How To Use Social Media For Your Business

Everyone knows the importance of social media in today’s marketing landscape, but too many small business owners don’t approach these channels with a solid strategy.

Many business owners — especially those who come from traditional backgrounds often misunderstand the real purpose of social media and how it can have a dramatic affect on brand visibility and growth.

If you’re new to social media, or have experimented with various channels for marketing your business, consider the following issues that might help improve your efforts.

Understanding purpose

Instead of viewing social media as a destination, think of it as a road TO a destination. In other words, social media channels are not mutually exclusive in your marketing landscape, nor should they be viewed as any kind of end-point.

Social media is a conduit for interaction with your brand. These channels can provide brand exposure, create awareness, and foster relationships with your customers. But the point of any social activity should have a purpose — and that purpose is typically sales.

Generating sales for your company means all your social efforts should act as marketing ‘spokes’ that drive traffic to your ‘hub’ (website). Every e-commerce business understands the importance of in-bound traffic and generating conversions, and social media channels play a big role in driving new leads.

Finding the right fit

As I’ve stated before, social media is about working smarter and not harder. What this means is that you need to be highly strategic when choosing social platforms. Every business is different and every audience is different in their interactions and the spaces they hang out.

For example, if your business is primarily B2B, focusing on LinkedIn might be the place to reach prospects. Conversely, if you’re in the B2C space or retail, Instagram or TikTok might be the best options. If you run a non-profit or any kind of community-based organization, Facebook Groups might be the best way to build relationships and brand engagement.

The point is, focusing on reaching your customers where they are will save a lot of wasted effort trying to cover social channels irrelevant to your audience.

Budgeting

Social media, like all other marketing efforts, comes with a cost. Whether this becomes part of your annualized or quarterly marketing spend, or if it’s budgeted separately, it needs to have a tangible and fixed allocation.

Business owners can sometimes treat social media as a ‘soft spend’ and not adequately apply budgets in a way that can be managed and measured. This can cause major issues on the backend when campaigns are reviewed for ROI.

Internal vs. external management

Deciding who’s going to manage your social media efforts is another big decision. If you plan on hiring someone or dedicating someone internally to handle your social media, this can have a significant affect on costs.

This decision is also directly related to the percentage of your overall marketing picture social media will cover. If your business has limited social activity or reach and other media are more relevant, dedicating and internal manager might make sense if that person has the bandwidth.

However, if social media is the primary channel your business uses for promotion, then it absolutely makes sense to hire a dedicated manager who can focus their efforts full-time.

A third option is outsourcing your social media to an outside agency or freelancer. This eliminates the burden of managing campaigns internally or having to staff specifically for this role. The challenge can be finding the right fit and experience level needed in order to build and maintain relationships with your audience.

Setting goals

Like all marketing strategies, there needs to be a goal in mind. This is also true for social media outreach. As I’ve said, social media is really the ‘spokes’ to your hub, so the overarching strategy should have a measurable goal.

This can be everything from brand awareness and visibility, to driving specific traffic to a dedicated product or service.

Whatever the reason, social media marketing is a means to an end.

Measuring success

How are you going to determine the effectiveness of your efforts? What are the goals that measure your ROI? This can be a difficult metric because social media success — or at least in the way it’s quantified — can be rather elusive.

For example, if the purpose is brand visibility and awareness, the metric might be increased traffic to your website, increases in followers per channel, or increasing your marketing mailing list. All of those have tangible numbers that can draw a direct correlation with social media activity.

Is social media right for your business?

Every business is different and no one can make that decision but you. It all depends on how you acquire new customers and how they interact with your brand. In my case, most new business for my agency comes from referrals or B2B channels such as LinkedIn. We have little to no activity on other platforms. For other companies, their social activity is the life blood of their organizations and are highly active across all channels.

The bottom line is this; social media is an important aspect for most — if not all companies today, and it offers the flexibility of integrating in your marketing mix in countless ways.