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There is one indisputable fact. If you have a business, no matter what the size, you need a strong social media presence. If you develop your personal brand, you need a platform where you can find a soulmate and grow your audience. Simply put, no matter how you position yourself, you need social media marketing anyways. 

The Benefits of Social Media Marketing

For any business, there are huge benefits of social media marketing that you may not even realize.

• You can meet and “massage” your customers where they already are. You don’t have to go out and find them.
• Social media allows you to interact on a personal level with your customers
• It’s an investment of time but not money if you can do it yourself. The only time money comes into play is if you should decide to take advantage of advertising on any of the platforms.

Choosing Your Platforms

Unless you have the time and staff to hit all social media platforms with a regular schedule of posts, you should narrow your choice of platforms to those that are most used by your customer base. 

Then, do the research to determine the most popular social media channels for your demographic. The results will show you which platform to begin with.

Nathan Chan found an unfulfilled need. He realized that there was no publication to help aspiring entrepreneurs grow their businesses. In his spare time, he launched Foundr digital magazine, with $3000 in his pocket. He found that Instagram was hugely popular with his target audience. His method was to flood Instagram with numerous postings a day – most of them inspirational with a great photo. He did other things as well – offering discounts and contests in exchange for his followers sharing his posts. Within 18 months, he had a following of 850,000. Today, this magazine is a major success, bringing in a huge profit.

Hily is an online dating app in a sea of competing companies. Because they have an audience of all ages, all ethnic backgrounds, all socioeconomic groups, etc. they must have a presence on numerous platforms, to appeal to all of these audiences. And that is just what they have done. Their other marketing tool, of course, is their website/app that honors and appeals to all singles Among all dating apps, they focus on standing out above the rest through plenty of appealing features. If you are single, try this one out. As you navigate around the site, you’ll see a vast array of pages, blog posts, user success stories, and more.

Choosing the Right Content

If you’ve developed the right customer persona, you know a lot about them. You know what style and tone of language they connect with. You know what kinds of information they crave. You can figure out the type of content you need to be sharing with them. 

Interact

Social media is just that – it’s social. Users are on these platforms to interact with one another. Monitor your accounts every day and respond to comments and questions. The more you interact with your followers, the more like a real human you will become – like their other friends on these channels.

Use Social Monitoring

There are lots of companies that monitor social media accounts (and other places on the web) and notify a business anytime they have been mentioned or any time someone has responded to something you have posted. This is a huge time saver for you and is worth the investment. It will let you react and respond quickly.

Monitor the Growth of Your Following

Regularly monitor the growth. If you find that your following is not growing at a decent rate, it’s time to review what you are doing and how you may need to change things up. If you are not getting a lot of likes and shares; if you are not getting conversations going, then your content may need an overhaul. Perhaps come up with some quizzes that will engage them. Keep changing things up until your following is growing at a reasonable rate.

Social Media Marketing is Nothing to Fear

Like any other marketing tool you may be using, you will learn what works by trial and error. The big plus is you are not putting out lots of money while you do this. Your investment is time. Start small, perhaps with a single platform like Nathan Chan and then grow into more as you add staff to handle it.

Published by: Martin De Juan