Social Media As A Tool For Business Growth

Social media is an important tool for the marketing and growth of a business online. You can get more visibility for your brand, trend your posts, and engage with prospective customers that are always on these platforms.

Which Platform?

As a business owner you shouldn’t feel pressure to join every social media platform out there. It is overwhelming, time consuming, and not necessary. You should look at which platforms suit your business and which will give you the best return on investment (ROI). We have written a guide on which social platform you should be on here:https://www.venturedigital.ca/tips/which-social-platforms-should-your-business-be-using/. In general Facebook is always a best bet for most businesses we serve and Google+ for the SEO benefits.

Engagement

Page “likes” don’t matter anymore in today’s modern social media marketing; engagement is the key to building business on Facebook. With all the new changes in Facebook in 2015, only a small percentage of your followers even see your posts anymore; as well asking for “likes” and “shares” is now being scrutinized by Facebook. To get around this limited organic reach, we recommend an advertising budget to reach more followers, even $25 a month will help. It is important to create posts that generate engagement; choose pictures that followers might share, use hashtags, ask questions, take polls, and be creative with your posts.

The other important part of engagement is responding to your followers. If your followers are talking to you online, continue the conversation to grow the engagement further. As more people respond, your post will get bumped up in news feeds and shown to more people. As well, your followers will feel a relationship grow with your brand if they get a response from you directly. You want your brand to be kept in their mind as they could be or know your next customers.

Small businesses are now also networking in Facebook, Google & LinkedIn groups. This can be a more time consuming activity but it does pay off faster than posting to your business page for organic reach. Explore groups in your city that are for small businesses and networking, talk to the people in the group, and try not to post too many spammy posts. The groups are not a platform for your advertising (unless they are listed that way), they are a place to network online.

Summary

Remember, choose the platforms that make sense for your business. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Most importantly, engage with your followers, join groups to meet new people, and hold off on too many spammy posts. In the end, social media is a social endeavor so you want to talk to people on a personal level.