Social Networks for Business
Social networks – one of the modern and effective ways to promote your company, corporate or personal brand, and products. They differ from other options by a targeted set of potential audiences and lower costs, which is especially important for small businesses. It is no longer relevant to gain thousands and hundreds of thousands of subscribers, as it was not long ago: it is enough to clearly define your positions, your product, and then systematically and consistently work on their promotion with representatives of the potential audience. You do not have to please everyone online. You need to reach out to and appeal to only your potential clients.
The absence of your page on social networks results in irreparable losses and ineffective expenses, poured into other promotional channels without the expected results. Research has shown that 70% of the population in the USA is constantly present on social networks: missing such an opportunity is not rational for small businesses. Considering the possibilities of precise settings (targeting), the scale of audience reach, and the cost of investments in promotion, social networks are the most effective channels for promoting small businesses. According to A. Muhammad, director of RBB Communications, businesses should «go where the people are».
We have prepared several marketing tips that are worth listening to and using for exploring new markets, presenting new products, and stimulating sales. So, here are some recommendations on how to start your actions on new platforms for you and what you should not overlook.
Don’t be afraid to start
If you are scared of everything related to computers, mobile gadgets, the internet, and communicating with strangers, leave all these fears behind. Leave your modesty behind as well. And boldly join the ranks of those who can manage if not the world, then their own business.
First, remember: social networks are simple. It’s not rocket science or nuclear physics. You just need to set a goal, master simple marketing techniques, and follow the advice of experienced and advanced users, so that in just a few weeks or months you can achieve the desired effect.
Determine your resources
In reality, there are only two significant resources for your business: time and money. If you have money, you can delegate all types of work to hired personnel or use outsourcing. If you don’t have money, you will have to spend some time performing all or some types of work to establish your operations online. In fact, both resources are always used, only in different proportions, depending on which one is more abundant or which one is valued more or less.
If you decide to act independently, don’t hesitate to peek at the ideas, approaches, and marketing techniques of large brands, transforming them into a form that is accessible to you and suitable for the promoted product.
Study your audience
Before starting active actions on social networks, it is necessary to perform a marketing analysis, or rather – to study your audience. This analysis will be useful later for targeting and setting goals to assess the effectiveness of promotion through social networks.
Work on brand recognition
Start with visual marketing, which means working on visualizing your online presence. This means you may need to hire specialists or work on selecting a style, logo, and slogan yourself to explain the essence of your online presence as attractively and clearly as possible.
Choose a social network
Since there are several social networks, you should choose those where the largest number of your potential buyers or users are present. For this, it is enough to study the statistics – they are easily accessible and give a clear picture of the demographic differences of network visitors: age, place of residence, gender. In the USA, Facebook and its product – Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are particularly popular. The audience is different, so the reach will be broader if your product interests users of both networks. But don’t try to cover everything: you should diversify your efforts.
Register an account
It can be your personal page or a business account that tells what you offer, how you do it, how much it costs, where it is sold, about discounts, promotions, etc. In different social networks, the format of posts should be different in content to accurately meet the needs and expectations of the target audience.
Attract your target audience
This refers to potential buyers and clients. You can achieve this with regular posts that will be interesting and useful to readers. But first, you need to set up geotags.
Seek and expand your audience
It is important to take advantage of access to groups on related topics: leave your comments, advice, and do targeted mailings to related databases.
In this aspect, the help of micro-influencers will be very useful, that is, people with fewer than 10,000 followers. The low cost of publications or services of this kind will allow for the rapid dissemination of information about the brand and the page online.
Establish communication with potential buyers and users
To attract attention to yourself, your company, or your product, it is necessary to establish a constant online presence. People will interact with organic content, and by answering questions, providing explanations, and recommendations, you will build the trust in your brand that is so important on social networks.
Publishing interesting materials usually triggers the desire to share them: thus, your audience will expand independently of your actions since loyal users will spread the information completely free of charge.
If the influx of users is low, and there are few registrations in the group, think about how to stimulate interest. For this purpose, promotions, discounts, bonuses, invitations to test events, etc., are used.
Establish a positive and reliable reputation
This is very important and costly. A positive emotional attitude, useful, interesting, and reliable information, quality photos, reviews from those who have already tried the product – all these factors shape the image along with the growth of brand recognition. From this moment on, you are no longer searching for your target audience; it is searching for you.
Communicate with like-minded people
The easiest way to do this is in professional groups. There you will receive valuable information about various aspects of activity and promotion.
Create a content plan
This is a mandatory item that will help you think ahead about topics for publications, select material, and choose the most convenient days of the week and times for posting messages on different networks. It is not necessary to cover everything at once. It is enough to choose 1-2-3 social networks to spend half an hour a day just on responses, that is, communication with subscribers. Ready posts, which you can write yourself or order from specialists, will be uploaded automatically using special programs or manually.
Considering that you are creating publications, announcements, photographing, and editing photos yourself, you will only face small time expenditures (as you develop your skills) and zero budget for advertising expenses.
Repurpose content
Don’t stop at just texts and photos: in fact, content can be diverse in format, and each of them is suitable for a specific network. Variety of content is an incentive to attract visitors, grow the target audience, and, as a consequence, increase sales. At the heart of repurposing is already prepared material that can be transformed into a video, webinar, podcast, presentation, graphic material, a series of posts, or a book (eBook), press kit, press release, or official document with minimal time and financial expenditure.
Repurposing means that each of your posts will have the format most convenient for a particular network. Additionally, this operation will allow you to repeat content over time, presenting it in a different format. What does this mean? It means that a quote from Telegram can turn into an infographic on Instagram, an elaboration of the topic on Facebook, or a full video on YouTube, and so on.
When preparing content, strive for the highest possible quality, whether it concerns texts, photos, graphics, or videos. Visualization is very important for followers on Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat. If the photo is of poor quality and the video is uninteresting, no one will even pay attention to the text.
Use social networks for lead generation
Direct visitors from the business group or personal page to your website, and properly form a sales funnel.
Track the results of your promotional efforts
Evaluate the effectiveness of expenditures for attracting clients and customers. This is not difficult to do if you use the tools offered by search engines like Yandex and Google – Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica. In these programs, you can set goals, obtain various metrics that indicate activity in the group or page. Depending on the metrics’ indicators, you can gather information about which posts and types of content are most acceptable for users, adjust publication times, choose different content formats, and monitor the feasibility of the goals.
Use resources wisely
Time, as is well known, is money, so structure your work process wisely and establish self-control in such a way that when you enter social networks for business purposes, you do not get distracted by other matters.
Overview of popular social networks in the USA
Facebook with set geo-targeting is suitable for millennials and middle-aged people with higher education and an interest in quality goods and services in the mid-to-high price range. Content includes photos, videos, and texts. By opening a business page, every user gains access to promotion and performance evaluation tools. This format is convenient for providing operational information, as well as contact details, working hours, office or enterprise location, and product or service presentations.
Instagram is a visual platform, ideal for small businesses if your products and services are aimed at young women. There are numerous formats for presentation: photos, texts, Instagram Live, Instagram Stories, and various promotion tools. The platform's feature is that it is designed for mobile gadgets, although there are tools like Hootsuite and Buffer that allow content management from desktops.
LinkedIn can serve as a kind of international Rotary Club. With 260 million users, it offers a unique atmosphere for professionals, their communication, and promotion. The basis of the promotion strategy lies in creating profiles that resemble the resume of a specific specialist or company. Active presence in industry groups helps create a positive image and draw attention to yourself and your product.
YouTube is a very popular video platform for viewing and sharing opinions. Users upload content of various kinds: it can be posts on different topics or channels focused on covering a specific theme. Various promotion tools work here – personal channels, direct advertising, influencers.
Twitter is an excellent platform for spreading hot news and a base for obtaining similar information. The content format includes short messages (up to 240 characters), videos, infographics, links, and polls. Retweeting posts is possible.
Pinterest is a visual platform designed for saving and sharing content in various formats. It is ideal for niche businesses. Saved information is placed on thematic boards, which resemble folders for file storage. The Rich Pins tool is useful for brands to convey information about products and their location to users.
Snapchat is a visual social network for mobile gadgets. It is used for sharing video and photo content, storing it, and uploading it to other resources, as well as for chats. The tools allow you to create interactive content with narratives.
Choose the platform that suits your business, follow the advice, and if necessary, contact our company – we are always ready to support you at any stage.
