Expanding And Growing A Small Business Using Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is an untapped reservoir of potential consumers. With about 2 billion people using different social media platforms like Face book, Twitter, Instagram etc., social media marketing needs to be made an integral part of all brand marketing strategies. The fact that the number of social media users is expected to touch 3.02 billion by the year 2021 should be enough to make people understand the power of social media marketing.

The intriguing fact is that no one has been able to fully realise the potential of social media marketing to date. The question is not whether a person needs to take advantage of social media marketing but how to take advantage of the same. While there are a number of ways and means to do the same, some of the important ones which have managed to create a positive impact and prove themselves are:

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• Increasing quality leads: It has been seen that 65% and more small businesses use social media to increase leads. But it is not only the leads that need increasing it is the quality of leads that need to improve too. Generation of high-quality leads might seem like a very challenging task but taking one step at a time would ease out the whole process.

The first step to utilising social media for improving the quality of generated leads is to promote gated content. Content that is uploaded needs to be in sync with what the viewer wants and what interests him. It also needs to be eye-catchy and appeal to the readers on more than one level. This can be done by:

• Designing visually appealing graphics based on the brand being promoted,
• Writing interesting content exclusively for the social media reader and audience and
• Creating a sense of emergency by including a call to action button.
• Search engine ranking improvement: While people still debate on whether social media helps in improving search engine rankings, this fact has already been proved. Any increase in the share rate on social media automatically increases the domain authority of the relevant website. This, in turn, improves search engine rankings for that website. It has also been seen that any increase in the visits to a social media account automatically gives a boost to the page ranking of the concerned social media. This also enables these pages to rank among the top searches.
• Drives traffic: A strong presence on social media will bring about a marked change in directing organic traffic to the business website. This presence will enable the website to expand its reach and target more people thereby driving traffic to the concerned website. Targeted social media marketing is a very good way to drive an increased amount of web traffic to the concerned website purchasing page.
• Competitor watch: This is perhaps the most intelligent use of social media since it makes it very easy for e-commerce owners to:
  • Keep a watch on their competitor’s social media accounts,
  • Draw inspiration from the content that they post,
  • Learn how they interact with their followers and incorporate the same and
  • Generally, tweak their strategies and adapt them for use.

Simply put keeping a watch on competitor’s on social media accounts is an ideal way to learn from the mistakes that they commit. It also helps to analyse one’s standing against its competitors.

• Developing customer trust: Of the many opportunities that social media presents, nothing equals the opportunity it gives to e-commerce websites to develop a relationship of trust with its customers. Thus it is a very effective way to ensure loyalty among customers. Collaborating with a social media influencer is perhaps the best way to achieve this because:
  • They tell stories which are engaging, authentic and absolutely real and
  • Customers and consumers relate to them and even start believing them.

The ability of the influencers to share real stories is perhaps, the biggest draw of collaborating with an influencer.

• Creating brand awareness: Brand recognition is a very powerful tool since people generally prefer purchasing from brands that they know and recognise. Social media is able to take the brand to the targeted audience quickly and also forces them to think about the brand. In order to gain brand recognition out of social media, it is important to:
  • Post relevant content,
  • Cover images posted should create a deep impact and
  • The logo needs to be strategically placed so that it creates a long-lasting impact.
• Conversion maximisation: Using social media to effect customer conversion can be done in two ways:
  • By adding a strong call-to-action which is appealing as well as motivating and
  • Organising contests, offering lucrative discounts and giveaways.

The primary goal of using social media marketing is to increase the rate of engagement with potential customers. Once this is effectively done, gaining leads and facilitating conversions becomes quite easy.