How Does Marketing on Social Media Help Your Business?
Social media has exploded in popularity and importance for consumers and businesses over the last 20 years. Today's social media is more than just a space to keep up with friends or post pictures of your latest culinary adventure. These platforms allow businesses to connect with millions of customers, increase brand awareness, and generate leads.
In this article, we explore social media marketing campaigns and the platforms and types of content you need to know about to successfully promote your business on social media.
The Role of Social Media
Executed correctly, social media marketing campaigns offer businesses many benefits. The following are some of the top ways being on social media can help your business succeed.
Builds an Online Community
Social media provides users with a platform to communicate with like-minded individuals. Being present and regularly communicating with your target market lets you build a base of people interested in your brand. Converting those interested individuals into customers becomes much easier once your audience engages with your social media content.
Drives Traffic to Your Website
Your social posts can drive your audience to your website. You can steer social media users to your site using direct links to your website's homepage or product pages in your posts. Social media posts are the first step, leading users to explore your website and, hopefully, to make a purchase.
Including website links in your social posts helps increase your visibility and provides you with the opportunity for lead generation and conversion. Make sure you include your website in your profile description so anyone who sees your post on social media knows where to go to learn more.
Creates Real-Time Engagement
You can use your social channels to stay current on your online reviews and comments/mentions about your business, addressing users' concerns and responding to questions as soon as they appear. This real-time engagement with customers demonstrates how much your company values them.
Social media engagement creates personalized interactions where everyone can see them. As a bonus, content with high engagement rates also performs better in most social media algorithms. More people will see your content if you consistently respond and engage with your audience.
Teaches You About Your Customers
You can learn a lot of valuable information about your customers from how they interact with your social media posts. Social media is where many people go to share their thoughts and have conversations; reading these comments helps you stay informed.
For example, if customers are having trouble with your website, really love one of your new products, or are excited about an upcoming promotion, you should be able to tell by reading your social media comments. A deeper understanding of your customers will help you to better address their concerns and meet their needs.
Helps You Stay Ahead of the Competition
As of 2023, more than three-quarters of businesses use social media to connect with customers. If you're not on social media, you risk falling behind and losing customers to the competition. Conversely, a strong media presence that stands out can help you stay ahead of your competition and increase sales.
Marketing on social media is about more than just creating an account and occasionally posting, which is what many businesses do. You need an effective social media marketing strategy to get the full benefit of social media and reach new business goals. Executing that strategy is how you get an edge over your competition.
Platforms To Consider
There are lots of different social media platforms out there, but you don't need to focus on all of them for successful social media marketing. These are the top four social media platforms you should keep in mind for your business:
As the world's largest social media platform, it's safe to say Facebook is a reliable choice for advertising. Facebook is popular among a wide variety of demographics, meaning there's a good chance your target audience is engaging with content on the platform, too.
Aside from allowing Facebook users to connect and share content online, the platform lets merchants advertise their products and services online.
Known for its glossy photos and videos, Instagram is an ideal platform for brands with visually appealing products that are easily incorporated into visual media. Instagram also boasts a massive user base, with the second-highest engagement rate among social media platforms and one of the youngest audiences. These factors make Instagram an ideal platform for both organic social media management and social media advertising.
TikTok
A more recent addition to the social advertising game, TikTok holds enormous potential for reaching potential customers, especially among younger audiences. In just three years, the platform grew in the U.S. from 100 million monthly active users in 2020 to more than 150 million in 2023.
As the world's largest professional network, LinkedIn has an extensive professional user base and can target customers based on job qualifications. Unlike most other platforms that focus on business-to-consumer (B2C) advertising, the nature of LinkedIn advertising makes it better suited to business-to-business (B2B) advertising campaigns.
Types of Content
Once you decide to use social media to help promote your business, there's still the question of what to post. Deciding what content to publish can be tricky, so try to include these three powerful types of content:
Interactive Content
You shouldn't limit yourself to posting just photos and videos when creating a social media account. Interactive content like polls, quizzes, and other posts that prompt audience engagement via comments or reactions are a must for your social media strategy.
Posting interactive content will help you gain better insights into what your target audience connects with most and can help you tailor more meaningful messages going forward.
Customer-Created Content
One of the best sources of content to share with your customers on social media is your customers themselves. Consider sharing reviews and testimonials that customers have left you on your business's social media accounts. Publicly posting these reviews lets you interact with your current clients and lets potential new clients see real-life experiences with your brand.
You can also repost other user-generated content (UGC) — like photos your customers have taken with your product or tutorial videos they've made involving your product — to your business social media accounts. Seeing content from actual customers will make other consumers more confident about buying from your business, as the posts serve as authentic word-of-mouth advertising.
Video Content
Video content on social media gets much more engagement than plain text or photos and is significantly more memorable for viewers. Posting videos showing off your products or services is an excellent way to show your online community what you have to offer. You can post these videos across social media on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook Stories, or Instagram Reels, to name a few options.
Keep in mind that social media users' attention spans are generally brief. Short-form videos between 30 and 60 seconds are often the ideal length to capture the viewers' attention and share a quick message. Stay on topic, and don't allow the audience to get bored.
Even sharing more personal content, like decorations in your shop or goofy memes that make you laugh, can help you connect with your target audience. Social media users respond well to authentic content with lots of personality that speaks to the heart of your business.
Help Your Business Grow With Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing may seem like a massive undertaking if you've never done it before. Luckily, you don't have to go it alone. Optimize Digital Marketing has over a decade of experience helping businesses like yours create and execute effective digital marketing plans. We can help you build your social media strategy so that you can start reaping the benefits of this incredibly powerful marketing channel.
If you would like to learn more about Optimize and how we utilize social media in our marketing strategies to ensure your success online, schedule your free consultation today