It’s well established now that incorporating social networks into your digital marketing strategy is important for online growth. Developing a social media strategy will help you to boost brand recognition, generate leads and increase sales. 

There is a lot that goes into making sure you have a successful social media marketing campaign, and lucky for you, we’re willing to share some tips. 

Here are the top 10 ways you can start using your social media accounts to grow your business. 

1. Use the right platforms

When it comes to marketing on social media, you need to make sure you are using the right social media platforms for your business. If all your customer base is on instagram, but you’re focussing on Facebook, you won’t see the growth you are hoping for. 

It may take some time to determine where your target audience is spending their time online, but it’s worth figuring out. It could be multiple different platforms or even obscure platforms. 

If you are only getting engagement and growth on one platform, but you are continuing to try and run multiple campaigns, it may be worth focusing your efforts on perfecting the social media channels that are working best. 

2.  Perfect Your Visual Content

There are a range of different types of content you can create for social media, but many platforms are very visual. Because of this, it’s important that you create high quality, engaging images. 

With the technological advancements of the past decade, people’s standards and expectations are very high.If you only use shutterstock images, or your images are blurry and low quality, people will be put off. 

The quality of your social media content reflects upon your business and your brand. You will be more trustworthy, and more likely to grow, if the content you put out is well thought out, and professionally made.

This doesn’t mean that content can’t be casual or fun, it just means that it needs to be high quality. 

3. Build Your Story

We continue to come back to the concept of building your brand’s story online, because it is one of the most effective ways to engage your audience and stick out in their mind. 

Brands on social media can get lost among the millions of other accounts if they don’t take the time to engage emotionally with their audience, and tell a captivating story that keeps customers coming back for more. 

This will improve your brand recognition and loyalty. 

4. Utilise paid ads

Many social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook offer paid ads on their sites. This is a great way to grow your business through social media, as you can advertise directly to your potential customers. 

With their sophisticated systems, you are able to put your brand in front of the people who are most likely to engage with you, and want to buy your products and services. 

It’s always important to employ a proper marketing strategy when it comes to paid advertising, so you can ensure you are getting the return on investment you need. 

5. Hashtag

When you post content on a range of different social media platforms, you will have the option to use hashtags. Hashtags are a great way to boost your social media presence, with no cost. 

Like with everything else, you should have a strategy to make sure that you are using the most effective hashtags for your business. There’s no point using irrelevant hashtags that don’t make sense for your business. 

If you use the relevant hashtags, you can increase your chance of getting your social media posts seen by users who are interested in your business. 

6. Collaborate

One of the best ways to grow your social media is through collaboration. Whether it’s other businesses, influencers or your customers. Social media is all about collaboration, from sharing content to tagging people. 

You can offer promo codes, or free products, to either existing customers or influencers to use to promote your business. They will post to their social media, and this can help direct people to your page. 

Collaborating with other businesses is also a great way to increase your reach, whether it’s sharing each other’s content or commenting on their posts. 

7. User Generated Content 

Genuine word of mouth is one of the most trusted forms of advertisement. This makes user generated content an excellent way to grow your business. This is organic social content, meaning that it is not paid for, the user just decides to post it themselves.

By sharing user posts, you can increase trust in your brand, all while engaging with your customers and making them feel seen and valid. This could be as simple as putting it on your instagram story. 

It’s a great way to show off positive reviews of your products that come across as authentic. 

8.  Engagements

Social media is a great way to engage with active users. You want to make your posts desirable to engage with, whether it’s a like, share or comment. Different platforms favour different types of engagements more. 

Commenting is one of the best ways to engage with your audience and improve your customer service, improving your branding by being prompt and quick to reply.

People are more likely to buy from a business if they feel like they are cared for, and these engagements are integral to building that relationship, especially for new customers. 

9.  Consistency

As always, consistency is important in your marketing approach.

Visually, you want to make sure you are consistent as it will look more appealing, and be more coherent. Your tone of voice and the content you post, should also show this consistency, as well as the manner you respond to people’s engagements with your posts. 

This consistency helps improve your brand awareness, and to create trust. 

10. Stay Relevant 

Social media is all about now. If you want to grow your business through social media marketing, you need to keep up with the current trends, and make sure your visuals don’t go out of date. 

It’s important that you keep up with these trends on your social media, so that your brand doesn’t look outdated. 

You want to look like you are ahead of your competitors, and this is one of the simplest ways to show this. 

If these 10 tips still aren’t enough for you, contact us here, to learn more about how you can grow your business through social media.