Social media can help your business to target your audience, reduce your marketing costs and build customer loyalty
The internet and social media has been arguably, the greatest invention of the 21st century. If you’re reading this, I won’t debate it’s case on our wellbeing as we all know about it’s positive influences against it’s negative ones.
All in all, social media is here to stay. And businesses need to adapt or else they will eventually get left behind.
Below we discuss the easiest way to get started for free, followed by some of the top platforms freely available to you.
Each platform may seem obvious that you should own, though it is worth considering if it’s right for your industry and worth investing the time into.
Remember, the amount of followers you have isn’t the indicator you’re doing social media well. It’s the interaction, shares, retweets, tags and comments to original, frequent, honest content; that helps sell your products and services.
Getting started with social media
Get a Facebook business page
Facebook is the largest social media platform out there, so large that it has bought out further social platforms such as Whatsapp and Instagram. It does sadly mean it’s got a grasp on the market however it can also work for you, as a modern AA telephone book.
Facebook gives a lot of it’s functionalities away for free. This is why there are nearly 3 billion accounts today (April 2022) that are using their free service – so you should take advantage of this and start your Facebook business page if you haven’t already.
On this business page, you can freely upload photos of your work, send out a status update to your followers, display your contact hours, present your reviews and have your posts shared by friends, family and happy customers.
Throughout the pandemic, my local pub was shut down like so many others. They held live stream quiz nights, posted progress photos of refurbishments whilst their establishment was closed, promoted their temporary delivery service and shared posts of other local, struggling businesses.
Fortunately they used social media right – and couldn’t keep up with the demand of their delivery service. They remained engaged with their loyal customers to the point that everyone was so excited to return after the lift of lock down.
Facebook allows you to also freely use Facebook messenger and even connect their live chat tool to your website – therefore enabling you to contact your audience easier, faster and ‘friendlier’.
Ideas to strengthen your Facebook business page
The pages with the best content, connect with their audience and build up loyalty. A connected audience is far more likely to engage with your products and services and ergo; part with their cash.
- Get funny and down with the kids. Memes which relate to your own business, are a great way to make somebody smile and like your post. The more likes your post has, the higher chance it’ll get bumped up the feed for somebody else to see your account.
- Promote competitions. If people like and share your post in the chance of winning something desirable – this means free advertisement to an enormous audience. Alternatively – promote a competition that can only be entered directly on your website. This way you can capture lead details into a marketing database and improve traffic rates to your website for SEO purposes. However be mindful that some users prefer to like and share social posts as it’s quick and easy.
- Live sessions, videos and photos make all the difference. You may be camera shy but face to face business is decreasing. Communicating to somebody on the other end of a screen to show that you’re approachable and trustworthy makes all the difference.
- Post content of your latest works. Perhaps how long it took you, any blockers you faced and how you overcame them. Treat it as a case study. The recipient of these works is also likely to share the post if they’d love to show off to their friends and family what they’ve just purchased and love.
- Create a poll – could be used to know what customers would like to see in a seasonal menu change for example. This feedback lets you know what your customers want and what they would be more likely to pay for. This is market research and every business needs to stay up to date. It also helps customers feel more involved and listened to.
- Link back to your website. If you have spent time writing an article or perhaps you’ve built up a juicy new sales page – promote this to your social audience and support your SEO efforts by feeding traffic into your website!
Other social media platforms to consider..
We recommend having at least 2 social media platforms on the go. It helps to boost your credibility whilst also reaching out to audiences who may not be on the first platform of your choice. Further to that, it also helps readers who may have seen your content on one platform, to be reminded of you when browsing through another.
LinkedIn works very well for large and small formal businesses, one man bands and freelancers. Pretty much anyone. But to get the most out of using LinkedIn; you really must engage with other people’s posts, not just your own. Even if the other posts are from the competition – and you’ll need to do more than just a few like’s here and there. Get stuck into conversation and input your own contribution and ideally, expertise knowledge. You’ll start to appear more frequently in people’s feeds. As you become more familiar, others will want to see what you and your business are about. Your connection requests will start to grow. The audience you are targeting will start to grow.
Our own experiment: We wanted to see what it would be like for our copywriter to re-share one of our LinkedIn posts. The post was about an article she herself had written for our website, around website speed. Generally, she doesn’t post to LinkedIn often and is a person that usually just like’s other people’s content.
With our LinkedIn post she shared from Reddy – the analytics showed a greater amount of impressions (times it could be seen on a feed) than she’d ever had before.
Within 3 days, she had 668 impressions. Aside from boosting her own credibility – that’s 668 people that would see our logo, our LinkedIn profile and an easy access link to our website. 7 of these impressions were founders of a business.
The experiment was well worth it. All it took was a re-share.
LinkedIn also has other bells and whistles to set it apart from Facebook, You can have co-workers or employees endorse your listed business skills to show credibility. You can list your employment history. You can also add accreditation badges and awards to show your knowledge and experience in the industry. LinkedIn is also a great form of recruitment if you have a post to share or set your account to ‘looking for work’.
As above from our experiment, LinkedIn is particularly useful in providing you with analytical information. It will show you how many impressions your post has had and to what demographic these users were. Such as CEOs, Project Managers or Web developers.
Instagram is enormously popular with those who prefer visual content. They have recently been following TikToks strategy of presenting reels that you’d likely want to see – based on algorithms of content you’ve previously been engaging with.
Do remember, your content must be eye catching and original – these users are scrolling at lightening speed and may not have even blinked between the last 4 images they swiped past. Make up artists, fashionista’s and product reviewers do well on Instagram due to the short window to get their content engaged with.
Ideally if you have products that your customers can take their own photos of to post about; ask them to tag you! This is free advertisement and can reach an audience who may have never heard of you before. If you have the budget, ask an influencer for a paid advertisement post.
TikTok
TikTok. Love it or hate it – the best content eventually trickles down to Facebook videos and gets viewed even more. You never know, you could make a viral post!
Did you ever hear about Coventry Binley Mega Chippy and their catchy TikTok song, that went viral, then aired on BBC Radio 1? People flocked down from Scotland to the Midlands for some every day fish and chips! TikTok reels are often on trend, with background music samples, taking part in viral dance challenges and pranks. It helps greatly to connect with the younger audience more so, however if you choose to use TikTok then you must set time aside to create strong content – you don’t want it to be cringey or half arsed!
If your industry would benefit from the time you’d invest into creating strong video content – then why not have a go?! You may even enjoy the process of getting creative.
Pinterest is super useful for getting your content ‘liked’ or ‘pinned’ to mood boards. For example, I haven’t moved into my new home yet however my Mrs has Pinterest boards for the living room right down to the under stairs cupboards – full of pinned content on how our new home will be decorated. She has boards of linked images of where we’re buying furniture from, colour schemes and even how the cupboards will be organised..
If your business benefits from visuals; we’d strongly recommend using this platform. Perhaps as a florist, you can have mood boards for weddings, funerals and bouquet arrangements. If somebody likes your content, they may also pin it to their own shareable Pinterest boards, and get your work shared across to their audience.
Your evidence of experience and ideas may be ‘giving it away’ freely, but shows the audience that you know your stuff and you’re the go to person.
If you’re looking to reach into Twitter – then approach with caution. Twitter is usually the place people go to complain and write sassy messages. However it is a great platform if your role is influential / in public speaking.
For example if you are raising awareness on something, if you are an MP or perhaps a finance guru; advising a following about recent investment trends or how to save money. Martin Lewis has a strong following as people appreciate his short tweets, and his knowledge is incredibly beneficial which influences their decision making.
Twitter also prompts wide discussions for public feedback. Retweets, likes and comments are important on this platform. Therefore if you plan to use Twitter – make sure it benefits the user. If your content for discussions is ‘What did you have for dinner?’ with 2 likes just for the sake of having another social media platform – then keep your precious time to better industry suited platforms.
Youtube
Should you have lots of video content – upload it to Youtube as again, it’s totally free. You can tag your videos with keywords to help yourself get found by browsers who may stumble across you. Your content can be shareable to other social platforms, and also embedded into your own website should you want to promote something specific.
The more content you have, you should organise the videos into lists to help your customers niche down content they are looking for. YouTube is great for how to videos, case studies and product reviews.
If you’re not a massive video content maker – one well made video is a great way to provide honesty and accuracy to your viewers. A single video embedded to your website, can demonstrate to your audience how clean your workplace is, what your personality is like, what tools you use and so on.
*Vimeo is also a popular video content platform, however has additional bells and whistles at a cost.
Share your social media posts to other social media platforms
Don’t make yourself extra work! All of these social platforms have sharing options. For example with Instagram, you can share your post to your linked Facebook account the moment you hit post.
It may seem like you’re just saying it twice in different places, but you could have 150 different followers on Facebook that you don’t have on Instagram; who may want to share the post, like the post or ideally get in contact with you to enquire.
As explained above, it also helps readers who may have seen your content on one platform, to be reminded of you when browsing through another. Being easy to reach is important. The time you’ve spent to create this original content should be made easily available to everyone!
Link your socials on your website!
Very important. Different people prefer different platforms – therefore promoting your accessibility to the customer is highly recommended and also shows you are active and up to date.
But DON’T put your social icons and external links in the header of your website unless you make your money via third party platforms, such as Etsy. This prime website space is for engaging users who want to find out more about your business and if you can help solve their need or problem. They landed on your website before your social media for a reason – now let them read more into you.
If you do highlight your socials too prominently before making that connection with the reader, you are at risk of the user going down the rabbit hole of social media; leaving your own page and instead watching cat videos.
*Coming soon: We’re in the process of writing up a post all about the Power of paid social media, with services including Facebook ads and Google’s PPC.
