A Brief Social Media Guide For Entrepreneurs: Platforms And Benefits

Over the last decade, a fascinating alteration has occurred in the business world— social media has become less of a voluntary marketing possibility and more of a priority. In effect, social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook have become constitutional elements of raising brand awareness, lead generation, content distribution, and customer acquisition tactics for companies. 

Nevertheless, despite its importance, very few owners of startups and new ventures understand how to leverage the potential of social media in 2021. If you’re an entrepreneur who still hasn’t unlocked the powers of social media as an integral part of your marketing strategy, know that you’re missing out. 

Nowadays, when nearly 70% of all Americans are active on at least one social media platform, social media is the best way to connect with your audience on a level that deviates from conventional marketing and advertising. 

With this brief guide, we’ll help you understand where you can build a presence for your brand and the benefits that will come along. 

What Platforms Can You Use To Market Your Business? 

Nowadays, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to easily interact with your prospective buyers and key industry influencers to notice your business by liking their posts, reposting their content, following them, and engaging in conversations through hashtags. 

Nevertheless, don’t fool yourself that a simple follow unfollow Instagram tactic will help you build an army of followers overnight, as social media platforms like Instagram have rules and policies in place that you should abide by when creating your online presence. Instead, social media platforms should be utilized to establish profound relationships with existing and prospective buyers by updating them on your latest product releases and updates, informing them on events your brand will be attending, live broadcasting conferences, using relevant hashtags, and more.

Furthermore, businesses with active blogs are 126% more likely to generate leads. Your blog content marketing might be the key to the storytelling your company needs to obtain and retain customers. Afterward, you can post and promote these blog posts on your company’s social media profiles and organically grow your following base by demonstrating knowledge of your industry as you’ll enhance your brand by providing relevant content consistent with your reputation.

Other tools or platforms that you might utilize to meet your target audience and socially interact with each other include LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok.

The Advantages Of Social Media Marketing

As you can see, there are many reasons why your business should utilize social media marketing right from the start. However, the most beneficial reasons to consider using social media within your marketing plan include: 

Increasing Brand Awareness

Due to the significant number of users on social media, ensuring that your business is sharing informative, relevant content related to your products or services and details about your industry via the platforms that have the potential to help you improve brand awareness is a must. 

Social media boosts brand awareness by driving up engagement through activities like comments, likes, shares, and re-posts. In addition, it can also help you increase brand awareness by simply directing traffic straight to your company’s website.

Generating Leads And Conversions

Sharing and promoting your products on social media is an easy way to improve lead generation, boost conversions, and consequently increase sales because you’re practically advertising to people who’ve opted to engage with your brand by following your social media account. If you want to make the most out of social media to generate more leads for your business, you might try the following lead generation strategies: 

• Organize contests for your followers and website visitors.
• Include a link to your website in the bio section of your profile.
• Host live videos to make product announcements.
• Utilize social marketing campaigns on your preferred channels.
• Sell your products through your social profiles.

Fostering The Relationships With Your Customers

Furthermore, by connecting and interacting with your social media followers, you’ll set yourself on the right path to building lasting relationships between them and your company. You can do this by engaging with them on your social media posts, blog posts, responding to their comments and questions, and providing them with any help they may need.

You can also ask your audience questions about your products to reveal their pain points so you and your team can address these issues and create giveaways to help you build trust and showcase how much you value their support and input.

Final Words

As an entrepreneur, you’re already close to your clients by founding your business. Social media is about making those relationships deeper and building new ones. Listen, engage, measure, and learn, then adjust your social media strategies based on what’s working best for your business.