There has been an explosive growth of social media over the past decade. What started off as an easy way to post content, share updates, and connect with friends gradually became a powerful tool for customer engagement and promoting business online. No matter whether it’s a next-door retail store, a budding startup, or a multibillion-dollar enterprise – all are running after the bandwagon and embracing social media to connect with existing as well as potential customers to leverage their brand value.
Promoting your business on social media is relatively easy compared to traditional advertising. You don’t need deep pockets to spend a fortune on brand campaigns. Anyone with careful planning and understanding of their buyer persona can do this. Follow the strategy steps given below to increase the chances of engaging, attracting and converting your potential leads to customers from various online social media platforms.
1. Identify Your Customers
Identify your customers and what their pain points are. What problems do they suffer from, and how can you help them resolve those. Understanding these key elements will narrow down your customer base so that you can focus only on what’s relevant to your intended audience.
2. Create Interesting Content
Create relevant and informative content which your audience may find useful. This could either be in the form of a blog post, a short video, news or a press release. Your buyer’s journey goes through the three different stages of awareness, consideration, and decision. Never make the mistake of a sales pitch at the beginning of a buyer’s journey. This will turn your potential buyers away. Instead, try to help them solve a problem. This will add value to the product or service you offer and improve your brand image.
3. Choose the Right Social Media
Choosing the right social media is the key to success. There’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Quora, YouTube, and so many more. Should you publish your content on every available platform – probably not. Figure out where your customers are flocking to. If your potential customers are mostly available on Instagram and you end up posting most of your content on Pinterest, you surely won’t get the desired result. Do your research and identify the social platforms your customers use, and then publish your content there.
Top Popular Social Media Platforms List for Online Businesses
Given below is a list of top performing social media sites where people are often active and like to engage with interesting posts and businesses.
| Serial Number | Social Media Sites | Approx. Daily Visitors* | Alexa Traffic Rank* |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | 219M | 3 | |
| 2. | 65.9M | 11 | |
| 3. | 48.2M | 16 | |
| 4. | VK | 51.7M | 20 |
| 5. | 28.8M | 28 | |
| 6. | WhatsApp Business | 29.1M | 54 |
| 7. | Tumblr | 12.5M | 66 |
| 8. | 12.1M | 77 | |
| 9. | Quora | 12.6M | 92 |
| 10. | LINE | 3.02M | 284 |
| 11. | Telegram | 3.24M | 350 |
| 12. | Viber | 832K | 1,804 |
| 13. | 622K | 2,566 | |
| 14. | Snapchat | 253K | 4,443 |
4. Publish Content Regularly
Once you start posting interesting content with enthralling captions and trending hashtags, it will grab your followers’ attention. Potential customers active on social media channels will seek more information about your business and eagerly wait for your next post. If they don’t find subsequent posts even after a while, they might soon stop following you. Your followers will grow only if you publish at regular and frequent intervals.
Publishing random posts frequently could turn out to be overwhelming for you and sooner you will run short of content. Create an editorial calendar over a period of time, where you will have a plan to publish content based on chosen topics. This will give you enough time to research and create relevant content.
5. Post Videos to Engage Customers
Videos are more engaging compared to other forms of content, so you need to leverage video on social media cleverly. Post short explainer videos about your brand on a biweekly or monthly basis. Interesting videos about how your products or services solve a particular problem can attract more customers.
6. Build a Community with Influencing People
Tie up with experts in your business niche. Connect with people having huge social media followers. Invite them for a guest post in your blog recommending your products or service. Request them to share a blog post or an informative video featuring your business on their social media channel. This may give a tremendous boost to your brand awareness and increase your followers dramatically.
7. Respond to Customer Queries Quickly
Once you have an active social presence online, people may occasionally come up to you with certain queries and seek your advice regarding how to use a particular product or service. Address them as soon as possible. They are your potential customers. Providing them a feasible solution can help you gain recognition in your respective niche.
8. Run Contests on Social Platforms
Running a contest on social media is a great way to engage your customers. Create an online poll to know what your customers would like to have in your next release. Arrange giveaways for those who like and share your posts or for positive mentions of your brand with hashtags across Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media channels which have high potentials of attracting new potential customers. Reward the best photo featuring your brand on Instagram.
9. Offer Coupons and Discounts Occasionally
Treat your social media followers in a special way. Let them know how important they are and how eager you are to do business with them. Offer discounts to those who query about or shows interests on your product or services. Give coupons on special occasions, this will encourage them to engage with your business more often. These offerings also possess the chance of not only converting your potential leads to buyers but also can help your old buyers to return back to your business.
10. Coax Customer Reviews on Social Media
Testimonials are great in building your brand image. Try to induce all your happy customers to review your business at your top performing social media channels where people often engage with your posts. Share their feedback to let others know how well you served your customers.
At times, dissatisfied customers may bad mouth you publicly on social media with negative reviews. Ignoring them could turn out to be a disaster for your brand image. Address their concerns immediately in a polite manner. Get in touch with them to check what they need help with. Once you resolve their issues, they may convert into satisfied customers and applaud your excellent customer service.
Being proactive on social media with a structured plan of action will help you gain recognition in your industry and earn you more customers in no time. Post engaging content regularly and respond to your customers when they need you the most. Remember, happy customers always results in a growing business.
From weaving contents, scheduling them to get published at the right time, and monitoring overall activities on social media channels sometimes become cumbersome. To stay managed with all social media management tasks and monitoring multiple platforms smartly, one needs some handy software.
13 Social Media Tools to Monitor & Manage Your Promotional Efforts
Fortunately, there are few social media monitoring and management tools which have been helping countless online business owners and marketers from the social media management muddle. Those tools are listed below.
Implement strategies with the help of your preferable tools as listed above and let us know by commenting below about your business performance on social media.
* Approx. Daily Visitors & Alexa Traffic Rank stats are sourced from EasyCounter.com & Alexa as of 16th January, 2019 data.
Image Courtesy: PhotoMIX-Company/pixabay and Modified Image of geralt/pixabay.
SEM Correspondent publishes latest news and updates from the world of Digital Marketing in behalf of Search Engine Mogul Team.
GREAT POST!
THANK YOU FOR SHARING…