Using Social Media to Leverage Marketing and Grow Your Brand

How Businesses can gear up for using social media to leverage their marketing efforts to influence their audience and drive big marketing gains.

Marketers have to adapt to new ways of marketing by using social media networks because it is one of the most efficient ways to reach and target specific audiences where they spend their time. Your ability to use the social media platforms effectively can provide your business with the best way to interact and communicate with your potential customers. Regardless of the size of business, small businesses, in particular, have to embrace social media marketing.

Why? Because small business owners more than any others, need to manage time efficiently. Using social media to leverage marketing efforts provide small business owners with an opportunity to build brand awareness and engage an active and highly targeted community quickly and relatively cost effectively.

Social Selling is a Powerhouse for Brand Communication

Social media is extremely powerful in helping businesses to find new prospects and engage with them. It creates opportunities for engaging with the customer, new and old. By using the two-way communication of the social media platforms, marketers can get much closer to customers and engage with them at a personal level. Gone are the days of advertising and waiting for the audience to respond. Today, you have to elicit a response from the audience and make them behave in the way you want for which the social media is the perfect platform. Sales will not happen unless you can make it happen by interacting closely with the audience on the social media.

Social selling comprises of building relationships with the target audience on social networks and then engaging with them. Using social media is vastly different from search based selling as state by Johannesburg SEO.

“Using social media allows a business to educate the potential buyer and create a position of authority within a specific community. This is huge, because the trust and confidence you gain, help to influence the minds of the audience and drive them towards making a purchase.”

In this article, we will discuss how businesses can begin using social media for big marketing gains.

Most Importantly, Choose the network most relevant for you

Today, business is all about relationships, which is the reason that using the social media the right way provides a business with a substantial opportunity for growth. The key to success is understanding that social media is in nature social, and this means your business needs to take on a relatable persona.

To decide which social network to use, just find out what your audience likes and be there. Also, you have to consider the suitability of the platform for your business because different platforms behave very differently. The platform you select should not only pull the crowd you are looking for but should also be conducive to promoting your type of business. For example; LinkedIn works well for B2B business, and Pinterest is an attractive platform for the fashion industry.

Use the right tools

The social media is for your business is entirely about interacting with your audience. Keeping this in mind, in order to build your network and expand it quickly you’re going to want to implement a set of tools that will help you efficiently follow, track and share with your audience. Some tools help to search profiles by topic or keyword so that you can create a list of users who would be interested in your business or brand. These kinds of tools help to save time as you can follow several users simultaneously without having to reach out to them individually. It is also possible to export the list of users and use filters for narrowing down the search for profiles.

Target the top companies and follow them

Everyone wants to create business relationships with top brands, and the social media provides the opportunity for connecting with top companies. Businesses of all sizes have social media accounts, you can follow the profiles of companies of your choice. You can keep close track of their activities and look for opportunities of interacting by sending a congratulatory message when they win awards or request for product recommendations at the opportune moment. Make a list of your chosen companies and start following them for picking up the threads of communication to interact with them.

Keep track of new prospects

LinkedIn has the feature of Saved Search that helps to create a search based on some typical customer profile of your choice. Whenever a new sign up matches that profile, you would receive a notification from LinkedIn. It provides a unique opportunity to find new contacts for expanding the customer base while also providing a list of your existing contacts.

Join and participate in forums and groups

Although selling is the ultimate goal for businesses embracing social media for marketing, but directly marketing all the time is a social killer. Instead, savvy businesses pay attention to building and maintaining relationships and ultimately this is what will grow your business. Stay active on the social media to make your presence felt and latch on to every opportunity by engaging in discussions by joining various groups and forums. It is an excellent way of gaining more exposure for your brand and business without talking about selling. Familiarization with brands leads to increased trust that translates into sales.

Respond to customers

Potential customers who view your business profile on the social media are ideal for pursuing, and you must keep a close watch on all the clicks happening to your profile. As soon as you discover that someone has clicked your profile, it might be a sign of taking an interest in your business. Respond to it for exploring the possibilities of finding a prospective lead. You can send an invitation to connect with you and follow up the conversation that takes place. Win over customers by adding value during the buying process for which you have to engage in conversation related to your brand.

Want to Reach a Larger Audience on Social Media?

Here are some great tips on how to reach an even larger audience using Social Media for your business:

In fact, studies show that 3 out of 4 U.S. adults use social media. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll reach a large audience when posting on social media. By following these tips, however, you can increase the visibility of your social media marketing efforts.

Boost Your Facebook Posts

Facebook recently announced several changes to its platform, one of which is showing fewer “promotional” posts in users news feeds. This is significant because it means any posts with commercial intent are less likely to reach your followers – not unless you pay for traffic.

So if you want to reach a larger audience on Facebook, consider using the network’s paid advertising service, Facebook Ads.

Unique Hashtags

You can further improve your reach on social media by using unique hashtags. In other words, try using a unique hashtag, such as your brand name, on each post. Whether you’re posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or elsewhere, include this hashtag. When someone wants to find more of your content, they can search for this hashtag without worrying about irrelevant content posted by other users and brands.

Using hashtags can be tricky… 

“am I using the right hashtags?”

“am I using too many hashtags, not enough hashtags?… this is crazy!“

 

If you need some pointers, Mashable put together a nice guide to using hashtags, here.

Connect Social Media to Your Website

You should also connect your social media profiles and pages to your website. If your website uses the content management system (CMS) WordPress, you can download and install a plugin to display buttons for your social media accounts. Upon clicking these buttons, visitors can instantly access your social media profiles or pages.

Share Other Users’ Content

There’s no rule stating that you have to create all of your social media content by hand. On the contrary, if you look brands with a leading presence on social media, you’ll probably notice many of them post both unique and “shared” content. Social media networks typically allow users to share other users’ content. If you see a piece of content that’s engaging and relevant to your followers, share it on your profile or page.

Repurpose Existing Content

If you have content on your website, perhaps you could repurpose it for use on social media? Assuming the content is relevant to your followers’ interest, this is a great way to expand your reach. Furthermore, some of your followers may share the content with their friends and family. And those individuals may also share it; thus, creating a viral effect.

Most importantly, you have to share relevant and high-value content with the target audience by publishing white papers and informative content that make the lives of customers better. The value proposition is what could separate your business from others and give returns.