If you’re a small business owner in the 21st century, you’re most probably a member of the social media community. If you’re not, which we highly doubt, then you already have a lot of catching up to do. Getting a grasp of the social media demographics helps you come to terms with its relevance to small businesses.
Why Is Social Media Relevant?
Social media has been on the rise ever since its introduction. Over a third of the world’s population engages on social media every month. This alone is enough to express the huge amount of boost that social media gives to your business marketing.
It’s safe to say that social media is the cheat code to building your business presence in the 21st century. Thus, it’s almost needless to say that building your social media presence is a must for attaining success in your business.
So what’s the best way to build your presence on social media?
Developing a Long-Lasting Social Media Presence
Social media usage has skyrocketed in recent years, and the stats are off the charts. If there’s ever a perfect time to get instant followers for your business platform, that would be now. Here are the best tips for building your social media presence.
- Pick a Goal and Work towards It
What’s your aim of engaging in social media? Why and how is it relevant to your business? These are questions you need to ask yourself before deciding to hop on the social bandwagon. An active social media presence comes with a lot of benefits. Some of these include audience expansion, increase in sales, gaining valuable feedback as well as optimum business-to-customer engagement.
Having a goal to work towards is great for setting the tone for your media presence. But this is just the lock on the door to the opportunities waiting to be explored. The key you need to open this lock is a well-defined strategy that propels you in the direction of gaining instant followers.
- Choose the Right Platform
Social media is an ever-expanding world of thousands of networks, all dedicated to connecting users across the globe. But with so much to pick from, how do you know the best platform to engage in for optimum social media presence?
The best option is always the most popular option. And the most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These are by far the social media platforms with the most engagements.
This is as a result of the large percentage of the populace that engages on these platforms. Facebook, for starters, is the most popular of the media. Over 2.9 billion users engage on Facebook monthly, and it is the perfect platform for building customer relationships.
Instagram is the platform for you if you’re targeting the under-50 populace and engaging in mainstream business e.g., fashion, food, travel, etc. Instagram is a picture and video sharing app, and with the right captions, your business posts are capable of attracting a lot of instant views and instant likes.
Then we have Twitter which is vital for delivering on-the-hour business info. Also a platform for the young masses, Twitter lets you stay in the know, making sure you have an idea of what’s trending.
Other relevant social media platforms include Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc.
Picking the right social network is great; what really shoots your business upwards is how you use this platform to reach your targets.
- Develop a Content Creation Schedule
You shouldn’t just jump into social media and start posting as you wish. This puts you at the risk of abusing your presence. The fact that you need to gain instant views doesn’t mean you need to post at every hour of the day.
Also, knowing what to post is as essential as knowing when to post. This is where your target audience comes into the picture. Putting the needs of your target audience in mind helps shape your social media content curation. This makes it easier to relate with the customers.
- Be Active With Your Audience
Developing the best social media content is not enough to stay relevant on the social grid. The first aim of any social media platform is connection. That means you shouldn’t open a social media account just to amass thousands of instant followers.
Rather, learn to engage more with your audience. Reply to comments and customer feedback, engage in Q&As, post on Instagram stories, start and follow up on conversations. Make sure to address customer complaints always.
This act of constantly engaging with your audience builds a sense of trust and closeness.
- Target Customer over Sales
The fact that boosting your social media presence helps in sales shouldn’t lead you into the act of “hard selling” your business online.
Yeah sure, as an e-commerce individual, your major activity will be making deals with your customers. However, what’s more important is following through on those customers from the moment you strike your first deal together. Having a huge follower count is not the end of social media presence, but again, what’s more important is forming relationships that turn instant followers into loyal customers.
Wrapping Up
The beauty of social media is the long-lasting relationships you build with your customers. These relationships are a result of the strategies put in place to build your online presence to the point where your customer reach is at its peak.
But the use of social media doesn’t end with you attaining a large presence or wide reach. The next logical step is to monitor and maintain a constant brand voice online. Develop a personality that attracts new customers; let your customers become the extra pool of marketers that promote your brand name.
Keep track of your progress by having accurate demographics at your disposal. This requires you to have a team on hand ready to take on the job of developing your social media presence by developing creative content that entertains your customers.
Finally, don’t be hesitant to relate with your customers, who are the bedrock of your social media presence. Get close to them, find out what they need, and work towards helping them get a satisfactory experience that’ll make them come back for more.
