podcast

Scheduling: Hootsuite and buffer enable you to manage and schedule your post on all platforms.?

Google workspace: docs, spreadsheets, and drive can be used for organization, documentation and storage.

10. Analytics

As you implement everything, you’ve learned, keeping track of how each strategy performs is necessary.?

Each platform’s analytics will inform you about people you’re reaching, track and determine which posts are performing well.?

Once you get the hang of what is working, what has potential and what is not performing well, you can fine-tune your effort and strategy to improve results.??

Repurpose and Reshare your top-performing posts now and then to get in front of your new audiences.

On final note,

Social media is here to stay. If you want to promote your brand, you need to pick your platforms, create a top-notch profile, post valuable content, engage your audience, build relationships and keep up with trends.

Social media does more than building brand awareness, increase reach or drive sales. It serves as a platform?to demonstrate your brand core values and create a personality for your brand that people can connect with.