Social media accounts are great for keeping in touch with loved ones and friends but who says they cannot be used as a tool to drive sales up and put money in the bank for your business?
Businesses like Timothyskyes, Tech Crunch and Gawker Media have had their gross revenues boosted in ninety (90) days by using a combination of social media marketing and other Online marketing Strategies.
Traditional advertising is gradually taking a back seat because a lot of successful business owners have confessed that with a bit of creativity, they have achieved a great deal with less budget on Digital Marketing.
The process is as easy as A, B, C; the more customers you engage on social media the more trust you generate for your brand.
Trust gained on social media leads to more people visiting your website and procuring your services or products. Also you get to enhance your online presence and value for your brand.
In this article, I have highlighted how you can use social media marketing to build a trusted community for your business, engage your followers and boost your brand image.
Create Social Media Page(s) for Engagement
Create social media pages and link it up with your website. Don’t limit yourself to one platform; create pages on as many platforms as possible that are relevant to your business. Over time you will find out which ones works best for you.
A key advantage is that when you post advice and tips to your social media pages and create links to your website, followers/customers click on the links and they are redirected to your website.
This is good for your overall search engine optimization?and page rank.
Also, your customers may express their views about your product or service whether good or bad on your social media page(s). This will enable you make better and tactical decisions that would tailor your products and services around the needs of your customers.
No doubt, having social media page(s) set up allows you to hear what consumers are saying about your products, services and competitors giving you competitive advantage.
You can use this information to better your business by taking advantage of your competitions weakness or even try offering better services.
Lets say for instance you run a catering business and your competitor serves their food in high quality take away packs and customers are happy about it.
You could find a better quality take way pack that conserves the heat of the food you are selling to customers. Thereby, making it taste and feel like it just came out of the pot when they are finally ready to eat.
What you just did is come up with a better solution than your competitor and that would help you gain more customers by beating out your competition.
Offer Advice or Tips to Your Social Media Followers
People like to know that you care for them and that you are concerned about progress they make in their business.
So create useful tips in video, article, infographics or podcast on subjects that your business covers and is relevant to your customers and followers on social media. Try to tone down sales pitches in you post.
Post the article on all your accounts. I agree with Neil Patel when he says post once on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. But repost three more times on the same day on twitter to market your tip or advice to your followers.
This will make them realize that you have them at heart and are not there only to make profit but you actually care for their wellbeing too.
Trust will be established and you may just build for yourself a loyal community of customers, you may end up being your brand ambassadors for free.
Differentiate Between Personal & Business Accounts on Social Media
It might seem like a basic rule but a lot of people are guilty of this. What you need to understand is that your prospective customers might get confused when you start tweeting or posting personal posts.
Sometimes on our personal accounts all we want to do is complain about our jobs and bad customer service, which is completely allowed because it is your personal account but a definite NO NO for your business account.
They have followed you just to get updates for your business and when you don’t deliver you lose followers and prospective customers as well.
Conclusion
While some entrepreneurs hold the belief that social media platforms are just ‘Nice to Have’ that their teenage kids use to interact with their friends. Emerging trends like the 2015 presidential elections have clearly shown the power of social media.
So why miss out on this evolution, the big brands are already players on social media and online marketing.
Get started and reap the benefits. You may want to read 10 Online Marketing Mistakes to Avoid to be better equipped as your start to boost the web presence of your business through social media.
Leave a comment let me know your thoughts.
Daniel Obaike
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