How to Promote Your Business on Social Media

Social media is a great place to promote your business. With 3.6 billion people using social media globally, it provides you an amazing opportunity to connect with your target audience. As much as 89% of people buy from a brand after following a brand on social media, 91% visit the brand website, and 85% recommend the brand to a friend.

So, social media isn’t all about socializing, rather you can use it to increase traffic, generate sales, and connect with your target audience.

How exactly to do it?

Here are the best techniques on how to promote your business on social media that will ensure business growth:

1. Have a Plan

The first step to promoting your business on social media is to have a clear plan with well-defined goals. What do you want to achieve from social media for your business? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or generate sales?

Research shows that 70% of marketers use social media for increasing brand awareness. Other important goals include lead generation, engagement, and audience growth:

Having a proper plan ensures that you know what you have to do, how you have to do it, and how you’ll monitor your progress. Follow these steps to create a promotion plan:

1. Situation analysis
2. Identify your target audience
3. Set clear goals
4. Set social media promotion budget
5. Define your plan of action
6. Analyze and improve your plan based on its performance.

Check out this 6-step process to create a marketing plan for social media.

2. Pick the Right Social Platforms

Selecting the right social networking site for business promotion is essential. Not all social platforms are created equal. For example, TikTok is majorly used by youngsters. Over 62% of users in the US are between 10 and 29. It won’t be a good idea to use TikTok to promote your marketing consultation business as teens and youngsters aren’t interested in such services:

Selecting the right platform for business promotion is the key to success.:

• If you want to use video content, Facebook and YouTube are the best platforms
• If images and photos are your major promotion material, go for Instagram
• Use LinkedIn if you are in the B2B sector
• Twitter is ideal for updates and building professional connections.

There are, however, no restrictions. You can use any social networking platform you like as long as your target audience uses it. For example, if the buyer persona shows that your ideal customers don’t use Snapchat, you don’t have to use Snapchat for promotion.

Use a social networking site that your target audience uses.

3. Partner with Influencers

Influencers are the backbone of social media marketing whether it be nano or mega influencers. Partnering with influencers in your niche is a great way to promote your business on social media.

A social media influencer is someone who has a significant influence on the buying decisions of your target audience. Instead of reaching your target audience directly, you can work with the influencer. Here is an example of a micro-influencer promoting Tom’s of Maine:

A study found that influencer marketing yields a whopping $6.05 return on every dollar spent and this is because people don’t trust advertisements anymore. Only 1% of millennials trust advertisements while 40% of people say that they purchased a product after seeing an influencer using it.

Influencer marketing works because it humanizes your promotion and people see it being used by a person they trust. Partner with influencers in your niche preferably micro-influencers as they’re affordable.

Here is how to find the right influencers for business promotion and partnerships:

• Find influencers in your niche with the help of hashtags and your primary keywords
• Analyze influencer profile. Check followers, engagement, number of posts, type of content, follower reaction on branded posts, etc. This will give you a good idea of influencer’s reach and engagement
• Use an influencer marketing tool that will help you in finding the right influencer at a cost
• Negotiate price per post or project with the influencers and choose the one to get started.

Remember, there is always room for negotiation when working with an influencer as they don’t have fixed rates.

4. Run Social Ads

All social media platforms let you run ads to promote your business. Facebook Ads is the biggest social ad network with an 83.3% market share:

Facebook ads should be your top priority for running social ads for the following reasons:

• It is the most popular social media platform with 2.7 billion active monthly users
• It has a maximum market share
• You can run ads on Instagram too via Facebook ads.

You can run an ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram at as low as $5 per day. Setting up an ad campaign is a straightforward process. The best part: You can send traffic to your website or engage with your audience on the social networking platform. Similarly, you can run social ads on other networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and others. 

Running social ads for business promotion on social media works best as it delivers results quickly. You don’t have to wait for your followers to visit your website by clicking the CTA on your profile page rather a simple ad can send heaps of targeted traffic to your website in no time.

However, this targeted traffic comes at a cost. If you can afford it, go for it. This is the quickest and most authentic way to promote your business.

Final Thoughts

Social media is an amazing channel for both users and businesses. Promoting your business on social media isn’t a big deal if you know what you have to do and how you have to do it. The best way to get started is by creating a plan with clearly defined objectives. When you know why you want to use social media for business promotion, the rest gets easier.

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