Social media…we have a love hate relationship with it, am I right? Some days it’s like throwing spaghetti on the wall and hoping it sticks and other days, we sort of feel like we’re finally understanding how to optimize it for our business and then Facebook changes something and you’re back to ground zero. Or perhaps you’ve stayed off of it for the most part because it feels like an insurmountable mountain to tackle. You’re not alone. It can feel tiresome and overwhelming to truly understand how to use, especially when using it for your business.

And yet when we look at the stats:

1+ billion people on Facebook (120 million in the United States alone)
1 billion on Instagram (half are on it daily)
610 million on LinkedIn
210 million on Pinterest (a growing search engine)

we can see the opportunities to maximize the potential of growth and success of these platforms if we fully understood how they work and why they work when it comes to marketing your business. So if you’re not fully utilizing it for your business and seeing the possibilities, perhaps you should reconsider? Let’s dive in to the why and how it can work for you…

6 ways social media can work for you and your business:

1. Brand Awareness

If you’re a new business or brand (or even rebranded), social media is the best way to build awareness of who you are and your business…and it’s free. Unpaid (organic) social media allows you the opportunity to tell your story, share behind the scenes and inside your business, share updates as products and services are launched, promote products/services and gain a reputable following of people who trust you. If your audience doesn’t trust you, then they won’t be ready to buy when you’re ready to sell.

Show up. Be consistent. Provide value. Engage with your followers without having to talk about your product/service every time.

2. Attract and find your ideal client

Your business has an ideal avatar whom you love working with or would love to work with. They just don’t know it yet. 😉Knowing who you’re speaking to and how to speak them begins with getting to know them. Spend some time discovering and educating yourself on that person. Give them a name and humanize who they are as you begin to think about your strategies in reaching them.

Where are they hanging out? What shows do they watch? Are they married? Do they have kids? What do they like? As this begins to become clear, then you can formulate a strategy around attracting that ideal client/customer and pinpoint their pain problems that you have the solution to! And guess what? They’re more than likely on social media. As you’ve honed in on who they are, create a content calendar of several ways you can invite these followers to get to know you and into what you’re doing!

Likes become followers who become buyers who then become fans!

3. Targeting your ideal market

Social media has come a long way from billboards, mailers and flyers. We’d strategically get in the right magazines and position our marketing where we hoped our customer would see it. So even then, as marketing dollars were being used to grow business, we were hopeful the thousands of dollars we spent would turn into sales—and more than likely, if we did it well, it worked. But it usually cost us a pretty penny and there was virtually not way to measure what worked vs. what didn’t.

Now a days, marketing your business must be done online. The stats speak for themselves. Most everyone is online. Did you know the average person checks their phone 80 times a day? That’s once every 12 minutes! But the thing about digital marketing is that it has the ability to get your content in front of your ideal market. Did you know you can track visitors to your website or social media profiles and target them with your ads? Paid digital advertising, therefore, is less expensive that traditional print marketing and it CAN get you results if it’s done correctly (more on this another time).

How would you like to be able to craft your messaging, your offer in such a way that you can strategically get it in front of your ideal customer/client and turn them into viable leads? Social media can do that for you.

4. Boost those leads and sales

Warm up cold audiences to become satisfied customers for free. This is what organic (unpaid) social media does. It humanizes your brand (people can have a live person respond to comments and DMs), your business, connects with your customer and begins to build trust between you and them, so that when they’re ready to buy, you’ve essentially warmed them up.

Social media can help you sell your product/service even there doesn’t appear to be a market for you. There is a market for everyone and everything. Did you know a digital marketer grew his love for Octopus’ through a Facebook page to over 100k people? Sea life, people!

Perhaps there’s an entire region or group of people you haven’t reached yet. Your social accounts are a critical part of your sales funnel—the process through which a new follower becomes a customer. Do you have a sales funnel? Is it easy to follow? Do customers have a journey you take them on to buy?

From here, social media advertising has formats specifically designed to take customers through the sales journey and collect qualified leads. It allows potential customers an easy and low-commitment way to express interest in your business. So this makes lead generation doable!

Getting your offer and business in front of you ideal market is entirely doable and justifiably cheaper than billboards and mailers these days.

5. Real time analytics

Know what's working and what's not working NOW. Are people engaging with your social media? Have you ever checked the analytics of your posts and videos and see how many people it's reaching? Or how many people either followed you or even unfollowed you? These insights are SO helpful if we can learn how to read them and test the content we’re producing. Stop just posting stuff just to post it! It’s more work for you and it’s probably not converting the follower.

And should you invest your dollars into paid advertising, edit that creative or the ad text and test those ads to see what’s working. This is a game changer! Once an ad prints in the local paper, can you edit it? Can you swap out your billboard creative after it’s done? Can you measure if it’s even working?

Social media digital marketing today allows us to measure the analytics of our strategies in real time. Previous efforts like mailers, billboards, radio, television are not only expensive but difficult to see immediate results. We have the ability to to track clicks, ad performances, audiences and ad text in order to help improve the overall performance.

6. Optimization (the action of making the best or most effective use of a situation or resource)

Optimize. Optimize. Optimize. If we’re listening close enough, our market tells us what they want and what they don’t. If we’re paying attention close enough, we can discover ways to improve our products/services and find better solutions that meet the pain points of our ideal audience. This speaks directly to our messaging, our creative (content, posts, videos, stories, etc.), our presence online…

Our presence must be consistent. Your audience isn’t necessarily looking for you but you’re looking for them which means you need to show up everyday. Consistency is key for your brand and your business but also so the platforms show your content regularly. They don’t like it when you go vogue for awhile then pop in. It’s social media intended to be SOCIAL!

Paid social media ads? People are more likely to buy after seeing your ads at least 7 times. This does not mean you use your organic social media to promote your products 7 times but it does mean when you’re pushing an offer, let's optimize the ads to be seen in multiple locations on the platforms (articles, videos, newsfeeds, stories, etc.) and pay attention to how people are engaging with it or not (i.e. leads are coming in or they aren’t).

Need clarity about your organic social media strategy or digital marketing plan? Let’s chat! My Power Hour is just what you need! Book one today!

6 ways Social Media Can Work for You in Your Business