When you decide to start a business, one
thing is immediately obvious: you are your own boss. This is usually symbolic
of the unshackling from the demands of workplace discourse, but every new
business owner quickly falls off of their high horse into a pit of demands to
which they are solely accountable for. All
of a sudden you are in charge of the product, promotions, advertising, payroll,
and most importantly, marketing. Fortunately, marketing has transformed how
business is done thanks to social media. In fact, even the most successful
businesses are becoming increasingly reliable on the marketing power of
resources such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to name a few. Small business owners and first-time
entrepreneurs must become familiar with this newly popular outlet if they want
to get in the game, stay in the game, and be competitive. So what’s the big
deal with this seemingly impersonal marketing tool? Here’s our big three!
Traffic! Traffic! Traffic!
Traffic is to business what location is to
real estate. It is imperative that your business drives traffic. If you are not
interacting with your potential customers, clients, and consumers regularly you
are doing a disservice to your business. Social media provides the perfect
platform to engage. Whether you are posting once a day or multiple times a day,
posting is what will spark interest. The more interesting content you post, the
more likely you are to drive people to your website and find out more about
your business and what services you have to offer.
Hashtags are particularly
important to expanding your reach beyond the set number of people who are
following you. Don’t know what a hashtag is? Hashtags are keywords relevant to
the corresponding image, text, or information that you post on a social media
outlet. It is always preceded by the “pound” or “number” sign. For example, if
you are starting a real estate business and you posted a home for sale on
Instagram, you can hashtag words like #realestate #buying #selling to allow
your image to populate on those pages. The idea is, if someone is looking for
home, they can search the hashtag and browse your social media page. This
method is quick, easy, free, and effective. Hashtags aren’t the only way to
drive traffic to your page and subsequently your website. You can team up with
other business owners and agree to promote each other. These tactics are likely
to increase traffic to your business pages and website and are quite interactive.
Engagement
Equally important to any business is
feedback. If you want to know if your business model is working, you ask.
Social media puts you in direct contact with the people you intend to serve.
Post questionnaires and ask for product feedback to find out how your product
is doing or why the service your offering is helpful to some people and not
others. Having an interactive platform is beneficial to molding your business
for success. It is one thing to have input from shareholders and investors, but
when consumers are telling you what they like or don’t like, there is a lot
more weight in their words.
Engagement does not only help you to
evaluate and shape your business, it also helps to gain it. This can be
accomplished by interacting with your followers. People want to know they are
being heard. If someone comments, make an effort to respond. If you are
consistent you will gain customers and clients. The key to mastering engagement
on social media is creativity and consistency, so be sure to run trials. Be
observant to what posts garner the most “likes” and what posts are less
popular. Use these statistics to guide your posts.
Branding
One of the primary goals of marketing is to
be recognizable and stand out among your
competitors. Social media facilitates branding goals such as recognition and
loyalty. Any opportunity you have to post your logo or assert your brand, you
should use it. In doing so, you will increase your visibility and enforce
familiarity with your audience. Using social media to promote your brand will
also keep existing customers engaged. As previously mentioned, the more you
engage with your audience, the more likely they are to remain customers and
fans.
Social media marketing may not be the hot
topic forever, but it is the hot topic now. Don’t let your business fall
through the cracks. It may take some time to get acquainted with social media
discourse, but once you master it your business will flourish.
