We live in the age of social media everything. New platforms appear overnight and take the world by storm. Business owners, no matter their field, are kept on their toes when it comes to keeping up with modern consumers. Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and a host of other apps are where businesses need to be if they are trying to compete with a tech-savvy consumer base. We asked entrepreneurs and business owners about how they use social media for business and their replies are listed below. These tips might even help you find the right footing on social media for your business.
#1- Lead generation
We use social media for lead generation and it has proved invaluable to our lead generation strategy! We never knew that constantly posting and adding hashtags to our content would get it seen across more eyes and more sales. Instagram is our best social media outlet, even though we are in a niche market creating promotional merchandise. In addition to our normal marketing efforts, sales from social media like Facebook and Instagram account for 1/4 of our total monthly sales which is a big deal.
Thanks to Kamil Faizi, Challenge Coins 4 U!
#2- Connect with authors
Social media has totally helped my literary brand. Being a literary brand that interviews African Writers living in the diaspora via Twitter would have been challenging if not for DMs! Now, we connect with African authors from all parts of the world by reaching out to them through social media.
Thanks to Mystique Syn Osuchukwu, Syncity NG!
#3-Humanize my Efforts
The common structure of commerce now often removes the human element of the business experience. There are automated systems in place for customer service, order fulfillment, and more. When I started my company, I vowed to keep my customers first and that for me, meant communication and direct contact. I like for my customers to have direct access to me so that they feel compelled to trust my products and services because I publicly stand behind them. I'm not some distant executive, heavy-laden with conferences and business meetings. Social media allows me to constantly remind clients how human I am by allowing them direct access to me.
Thanks to Brittany Sherell, The Intentional Mindset!
#4- Build relationships
As a small business consulting agency, we are heavily invested in social media, specifically LinkedIn. We find LinkedIn to be a great tool to build B2B relationships. We’ve been able to leverage those relations to identify leads, qualify them, and convert them to clients. We are also active on Facebook and Twitter as part of our overall brand-building campaigns.
Thanks to Brian Cairns, ProStrategix Consulting!
#5- Update our followers
Because the content we put out mostly consists of valuable guides (How Tos & DIYs, Product Reviews, etc.), our niche audience typically follows our Twitter page for the latest update. We still appreciate the Retweets and Likes, but I'll be honest that we're mostly using it as a means to update our followers. Twitter is nice in that regard, in that you can automate or at least schedule out social media updates. In my experience, if a small business consistently creates content worth sharing, then you'll see a fair conversion rate and return on your time investment.
Thanks to Shayne Sherman, TechLoris!
#6- Getting exposures and leads
Social media is a great tool for getting exposures and leads. For me, they are a tool to connect with audiences from another perspective. By this, I mean my main source of traffic, leads, and exposure are through my website using SEO. So from there, my audiences or prospects see my business in a formal manner. Social media gives us an opportunity to connect with our audiences in an informal way. For example, behind the scenes, live stories, YouTube video tutorials, etc. For me, they are tools to build a closer relationship and allow our prospects to engage more with us. This helps build trust, which is a crucial factor in any business.
Thanks to Jackie Owen, Techjackie!
#7- Educate
Social media to educate the public of options indestructible homes andsafe rooms: Technology today allows homes to be built indestructible, faster and cheaper using monolithic thin-shell concrete construction technique. No bearing walls, no air leaks allow these structures to easily become off the grid including composting toilets, elephant in the room nobody speaks about. By using social media facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and Twitter to spread the information about a new method of construction.No banks no homeowners insurance Florida homes for sale North Port, Florida. Where will you go when the wind blows?
Thanks to Dave Pressler, DRD Enterprises Inc of Davie!
#8- Variety of business things
We announce awards we've won, published articles we're quoted in, upload videos we have filmed, post testimonials from our clients, include announcements about things our clients are doing, photos from events we orchestrate or attend and PR and social media advice, based on our wealth of knowledge. We are a boutique PR, marketing, social media, branding and event company, based in Phoenix and have been around since 1995. We started in social media in 2006 when it was still a little like the wild, wild, west. There weren't a lot of rules and it was very easy to build followers. We were on the front end of the movement and got to help develop best practices for businesses. As a result, we've helped numerous clients build their brands with the help of social media. Every business needs to have a social media presence. People expect a digital footprint.
Thanks to Beth McRae, The McRae Agency!
#9- Unique way
We use social media, particularly Facebook in a very unique way. We use ads but not to our customers. We announce upcoming shopping center developments and boost the post to the residents living around the center. We then ask them Which tenants do you want to see here? We take the most viable responses and approach retailers letting them know of the demand which then helps us pre-lease the center. It is a very cost effective focus group of sorts.
Thanks to Bethany Babcock, Foresite Commercial Real Estate!
#10- Three ways
First, we use our Instagram and Facebook pages to help foster a community within our target market. We share similar businesses' posts, run contests and giveaways, and ask our audience/community questions relevant to the various sports events that are taking place around the globe. Another way that we use Social Media is test the type of content that works the best by using promotions. There have been situations where we will have an advertisement run for a week or two to test the type of content we are using. By reviewing the insights from the advertisement, we can see which age group was most engaged, which part of the US they lived in, and which gender is more likely to appreciate the content. Lastly, we use social media to promote our purpose and mission. We share facts and tips on how to stay healthy and how to be foster relationships through social interactions, which is are two main focuses of the business.
Thanks to Elandas Miller, Kicking It Sports!
#11- Connect and engage
We use social media largely to engage with our prospects and customers individually, and to make a personal connection with them. As an SMB, our audience responds well to a more personal approach than direct selling or attempts at viral infamy, and by taking the time to make individual connections and provide personal responses to our fans and followers, we're able to increase brand perception and loyalty. Additionally, this approach has proven successful in terms of enhancing our organic, word of mouth advertising and garnering personal recommendations from our customers and prospects too.
Thanks to Polly Kay, English Blinds!
#12- Shine a spotlight
I use LinkedIn to shine a spotlight on my brand and on my clients. Frequent, consistent posting of articles that are on brand for me reinforce people's recognition that I am an expert in specific topic areas. I post at least once a day, using existing articles available by internet. Google Alerts is a free service of Google that serves up articles daily that use the keywords that I've set Alerts for. I can look through the list of articles that Google Alerts provides me and quickly select the articles that look promising, read just those, and decide how I will share them. Sometimes I use a pulled quotation to go with the article; other times, I summarize. I always give credit to the article's author by tagging them in my post.
Thanks to Carol Kaemmerer
#13- Promote and grow my business
I leverage YouTube to grow my business. Basically, I provide informational and training videos on topics related to my business and skills and monetize the viewership. It works like this: The focus of my video blog is helping senior citizens to become more familiar with technology to improve and better their lives. I create enough content that is relevant to any audience while still specializing in helping seniors. Along with the videos on my channel, I then offer free information via an email sign up. People enter their email address and get the freebie. I am then able to grow my email list and market directly to people interested in my videos and my services.I do use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to cross promote my video releases.. Everyone should do this as this leverages your other fans and turns them into YT viewers also. I release new videos every week on Wednesdays. Once published live on YT, I link to the videos on my other social media sites to draw traffic to my channel and, ultimately to my business and services. Having a regular release schedule is critical. You must think of your channel content like your favorite TV show. It airs at the same time every week. Your channel releases should do the same. It gets people/subscribers on a regular schedule and looking for your new content regularly.
Thanks to Jim Costa
#14- Give value
We have found like many other businesses that post on social media that they are receiving less views, interactions and comments from audiences. What we now post as a business has changed a lot in the last twelve months. Our posts are always now focused on providing our audiences with something of real value, whether that be help, advice or free resources – we still mix that in with more social content. This has helped us increase our base following and also ‘click throughs' to our website. If someone can say ‘so what' after a post then it's missing the mark, give them value and they will become a regular consumer of your content.
Thanks to Damien Buxton, Midas Creative!
#15- Position ourselves as experts
Our social media platforms help us reinforce our reputation as experts in our field and to engage with clients and customers. We have lots of snippets of knowledge that we push out automatically through social media, which shows potential clients about our level of knowledge and experience and helps boost our conversion rates. With clients we like to keep in touch through social media, interacting with their posts and updates, and congratulating them on milestones and projects, which helps us stay connected and considered for future work. We use Buffer to automate our knowledge snippet posts, and push out new content as we produce it which brings in extra traffic with very little effort.
Thanks to Sam Orchard, Edge of the Web!
#16- Two ways
While we update our website with new puppy arrivals daily, we also update our 100k Facebook followers with Facebook posts. By posting a picture of the new puppy, along with a short paragraph, we've seen great engagement and growth in our following! Ultimately, we use social media to increase the number of puppies we find homes for, and also to promote puppy health tips.
Thanks to Shawn Hostetter, Keystone Puppies!
#17- Make announcements
Social media is integrated into our overall marketing mix mainly to build awareness of our company and products. Despite being around for a couple of years, we are still a fairly new company in our marketplace. Much of the work done in the first two years since launch were building software and infrastructure. Now, I am tasked with getting the word out about who we are BEFORE we launch products into the market. So, we use our social media to discuss and announce software advances, partnerships, and stock announcements. We also piggyback onto event-of-the-day type social media posts that match our industry profile, like National Blood Donor Day, as a way to connect HealthLynked to issues and events closely related to our niche and target markets. We've had great success tying our blog posts to social media. We've had a 1000% increase in readership since we started promoting our blog on social media. It's well worth the effort as the blogs enhance our SEO. We get shares and backlinks from our social promotion of the blogs, which is the snowball effect one wants from integrated digital marketing.
Thanks to Richard Williamson, HealthLynked!
#18- Display project photos, post testimonials, and share engaging content
As an outdoor living company, it's important for us to reside where our customers are – on social media! We use social media to display project photos, post testimonials, and share engaging content. Connecting with our clients this way allows us to stay relevant, even after a project's completed! It has been an effective way to drive word-of-mouth referrals and keep our customer relationships strong.
Thanks to Michael Esh, Keystone Custom Decks!
#19- Serves as a portfolio in my industry
I use Instagram for my business by posting tons of videos and photos for my clients and students to look at which serves as a portfolio in my industry. I am also able to write a mini blog post and possibly even start a chat forum by asking questions so they can engage more in the same post. I frequently use it for marketing instead of mailers and the best part is, I know when they look by checking my Promotion insights. They can immediately view my business page and get a feel for how I am as a person right there and then which in marketing is always the dilemma on making the sale in the beauty industry. Instagram is a great social media platform for me to not only retain my past clients but gain new ones faster and more efficiently too.
Thanks to Naomi Roopchand, DermAesthetics Institute!
#20- Recruitment and highlighting accomplishments
Washington Business Dynamics (WBD) uses LinkedIn for scouting and recruiting top-tier talent with diverse skill-sets. I first connected with many of my most innovative employees through LinkedIn. As a management consulting firm specializing in acquisition, finance, and strategy, WBD also uses LinkedIn to establish itself as an industry thought leader. The platform is an excellent channel to showcase our skills and connect with a vast network. As an example, WBD develops and releases “Acquisition Alerts,” which are one-pagers that break down acquisition trends for the everyday consumer and incorporate our experts' insight. Additionally, we highlight firm accomplishments, such as industry awards and employee recognition.
Thanks to Scott Caldwell, Washington Business Dynamics!