Social Media for Business: A Marketer's Guide

Using social media for business can be a great way to engage with customers, view competition and develop a brand voice.

Facebook alone has 2.7 billion active monthly users.

The main social media platforms used for business include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

If your small business isn't on social media, you could be missing out on significant value, including new customers, insights into your brand, and audience and engagement opportunities with customers and competitors alike. Plus, social media can be a highly cost-effective way of reaching your customers in a personalised way.

"Social media provides targeting capability, as well as reach and scale, at a lower cost than almost all other marketing channels," said Abdul Muhammad, chief digital officer and partner at rbb Communications, in a previous Business News Daily interview. "People are on social media all day, every day – brands must go where the people are."

If you're considering getting your business onto social media, however, it's important to consider which platforms are right for your business and will provide the most value.

Not every social media platform is a good fit for every business, so you should invest your time and skills in the platforms where you're most likely to reach and engage with your target audience. Each platform has a mission, purpose and unique audience. For example, Instagram is heavy on visuals, whereas Twitter allows you to inject some personality into your posts and engage with followers.

Brand Awareness

Billions of people across the world use social media every day, and it makes sense to put your business where the customers are. Roughly 60% of Instagram users said they find new products using the platform, making it well worth your while.

Brand personality

It's becoming more important than ever for businesses to have a distinct voice and engage with customers on a human level. Social media provides an easy avenue for this, allowing you to develop an identity and a voice to showcase your brand values and engage with followers.

Thought leadership

Social media provides an opportunity for businesses to both learn from and stand out from their competitors, establishing themselves as industry leaders through engaging and relevant content. You can do this by sharing creative content on Instagram, writing thoughtful blog posts for LinkedIn or showing a fresh perspective in tweets.

Increased website traffic

If your followers like your social media content, they become interested in you and go to your website to learn more about your business, which means higher website traffic and potentially more sales for you.

Reputation management

Reputation is everything, and social media gives you the perfect opportunity to communicate with customers and solve issues quickly. You can even create a special hashtag your followers can use if they have a question or complaint to ensure it is seen by the right people. You can also use social media to highlight positive reviews or comments.

Analytics and insights

Most social media platforms have their own analytics tools, which allow you to monitor things like your follower count, engagement rates and click-through rates. These numbers can help you figure out what kinds of content your followers respond to best and tweak your marketing strategy accordingly.

Competitor analysis

Social media isn't just good for engaging with your customers – you can also use it to stay on top of what your competitors are doing. Follow your competitors and take note of what seems to work well for them and what doesn't. Work those insights into your social media marketing strategy.

Targeted advertisements

It's easy to create ads on social platforms, and the benefit is that you can target them to specifically suit your audience. Research has shown that users respond better when ads are tailored to them, and this often increases engagement.

Key Take away Key takeaway: There are many benefits to using social media for business, including access to analytics, boosts in website traffic and the chance to develop a brand personality.

How to use social media for business

Here are some tips and best practices to help you be successful on social media.

1. Post consistently.

You want your followers to know what to expect from you, so follow a consistent posting schedule. This will also help you avoid posting too much, which can be off-putting for your followers.

2. Have fun with it.

Provide fun ways to generate more leads and engage with your customers, like running contests, linking to your website or special offers in your profile bio, and hosting live videos with exciting updates or news. You can also utilise Facebook or Instagram Shops to sell directly on social media platforms.

3. Know your audience.

Use your analytics tools to see demographic information, customer behavior and social media trends to inform your content. Knowing what your audience wants to see from you and responding accordingly can go a long way in boosting your engagement rates.

4. Craft a social media marketing strategy.

The best way to ensure success on social media is to go in with a plan. This means sitting down and coming up with a social media marketing strategy that includes each platform you plan to use.

The best social media is the site you can leverage for your business's specific goals. With that in mind, though, a combination of social media usage on multiple sites will typically yield the best results.

What are the disadvantages of social media for business?

The disadvantages of social media largely depend on the platforms you use, but there are some universal drawbacks. The first is the investment. It takes a lot of time to manage a social media account, and if you are outsourcing the work, it will take a lot of money to pay for that time. While the initial outreach generated from those investments is usually worthwhile, social media investments generate smaller returns over time.

Another major drawback is the potential for bad publicity. Something as simple as a typo can send a very wrong message, and even after you make corrections, the consequences of bad publicity will persist. It is practically inevitable that a social media account will encounter political or otherwise controversial topics, and someone is guaranteed to dislike your business's discourse.

One of the hardest risks to manage is the influence of your social media followers. They will always represent a small portion of your total customers, but they will be the most vocal, and they could lead you to misread what the majority of your customers really want or think. Putting too much stock in social media can send a business down a bad track.

What budget should you set for social media marketing?

There is no magic number for social media marketing. While you should probably spend at least a little money on it, how much you get out of your spending will depend on the efficiency of your campaign. According to Web Strategies, companies typically spend 15 to 25 percent of their total digital marketing budget on social media. That marks a nice place to start, but you can and should adjust your spending according to your return on investment statistics, once those numbers are available.

Want to know more? Head on over to the full article here for more ideas and perspective. Afterwards, why not drop me an email to share your thoughts at [email protected]; or call me on 0467 749 378.

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Thanks,

Robert