Whether you personally use social media or not, when it comes to growing your business, social media plays a critical component in your brand’s success.
Why?
Social media marketing can help you reach new audiences, connect with your customers (current and potential), and drive sales.
For example, just one viral TikTok could resonate with thousands of people, build trust with them, and lead them to take action like sign-up for your online course or purchase your product.
Plus, incorporating social media into your marketing strategy allows you to put your business in front of millions of people you may not have otherwise been able to reach for free.
In order to reach these levels of success, though, you need to learn how to promote your business on social media effectively, and efficiently so you don’t burn out.
We know there are a lot of social media platforms to learn about and social media marketing can be time-consuming, so we’re here to help. Keep reading to learn how to promote your business on social media and set yourself up for success from the start.
How To Set Your Business Up For Social Media Success
You’re probably eager to start posting and begin seeing results.
But if you want to see your follower count start to stack up– and watch new sales fly in– you first need to have a firm understanding of your brand, develop a strong social media marketing strategy, and prioritize building relationships on the social channels you choose to be on (more on this later).
Let’s get started with the first item on that list.
Create And Stick To Your Brand
Whether you have a great product or not, people will innately choose to stand behind a business that has a mission they can believe in. Pretty crazy, right?
That’s why if you want to succeed with your proven and fantastic product, your mission needs to match what you’re selling. If you don’t have a well-defined brand, how will your potential customers know what your mission is, after all?
Developing your brand’s story is just one part of the branding process, though. Creating a trusted, recognizable brand also involves defining your target audience, tone, and brand colors. All of these pieces of your brand play a critical role in developing effective social media selling strategies.
Your brand will be the guiding light you look to when you craft copy, create graphics and develop social media promotion ideas.
Once you create your brand, remember to stick to it. You want your followers to recognize your content without having to look at whose profile posted it—that’s how clear and consistent your branding should be.
This is key to establishing trust with new followers and building brand loyalty.
Develop A Social Media Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing can be daunting for business owners, especially if you’re unfamiliar with certain social media platforms. So just remember, if you’re new to social media, it’s ok to start small.
You don’t have to be on every social platform.
Figure out where the platforms your target audience spends the most time engaging to help serve as your north star for which platform makes sense for your business to post content on.
For example, if your business is teaching others how to lose weight and create a healthy lifestyle, it may make sense to start an Instagram account where you can share recipes and workouts to help your audience build trust in your abilities to help them.
Once you’ve decided what makes sense for your brand and the products or services you offer, create social media accounts on these specific social media platforms.
This is step one of developing your social media marketing strategy. You’ll then want to define your marketing goals and brainstorm quality content that will help you reach those goals.
It’s a good idea to use a social media calendar to help you map out your ideas and determine when you plan to post content and on which platform.
Start To Build A Loyal Following
Social media is—at its core—social. If you can remember this, it will help you engage with social media users who engage with your business.
This engagement will help you develop relationships with current and potential customers, which ultimately builds brand loyalty. Plus, the more frequently users engage with you, the more likely they will see your content.
An important thing to remember when trying to build a loyal social media following is to continue to post quality content that your followers will find value in. The more value you can give them upfront, the higher levels of engagement and trust they’ll give you, eventually leading them to purchase your product at a higher value.
How To Promote Your Business On Social Media
Now that you have your brand and strategy in place and you know how to connect with your target market, it’s time to use your chosen social media channels to promote your business.
Let’s dive into some of those methods.
Create Eye-Catching Content
Content is king on social media. You want to create content that makes users stop in their social feeds – otherwise known as, “stop the scroll,” and spend time with your business.
Here are a few ideas to create content that does just that.
USE ON-BRAND & UNIQUE GRAPHICS
Remember the colors, tone, and style you dreamt up when developing your brand? Put them to use by creating on-brand graphics.
You can use these graphics across several social platforms and even in a blog post or email newsletter.
Fun, unique, and colorful graphics are a great way to share information in an eye-catching way. Incorporate them into your content calendar regularly as part of your social media strategy.
TRY NEW FEATURES
If you’ve spent time as a business on social media channels, such as Instagram, you likely know that these social networks want creators to utilize new features and promote their content when they do.
This is one reason why it makes sense to try new features as part of an effective social media strategy. Another reason is that users love to see visual content that is new and exciting.
If you think you can capture their attention in a new way with a new feature, test it out! There’s no harm in trying it out and it may help promote your business.
LEVERAGE VIDEO
Video content is highly engaging, which is why it’s one of the best mediums to promote your business on social media. It’s also one of the more well-accepted forms of content platforms prioritize to show their users.
Today, every social media channel has options for video content, and now they even prioritize it.
If you’re new to video, learning the ropes yourself or hiring an expert can help you grow your social media presence.
Create A Community And Engage Your Followers
Once again, social media should be social! There are so many great ways to encourage engagement and generate leads through various social channels. Here are a few ideas.
STAY CURRENT
Your social media marketing efforts should revolve around your business goals and timing, but they should also take into account current events and trends.
This doesn’t mean you need to perform every TikTok dance, but you may be surprised at how putting a spin on a current social media trend could help promote your business.
So stay up to date on what’s trending or popular and jump on the concepts that make sense for your brand and will translate with your audience.
This also means you should plan your content calendar and posting schedule around product launches and campaigns, yes, but also around holidays and seasons. Consider what your target audience is looking for at the current moment in time and play to that desire.
For instance, if you’re a recipe creator, you might want to put out some BBQ-friendly recipes in advance of Labor Day. If you have a new summer-themed book releasing, you may want to amp up your social media advertising at the start of the season.
These are just a few examples of how thinking like your potential audience and considering their current wants and needs can help you find the right customers.
RUN CONTESTS
Contests are another great social media marketing tool. They can help you earn new followers, draw people to your social media account, and drive website traffic. After all, who doesn’t want to win a great giveaway or be featured by their favorite brand?
Contests can garner attention at any time, but they can be incredibly effective when positioned as part of social media campaigns that involve the launch of a new product or offer.
In this scenario, consider giving away the new product or service to a select number of winners, or partner with other brands to give away a bundle of goods.
Contests can also be a great way to collect user-generated content. You might offer a discount to users who tag your brand in their photos, or you might feature customers in a shout-out post.
You could also run a contest out of the blue to thank your followers. Simply select a few users who comment on a certain post to win a prize. This can help encourage engagement, customer acquisition, and customer retention.
GO LIVE
Another great way to get engagement, jump on the video bandwagon, and expand your reach is to go live.
You can record live videos on nearly every social media platform, and even on multiple platforms at once. Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and TikTok all offer this feature.
During your live recording, you can answer questions and respond to comments that your audience submits live.
Just make sure that when you plan to go live, you tell your audience you’re doing so and give them a reason to tune in.
ASK FOR FEEDBACK
One of the great things about social media is that you can get feedback from your audience in almost real-time.
This can help you learn what products and services your audience wants or needs and understand their biggest questions and concerns.
If used correctly, feedback can help propel new business ideas, solve product issues, and create hype.
One way to do this is by asking for direct messages on Instagram. Another is to host a poll on your Twitter or Facebook page.
If you have a Facebook group for some of your most loyal customers, this can be an incredibly useful space to get honest feedback from a smaller portion of your audience and avoid spammy posts or comments.
PROMOTE USER-GENERATED CONTENT
User-generated content (UGC) is just as it sounds: content that features your brand created by your followers.
From the early days of social media marketing, UGC has been a useful tool for businesses for a multitude of reasons.
For one, it’s free content (as long as the user agrees to share it), but it also is content that promotes the use of your product or service in real life by real people.
By promoting UGC in repeated posts, you can offer your potential customers visual reviews that might sway their purchasing decision. Plus, you can showcase current customers, which can build brand loyalty.
MIX IT UP
Another way to keep your audience engaged is to use various types of content. When you get into a routine, it can be easy to post a lot of the same types of content, like all photos or all videos.
If you catch yourself in that situation, try to utilize different formats, such as a mixture of photos, videos, graphics, and text.
If something is working well on one social network, try it on other channels.
Treating social media marketing as an ongoing experiment and always being willing to try new things will help keep your content fresh and your audience engaged.
Pursue Partnerships
Partnerships play an important role in social media marketing. Organic growth often comes from other accounts promoting your social media profiles.
Consider these ways to grow your reach through partnerships.
EMBRACE INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencers influence their audience. They have built a following of people who trust their opinions and purchase based on them.
Reaching this type of keyed-in audience can be influential (pun intended) for your brand.
There are influencers in every market, but influencer marketing is particularly useful if your target audience consists of millennials or members of Gen-Z.
The key is to select the right influencers for your objective and budget.
For instance, influencers with large followings will get your product or service in front of more eyes but will be more expensive, while micro-influencers may drive more sales and cost less.
It’s also critical to work with influencers that are in line with your brand. This will ensure you’re reaching an audience that is more likely to follow, engage with, and ultimately purchase from you.
CROSS-PROMOTE BUSINESSES IN YOUR NICHE
While influencer marketing will come at a cost, other businesses may be willing to promote your brand if you promote theirs.
Cross-promotion can be beneficial for both parties involved and is often a great way for small businesses to support one another.
Consider what businesses share your target audience and have similar brand stories, but that aren’t competitors. You probably already follow these people on social media and engage with their content, or maybe they are friends or friends of friends who you have crossed paths with before.
Do a few people or businesses come to mind? Reach out and see if a partnership, be it simply for social media promotion or a larger collaboration might make sense.
Run Ads
So far, we have focused on how to promote your business on social media for free. However, once you’ve tested these ideas and developed your strategy, the time will come to run ads on social media.
Paid ads can be effective for social media promotion and help your content reach a broader audience.
A few cases where running ads might make sense for your small business include when you’re launching a new product or service, when you’re running a trendy social media campaign, or when you’re promoting a big partnership.
If you’re ready to get started with social media advertising, read these posts on Instagram ads and Facebook Ads to walk you through the next steps.
Expand Your Reach
These social media marketing ideas should keep you and your team busy for some time. As you experiment with new tactics, though, it’s important to analyze what works and what doesn’t.
Once you have identified what works, you can begin to automate where possible. For instance, there are a variety of great tools that can help gather insights and enable you to schedule posts and plan your content calendar.
When using these tools, your social media marketing can be more efficient and you can see results more quickly.
Analyzing the results of your campaigns will help you focus on the most effective strategies and ultimately expand your reach.
If you already have a social media strategy in place and want to learn how to improve and continue to grow your brand, sign up for our free digital marketing audit.
Our team will offer feedback and actionable next steps to take your business to the next level.
When there are so many ways to promote your business on social media, it can feel daunting. If you don’t feel ready or able to dedicate the time or energy to social media marketing, let us help.