social media

The first online purchase was made more than 25 years ago, but time flies and nowadays we can see that the success of businesses depends much on their online presence and digital marketing. The number of online shoppers has grown up to 2.05 billion people in 2020 and the tendency that it will continue growing seems clear and predictable. It means that companies should pay more attention to digital marketing and one of its most powerful and efficient directions called social media marketing. Millions of people use social media platforms on a daily basis, so why not take advantage of that and make your business flourish?

Look: this article will explain how to use social media to grow your business and be competitive in the modern market with its help.

How social media can help your business grow

E-commerce sales are going to reach $4.2 trillion in 2021. Don’t you want your business to contribute to this amount too? Probably, it is a goal of every company to achieve success and social media can be a perfect assistant on the way. There are over 4.2 billion active social media users in the world who spend over 2 hours a day on average there. It allows businesses to benefit from these platforms and set the following purposes:

  • Build and extend brand awareness;
  • Build and develop relationships with a bigger range of customers;
  • Increase sales made directly through social media platforms.

How to do that you may wonder? The easiest way is to turn to professionals and order smm services. It is a time-savvy and effortless task since you will get access to a wide range of services including:

  • Social media profiles creation;
  • Competitors analysis;
  • Content strategy development;
  • Creating visual and text content;
  • Activation preparing and launching;
  • Collaboration with opinion leaders, etc.

However, it is also possible to try and grow your business with social media marketing yourself as well as order an exact list of services listed below too.

How to use social media to grow your business

It is great to have a clear understanding of what you should do to draw traffic to your company website, increase the clientele number, and make your brand more recognizable. Get practical advice below and implement it for your business!

Increase your social media presence

If you want to use social media platforms for your business, probably, it should be represented there. It is not enough to have several accounts on the most popular social media destinations, however, it is the first step to start with if you have not done that before.

  1. Choose the best platforms for your company: consider your audience, their age, and whether your products are suitable for the social media platform selected. TikTok can be a great option for youth, though Instagram and Facebook continue to take leading positions worldwide.
  2. Set clear goals to be achieved: they should be clear, measurable, timely, and relevant.
  3. Make a plan: you can fulfill your strategy into reality only when you make a detailed and well-thought plan including possible investments and thresholds to meet.
  4. Develop a strategy on how to achieve every goal and what actions to undertake and when to do that.
  5. Make a posting schedule and work on the quality of your content to make it informative and appealing to viewers.
business in social media
Image source: Lovehair Instagram

Benefit from your competitors

You can contribute to the growth of your company even with minor improvements made on the basis of competitor analysis. There are lots of ideas to use and vice versa to avoid being more successful than your closest rivals. For this purpose, it is necessary to make a comparative analysis and find both common and different features as well as research the competitors and conduct a social media audit too.

Learn target audience and generate leads

The main benefit of social media marketing is the possibility to target your audience as accurately as possible. Therefore, you should have a clear understanding of who your customers are and only then decide how to attract them. There are tools to uncover such details about people as the most popular hashtags, relevant authors, age gaps, location, and many other characteristics that help to target consumers as specifically as possible.

When you know your potential customers, it is time to attract them. You can do that by posting relevant and useful content as well as adding call-to-action buttons for easier access to your brand.

Improve relationships with customers

One of the keys to the hearts of your clients is a possibility to communicate with them directly without third parties. It helps to develop more trustworthy relationships and provide personalized experience to everyone. A good idea is to engage back with people who showed interest in your content. Furthermore, you should remember not only about a necessity to attract new customers but also the retention of the existing ones. The most effective solutions in both cases look as follows:

  • Running giveaways and contests;
  • Starting retargeting campaigns;
  • Ordering paid advertising;
  • Rewarding loyal customers and brand fans;
  • Creating groups for brand clients;
  • Mentioning followers in brand posts and Stories;
  • Reacting to comments, likes, reposts;
  • Collaborating with influencers, etc.

Keep up with trends

IGTV

Social media platforms are incessantly adjusted to meeting the expectations of modern users and any significant changes introduced by them should be taken into consideration. It helps to make content appropriate and contemporary as well as be more appealing to the public. Therefore, it is necessary to follow the news and events in the industry, look for funny and innovative content, share photos and videos with other users, etc.

Use social commerce to your advantage

Social media platforms can substitute or be a good add-on to existing e-commerce websites of many brands. Many business owners forget about an opportunity to sell products directly in social networks, while this trend is getting more popular every day. US adults admitted making purchases on social media platforms: 18% of them done that on Facebook and 11% of the surveyed used Instagram for this purpose. Why not benefit from this opportunity too? You can advertise the most popular products there instead of adding hundreds of other goods and it will also drive traffic to the main web store too.

Automate and simplify marketing with the choice of the right tools

It is much easier to grow a business online if you know what tools to choose for a fast and effortless start. There are lots of applications and software examples that track metrics, schedule posts, search for hashtags, etc. The most popular tools are used to track analytics, engagement management, improve photo-editing, content creation, etc.

Make your brand recognizable

Social media is a number one place to increase brand awareness and make it more popular with people. Naturally, it is possible to opt for paid ads but this is not the only solution to take advantage of. You can accompany your content with a brand logo, cover images, and unique hashtags associated with your company and products. There is sense to make your bio and profile description more informative and add links to your official website too.

One more way to boost traffic to your website and increase brand awareness is to add content relevant to your niche. It will show your brand higher in search results.

Maximize Conversions

It is great to have many leads but you should convert them into active customers too. How to do that with the help of social media? There are several pieces of advice to consider:

  • Make your call-to-actions appealing and motivating;
  • Offer personalized discounts;
  • Boost engagement with contests and giveaways.

Summary

Social media platforms can be a powerful marketing tool for any business if utilized right. There are many ways how it can contribute to the success of any company and it is a mistake to neglect this opportunity in the modern digitalized world. At the same time, it is better to entrust professionals with such a responsible step as social media marketing of business to avoid mistakes and not to lose valuable time that can be spent for benefit!

About the author
Christina Walker
Christina Walker
Content Contributor for OneTwoStream
Christina Walker is a big social media enthusiast who documents her life in real time to cultivate a loyal social media following.
She is a happy mother, a blogger, and IT geek who not only uses the new technologies but also helps to introduce them to the public.