Social media is a powerful tool and you’ve probably heard a lot of people say that businesses need to have a social media presence nowadays. It is definitely true that social media can help businesses drive sales, but simply creating social media accounts for your business and posting regularly is not enough to make an impact. There are a few tips that are worth following in order for your social media engagement to have meaning.
It is certainly true that many businesses have successfully used social media to increase sales. For example, TechQuarters – a company that provides IT support in London – found that they were able to connect with their target audience through certain social media platforms, which helped them generate meaningful leads, many of which were converted into sales.
If you want to generate sales with the help of social media, below is some solid advice to follow.
1. Find Your Audience
Whenever you are looking to market a product or service with the intention of getting sales, the most important step is to firstly find your audience. This can mean a number of things. A business needs to define their audience so that they know who they need to engage with for the best chance of getting sales, but they also need to know where their audience is – so one literally needs to find the audience.
There is a wide array of different social media platforms that are popular nowadays – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more that have millions of users. Any one of those platforms are a diverse market of users, and so one might think that the best solution is to simply join them all. This is actually not true, because splitting your focus so many ways will negate any benefit that social media might have.
Identifying your audience means also determining what social media platforms most of them use. Once you know that, you should focus on just one or two of the platforms that are most popular with your ideal customer.
2. Partner with Influencers
Influencer marketing is a big part of social media, and it has a lot of benefit depending on the platform you use it on. For example, it was found that nearly 40% of Twitter users were more likely to make a purchase when they saw an influencer’s tweet. Additionally, the trust that social media users have in influencers was at least equal to the trust users gave to their friends. All of this is to say that partnering with the right influencers can be a great way to cultivate a positive reputation among your target audience.
3. Cultivate Brand Advocates
Influencers aren’t the only types of users on social media who can give your brand a boost in popularity and credibility. A brand advocate is an existing customer who willingly promotes your brand because they believe in it. If social media users are already posting about your brand, it can be quite easy to find them on social media – using keyword and hashtag searches can help you find posts that mention your brand. Audiences value a brand who’s customers promote them independently, because this is seen as a strong, authentic indicator of quality.
4. Make Sure Your Content is Genuine
Content is king on social media. It’s not good enough to simply be on the platform, you also need to be contributing to it regularly, and engaging with users through your content. The important thing for businesses and organisations to remember is not to make their social media content appear salesy. Audiences can spot content that is trying to sell to them from a mile away – and it is not always appreciated. Therefore, keep your social media content friendly and authentic. Connecting to your audiences without trying to sell to them is how you build credibility as a brand.
5. Create Interactive Content
As mentioned above, salesy content isn’t always appreciated, especially when you consider the fact that social media is considered a pastime, and so most users are on the platforms in their free time. Users on social media want to be entertained by the content they are consuming, and so as a business you need to do your best to make your content entertaining. A good way of doing this is by making interactive content. Rather than simply creating passive content that users take in, provide a way for your target audiences to actively engage with your content.
6. Paid Advertising
Just like on search engines like Google, it is entirely possible to win favor with the algorithm with minimal expenditure, simply by sticking to a consistent posting schedule, generating diverse and engaging content, and engaging with all the different elements of the social media platform. It is always worth putting in the time to organically increase your brand’s rankings on social, but paid advertising is also a valuable resource. Paying for advertising on social media can very quickly boost your brand’s visibility on the platform.
