According to data from digital insights website DataReportal, there are roughly 4.48 billion social media users in the world as of this year. If we didn’t know already that social media was an important factor in modern business growth, that number ought to put the matter beyond doubt. The sheer number of people using social media around the world necessitates that businesses aiming to grow get active on a variety of platforms.
The good news is that beyond being necessary, business outreach on social media is also cost-effective. As our post ‘Social Media: A Boon or Bane for Your Business?‘ highlighted, social outreach makes for one of the “best economic ways” to market your business. It enables you to build successful connections with customers, generate new leads, and even enhance a data operation that can drive future sales and marketing efforts.
With this in mind, we’ll discuss five specific ways you can leverage social media to promote your business.
1. Try the “tag-a-friend” strategy
One way to organically increase the visibility of your business posts and create engagement on your social pages is by employing the “tag-a-friend” strategy. This basically means nudging consumers to tag their friends in comments (sometimes making those friends eligible for a prize or something of the like), and it’s a common tactic. According to an article on increasing Instagram followers by AskMoney, the tag-a-friend approach can boost a following in multiple ways, but also invites the possibility of a viral post. In the event that you effectively use this strategy on social media, your post can land on a social media platform’s featured pages like Instagram’s “Explore” page or Tiktok’s “Discover” tab.
2. Make use of targeted ads
Aside from exposing your business to a wide range of audiences, social media also allows you to specifically target people who may be interested in your products and services. You can direct content toward these specific consumer groups using demographic information and behavioral data on various social media platforms. Doing so gives you a greater chance of generating profitable leads with minimal use of resources. Do be sure, however, to practice transparency and avoid using sensitive user data when creating targeted ads. If you’re not careful or responsible with users’ personal information, you’ll eventually put off would-be customers (and likely lose some existing ones).
You can also make use of online marketing tools like PosterMyWall to create and customize vibrant online ad templates to use and put up on your social media.
3. Involve your staff
Another way to build a robust and effective social media presence is by asking your employees to create engaging content highlighting the nature and/or achievements of your business. This is also known as employee advocacy. When your employees post about your business on their social media pages, they are helping to build brand recognition and trust, and can also amplify specific products, services, or promotions.
4. Create exclusive discounts
To further grow your business’s audience on social media, you should also consider creating social-only discounts. These are discounts that can only be redeemed through link or promo codes exclusive to social media. Social-only discounts make for an easy way to create engagement and promote your business on social media, as well as to gain more followers. Additionally, exclusive discounts and limited offers can help to directly (and quickly) boost sales. Just remember to include all relevant terms and conditions on the social media posts to avoid any confusion on the part of your customers.
5. Understand the importance of cross-promotion
It’s important not to focus all of your marketing efforts on a single social media platform, but rather to take advantage of a range of options beneficial to businesses. Forbes ranked social platforms that are most effective for business leaders and included Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Depending on the nature of your business and its target demographics though, you might also add TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, or others to the list. Whatever specific platforms you focus on though, it’s important to practice cross-promotion. This means, for starters, syncing up campaigns across accounts, as well as including call-to-action links to all your social media pages in every post you put online.
Through these methods and ideas, you can use social media to promote, improve, and ultimately grow your business.
Also Read: 8 Pro Tips to Make your Shoppable Posts more Sellable
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