How to Leverage Social Media for Business
Social media is poised to be a mainstream marketing platform for the foreseeable future. Many small business owners, however, aren’t social media savvy and have very little time to learn how to create and manage a successful social media marketing campaign.
A recent study showed that more than 80 percent of small to medium sized businesses in North America, that have an annual revenue between $1 million and $50 million, use social media to help grow their brand and raise awareness among consumers. While social media should be a major focus for all types and sizes of businesses, integrating it with other digital marketing techniques will garner the best results. The following tips will help you get started with simple social media marketing techniques that won’t break the bank.
One Goal At a Time: Brand Awareness
Social media marketing can be used for a variety of marketing efforts. If you’ve recently created social media accounts for your business focus on brand awareness first.
Spread your brand across social media by encouraging current customers to follow you on Facebook and Twitter. Create intriguing posts on a daily basis, offer special promotions, and do whatever it takes to have your loyal fan base share your posts and promotions with their friends. Sharing and re-tweeting posts are both essential but basic steps to increasing brand awareness among potential customers online.
Credibility and Authority Among Your Target Audience
Targeting a small dedicated fan base is much easier than trying to win over thousands of people who may never buy your product.
Put a significant amount of effort into discovering what type of consumer is attracted to your business. What characteristics do they have and what are their hobbies? If you’ve discovered your niche audience, take a look at some of the more authoritative social media accounts that they follow. Whether it be another business or a person, if they have credibility among your followers, you must form a partnership with them. Have them share your posts or mention you in a few tweets. You’ll notice a significant increase in followers once your new partnership takes form and your name is placed squarely on their profile.
Metrics and ROI are Important
Even if you aren’t spending thousands of dollars on an expensive marketing campaign, your time is worth money and it must be spent wisely.
Concentrate not only on social media, but integrate your social campaign with SEO work, content marketing, PPC campaigns and more. Track your return on investment by using specific metrics to see how many followers you gained, whether or not these followers turned into conversions, and how your increased social media presence affects your organic search ranking.
To learn more about using social media for your business, reach out to the online marketing experts at Saba, Inc. It is our mission to help businesses gain visibility in the online world, using a combination of social media strategies, PPC and SEO in San Diego. Call us today at 858-277-1717 for a free consultation and a complimentary website audit and analysis.