How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

When you think of social media, what are the first few things that usually cross your mind? Socializing? Likes and shares? Posts and reels? Interesting facts and myths? Memes? Indeed, the world of social media is a combination of all that and more. But if you instantly think of social media as the opportunity hub of growing your business, then you are on the right track. It is easy to use social media to grow your business if you know how. Many entrepreneurs have attempted to build their social media presence, and many of them have failed over the years. But a fair few have also succeeded in expanding their business beyond their own expectations.

In this article, we will show you exactly how to grow your business on social media beyond your wildest dreams! You may have imagined your business to reach a certain high point in revenue and potential. We will show you how to raise that point higher, break all boundaries, and forge your business into what it could possibly become. But before we get to that, let’s understand why you should use socializing platforms to meet your business expansion needs.

Why Businesses Should Use Social Media for Growth

Social media literally translates to a medium for socializing. But a business isn’t all about work and professionalism. It has several departments whose social growth implies the overall growth of your business too. Take marketing, for example. How can you hope to promote your products without interacting with your potential customers on a regular basis? The good news is, social media has everything you need to grow your business, from a wider audience to the specific marketing tools required. Here are a few more reasons why you should use the platforms.

You can Connect with Your Customers More Naturally

In real life, without the use of technology, the only way to connect with your ideal customers is to visit them in person. It’s not feasible for a growing business since you have a whole host of other managerial tasks to take care of. With basic social media features like chat and video calling, you can get in touch with your potential buyers as naturally as if you are meeting them at their house, improving your conversion rates tenfold.

Cost-Effective Promotion

Remember those large bills you had to pay just to execute a simple marketing campaign in the real world? On social media, the promotion costs are greatly reduced, and at times, it’s entirely free of cost! That’s a really cost-effective way to generate leads and an excellent return on investment if ever there was one.

Social Media Users are Active

In a real-world campaign, you never know if your audience is actively listening to you. On the other hand, over 4.8 billion people are active on social media, eager to listen to what you have to say.

Social Media Encourages Two-Way Communication

Active users on social media can visually show their support for your business by liking or sharing your posts. You can even communicate with them via direct messages and video calling. And don’t get us started on the interaction potential of reels and comments!

Real-Time Updates

News spreads like wildfire on social media platforms. If some major event has begun in Japan, people will come to know about it in the US instantly. You can leverage these real-time updates to build a better rapport with your customer base.

Other reasons to use social media for business growth include rapid customer feedback, delivering quick customer service, building a level of trust between you and your audience, and expanding your market reach on a global scale.

How to Grow Your Business with Social Media

Now that you know why you need to grow your business on social media, let us look at the how. The process is a bit lengthy, but you can easily bear with us since it is simple and immensely intriguing.

Decide Which Platform is Best for Your Business

Before you can start your social media journey, you will need to find the right platform to accompany you on your travels. There are hundreds of social media channels out there, and a new one has probably been added to the list as you are reading this! Not every platform is right for each business. The features of one platform may be more beneficial for one industry but not for another. For instance, Instagram is perfect for photography, whereas YouTube is ideal for cooking recipes. Choose the platforms that are right for your business.

Identify the Target Audience

Not every active user on your chosen social media platform is interested in your business. You need to find the specific demographic that best resonates with your industry and promote your business to them. For example, if you own a restaurant, then you may think that everyone could be your target audience. Who doesn’t eat? But that’s not the case. Foodies and cooks will best identify with your social media posts and will be eager to share them in their reviews if they like your types of content. That’s your target audience.

Define Goals and Objectives

Your ultimate goal is obviously to grow your business. But it’s a vague one. Be more specific in defining your goals and objectives on social media. Use the SMART goals technique: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. As an example, you want to focus on growing your Instagram followers to over 1000 by the end of the month. That’s as good a definition of your goal and objective as any.

Establish Your Brand as a Topical Authority

Topical authority in a particular industry is earned by posting quality, knowledgeable, concise, and relevant content on social media. Once your brand is established as a topical authority, users will keep referring back to your social media accounts from time and time.

Create Brand Recognition

How much does your target audience know about your brand and its products and services? You can make your brand more recognizable on social media by engaging your audience with relevant posts, answering their questions, resolving their issues, interacting with trending user-generated content, etc.

Develop a Social Media Calendar

A basic social media calendar consists of three columns: content brief, publish date, and time. Many successful business owners plan their future posts a month in advance. Also, it is recommended to schedule posts with management tools, like Meta Business Suite, since it helps free up your schedule for the month for tackling other important tasks.

Stay Up-To-Date on Trends

Defining new trends yourself or sharing viral trends on social media help customers relate to your business. Trends aren’t always humorous or motivational. They can often grow your knowledge about your industry, making you aware of any cutting-edge developments that would help you grow your business.

Seek Relationships, Not Just Followers

There are several social media profiles with thousands of followers. But many of them are either fake or with a greater follow-count. It shows that they have used unscrupulous ways to amass followers. That’s not how to use social media to grow your business because it’s not a reliable way. If you were to track their profile, you would realize that their follower count is constantly declining. That is because they haven’t made the effort to build a relationship with their followers.

A great number of followers looks amazing on your social account, but if it’s just for show, then your business won’t grow. Engage with your followers, respond to their DMs, reply to their comments, and like and share their posts too. Build a good rapport with them, and you will eventually notice a marked growth in your business.

Take Advantage of Paid Advertising

Paid social media advertising is a reliable way to expose your brand to your target audience. It ensures that your posts show up in their feed or your content gets promoted to a select demographic. The costs may be on the high end of the spectrum, but the strategy is well worth it. A point to note: paid advertising doesn’t guarantee that you will attract customers. Your content should possess the power to convert your audience.

Partner with Influencers and Industry Leaders

Influencers already have a vast reach and a sense of trust with their followers, which is why influencer marketing is in high demand. Find one who specializes in your industry and partner with them to promote your business. If you think that their rates are too high, then you can consider partnering with a micro-influencer, someone with no more than a few thousand followers.

Learn Best Practices

There are a select few things that many successful businesses do on social media. They set their brand’s tone and voice, optimize their profiles for SEO, use relevant hashtags in their captions, change their content to suit a wider variety of audiences, and use social media management tools to organize their accounts.

Keep an Eye on Competitors

Your competitors show where your business stands in the market. With social media, you can easily track the progress of your competition. Simply check their follower counts, likes and shares per post, discussion trends in hashtags, etc. You can also notice what they are doing right and modify your social media marketing strategy accordingly.

Cross Promote on Other Social Media Networks

Social media platforms are like interconnected hives. If one grows, so will the other if you take the right steps. Add links to your accounts on other platforms in the bio of each profile. Link your accounts officially wherever possible (like Facebook and Instagram). Upload the same content across platforms with minor tweaks to suit the relevant audience.

Track and Refine Performance

Have you taken your social media journey through every process mentioned so far? It’s time to track your performance with any available business tools, like social media analytics, and refine it wherever required. It is a process of trial and error of using social media to grow your business, a process that may need modification based on your industry. After all, what may be right for one business may not be right for everyone.

Is your performance on the platform getting better? If not, you may need to tweak certain aspects to refine it. For instance, if story writing on Instagram isn’t working out for you, try switching to a writing-focused portal like Wattpad.

Pivot if Necessary

Assume that you have your brand new social media strategy ready to launch. But it came right at the time of the launch of some new open-source artificial intelligence. If you move ahead with your current strategy, it may fall flat on its face. And you don’t have time to create a new one either.

The simple solution is to pivot your content to compete with the emerging AI. Social media has all the necessary tools for you to do just that: change the face of your brand overnight! You just need to keep your audience’s priorities in mind. Don’t pivot while focusing solely on your business profits. Evolve your game while thinking about the evolving needs of your clients.

Conclusion

Remember that you need to start by choosing the perfect social media platform for your business. Then you will be able to grow your business with social media using several ways. Begin by determining your target audience and defining your goals for every aspect of the channel. Work on your brand by creating an efficient content calendar. Brainstorm new ideas and utilize the existing viral trends.

Create relatable and visual content. Invest in paid promotions, brand ambassadors (influencers), and tracking tools. Finally, increase your engagement rate with your followers, and build a thriving relationship with them. You can always get more followers on Instagram with SimplyGram, but you need to build a rapport with them all on your own. That is how you can grow your business beyond imagination. Don’t hesitate to take it into uncharted waters. Let it float for a while. It will learn to swim naturally thereafter.