Social Media has transformed the modern day business and growth strategies. According to 2016 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Social Media Examiner, “A significant 90% of marketers said that social media is important for business growth ”.

Christopher Carfi, a VP Social Business Strategy of an organization says:

“You must understand the Social Media to use it effectively”.
 

How to grow your business using Social Media

Almost every company has a presence over the social media in some way or the other. Some are dedicatedly involved and make use of effective social media marketing practices and social media strategies for business, while some believe that creating a meare facebook profile, random updates, daily blog posts, or a significant number of likes and followers can magically grow their business.

If you are maintaining a similar mindset, you are wrong! it’s too dangerous for your business.

You might have a strong business acumen and a sharp entrepreneurial prowess but if you are missing on the crucial X-factor, you might fall short in keeping pace with the competitors, lose the exposure and traffic. Business growth through social media is essential, rock-solid and lot more easier than conventional marketing sources.

Social media for small business

As a SMB or a Startup business owner, you are required to accomplish a lot with few resources at hand. Traditional marketing techniques can easily blow your limited funds, social media for business is a low cost and easy to use alternative that connects you directly with both prospective and current customers. Just like any other practices to grow your business online.

“Maintaining a strong social media presence and using social media for business is essential”.

 

Here are 6 unique tips by which social media can assist you in growing your business and managing your brand.

A modern marketing tool

They say ‘Change is law of life’. Modern day marketing has changed a lot. According to the study by BIA/Kelsey, 74.5 percent of the small and medium-sized businesses are using social media as a tool to promote their businesses. Your competitors are using high-end tools and efficient practices to win over the customer base and grow their business. If you are not abreast with the latest techniques and practices, you are at receiving end from the very beginning, so act smart. Always stay ahead by practising modern day technology and adapting to changes in social media.

Reaching unique audiences

Advent of social media avenues have paved the way for people to become more dependent on the ability to consume and share information as soon as the real-time events unfold. Both the businesses and the daily lives are affected by this incredible development. Reaching everyone is not possible, but many entrepreneurs use Social media as a Mass Notification tool to reach out to as many prospective clients as possible. Instead of reaching out to everyone, a good social media practice involves reaching out to right audience through organic means.

“It’s easy to post a business status on Facebook, but the fight is about finding the right audience”

Finding the perfect people and reaching out to specific groups is more easier on social mediums like Pinterest and Snapchat is far easier than any other traditional modes of marketing. Besides, you can add a lot of value by knowing your customers likes and dislikes, understanding their needs. You can alter your product and service accordingly.     

Planning plays a key role

Planning is essential part of success, especially when it comes to Social Media Marketing.

Always create a plan and a crisis plan.  

Creating a plan

A strategic approach towards managing social media saves a lot of your precious time and resources. You are first required to create a simple weekly plan to focus on varied areas of interest. Next comes the creation of content and an event calendar. Track down the upcoming special event and holidays that are related to your business and build a compelling content around it. As practice makes you perfect, the more you post on social media, the more effectively you’ll have the perseverance to choose the content, frequency and timing.

And a crisis Plan

A crisis can hit you any time. But, being prepared in advance for a social media crisis can be a deciding factor in making a good or a bad reactive decision. Develop a crisis plan, document it and share it across your team mates. Do have a clear plan, know exactly what to write when a customer use harsh tone or disrespectful words. Sharing any such document will have a deep impact on smooth functioning. With this approach, anyone handling social media, PR and marketing will be in sync with one another.

Using multi touch points for maximum reach

To achieve your business goals and growing your business online, it is highly recommended that you use multiple touch points for your digital marketing and social media strategy. This is one of several factors that distinguishes Social Media from other marketing types. To expand your reach, you require followers which should be converted to customers in specified time frame.

Growing the number of followers in an organic manner is a slow but effective process. To increase the followers:

• Create a compelling, facts and figure rich content
• Answer the customer’s query
• Be open to the conversation

Facebook is the one of the best social media platforms where you can get targeted traffic. If you want to enhance online sales that start investing in Facebook’s “Like” ads to grow the fan page. You can achieve this by launching ads in specific city, state or country in which you are selling the product or providing the service. Then comes the proper content, use it wisely. It should be compelling and should interest your audience. This will further increase your brand awareness.

Then comes the Conversion

Conversions are the bottom line of all businesses. You are required to use proper product description, benefits, advantages and a clear product image. Posting information about your products with a very clear call to action is important. Message should clear  and should compel your followers to purchase the product and proceed checkout page. After creating the enigmatic post, it's time you use boost the ads to increase post visibility.

You can use similar approaches on twitter and other platforms.  You’ll be see how quickly your sales graph rises. Besides, you can use email marketing, search ads, SEO practices and ad campaigns to further boost your sales.    

Product launch and branding the Social Media Way

Its ability to reach out to the international customer base with easily targeted prospects and pinpoint accuracy, Social Media has emerged as a powerful medium for product launch. Using Social Media to launch a product has its own benefits. It is lot more cheaper, reliable, easier and less time consuming. As compared to the usual media budget, product launch campaign on social media is 25% cheaper and is backed with cutting-edge technologies and ethical tools to use your creativity to the extremes. Social Media promotions draw returning as well as new users and provide an opportunity to generate buzz around the brand. Choose almost every Social Media Platform to reach out to the users and give them real value in form of deals, sales and discounts. Launching a product and branding the same is vital for small business social media marketing.

Reputation matters the most

Social media is a formidable tool to reach out to completely new prospective customer base and increase your brand persona.  Even so, the customers or the followers can quickly become your business’s worst nightmare.

It is been rightly said by Jeff Bezos:

 

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”

Social media platforms including review boards, forums, etc. can become loaded with negative comments and feedbacks. This can destroy a brand and can even kill a business. If a customer post a negative comment or a remark, it is important to respond to his comment quickly and in a very docile manner. You should not get involved in any kind of brawl, instead you should focus on rectifying the situation. Thanking a positive feedback is an amazing way show that you care and listen to your customers. It also helps you build brand campaigners which can promote the business through word of mouth marketing.

Your brand managers or social media czars should focus on offering superior quality content and provide a reason to interact positively with you as well as your brand. Undoubtedly, use of social media in business is critical.

How did you find the article? Is there any other way by which Social Media can transform the modern day business? Do share in the comment section below. Thank you for patient reading :)