Pallavi Tyagi September 24, 2020 
Generate leads and sales through social media with these tips.
Why use social media for business?
43% of people use social media to research brands (Hootsuite, Feb’20). Which is why, every business wants to be on social media. Social media platforms give brands a chance to connect with their customers directly and showcase different sides of the business. Many brands even use social media for faster customer service. The effective use of social media can drive a steady stream of traffic to your website and generate leads, without spending on paid promotions.
So, how do you ensure that your brand’s social media presence is enticing customers to buy from you? There are several best practices to follow. In this blog, I have compiled the top tips to help you make your brand’s social media strategy a success.
,6 tips for brands to use social media
Know your objective
What is it that you want to achieve from being on social media? Some of the common objectives are to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, influence sales or provide customer service. Whatever the objective may be, it will determine which platforms you select and what you post on them.
Know your audience
Once you have decided your objective, it is time to pick your social media platforms. Each social media platform has a different primary audience and very different post categories. You have to pick the social media platforms which have your target audience. Here is an infographic to help you decide.
Look at the type of posts that each platform allows. Do they align with your brand? As an example, a brand providing service may find it harder to be active on Instagram, but a product brand will not find it difficult to curate many photographs. In the same way, a product brand may find Twitter’s limited word count unsuitable.
Check out the competition
Before you start posting, check out what your competitors are doing. See what kind of posts they post on each platform. Get a sense of what works for their brand. Also try to understand what their social media objective is. This will give you some ideas. However, do not follow the same strategy as your competitor. What works for them, may not work for you. Their strategy is dependent on the size of their business and popularity of their business. Say your competitor is using contest and user generated content as part of their strategy. But as you are a new brand, you will not get the same engagement for contests or user feedback.
Be yourself with your posts
Always remember that people follow brands for what the brands believe in. When you post things that are related to your vision, your followers will reward you for it by engaging with you. But if you try to copy someone else or are sharing other people’s content, then your followers have no reason to follow you. Your social media platforms should reflect your philosophy, your people and products. So, make your business profile unique.
Be consistent
When starting out on social media platforms, it can be overwhelming to post every day. However, there is no need to start off with that. Build up your posting frequency as you go. As you get more comfortable with creating and posting content, you can add more types of posts. But whatever your frequency, make sure to stick to a schedule. Social media platforms analyse which profiles are active by monitoring their posting frequency. If you post on a schedule, it recognizes that you are an active profile and shows your posts to people.
Use the platform’s features
Another common mistake is to ignore the platform’s features and create the same post for all platforms. As an example, most of the platforms allow you to upload or create a video. Yet, brands share the links to their YouTube videos. But social media platforms reduce the reach of external links, because they want the people to stay on the platform. In addition, many platforms promote their video features to increase your reach to new people. An example of this is Instagram Reels, which shows your Reels to new people, not just your followers. So take the time to understand the features of the platform and use them for your content. While it may seem a lot of work at first to create different versions of the same content, it is actually beneficial for your business.
So, these were my top tips for brands to have a social media presence. When creating a strategy for your social media presence, look beyond the goals of followers and likes. Instead think about how it integrates with your business goals. This will ensure that your social media works in tandem with the rest of your marketing.
Want to learn more about digital marketing? Check out my course on Graphy.
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