26 Entrepreneurs Explain How They Use Social Media For Business

Without Social Media I would not have a business. I have a local online Media resource – A website, email newsletter and Facebook and Instagram accounts with a brand providing resources and ideas for Moms in Plano, TX. It all started with a Facebook group, which I created 6 years ago – that now has over 15,000 Members. That group provides questions that I can create content to answer, and problems I can solve with the information I share. Without Facebook and now Instagram too, I would not have a business. Social Media provides the ability to build an audience of engaged people who follow you, love what you offer and consume your content and gives you a chance to build valuable relationships.

Thanks to Abbie Alter, Plano Moms LLC!

Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are generally used to display my work and to funnel potential clients to my main website. At these big social sites, it's also a great idea to always display your latest work or products and to grow your following for social proof. This is how your business creates validation for potential clients.

I use social media predominantly to connect with my audience – both current and future and I also use it to advertise my products and services. So in a way, social media is my funnel and where I may meet potential clients and customers, but will then transfer them to my website where they can make purchases.

Thanks to Julie Ann Dokowicz, Girl In Heels Travels!

#5- A number of ways

A lot of potential clients first find me via social media. I use my social media plateforms as a form of advertising what services my company offers as well as to define us as experts in our field. Recently I have found TikTok to be great way to get your brand infront of tons of traffic. Social media should be used to educate, entertain and then sell. This way you are providing value to your audience.

Thanks to Jon Torre

Social Media empowers myself and my company to paint a story of who we are as a business culture and as individuals. With the amazing work we do and the interesting clients we work with, social media provides a platform to give those people shout outs, celebrate our wins and of course have fun with creative content. Ultimately, we aim to maintain a presence and stay top of mind by making quality social media posts. If nobody was tuning in, what would be the point right?

Thanks to Fabrizio Moreira, Secret Hit Music!

#7- Humanize our organization

You must have seen healthcare organizations seeming a little sterile. This is wonderful depending on the angle of view of the organizations, as it encompasses the sanitation of the machinery, but it also may be missing in some places when we consider trying to communicate your personality to patients and the public. As a healthcare company we use social media as a means of interacting with and engaging with our patients or clients. We ‘re showing off our personality a bit. To put it another way, humanize our organization. We seek to respond more regularly to the comments and inquiries.

Thanks to Dr. Vikram Tarugu, Detox of South Florida!

One of my services is helping businesses with social media strategy. I implement the same process with my own company. I sit with my team and we come up with what we want people to see and what we want to promote. From there we map all of the posts out month by month. We use social media mainly to promote company events and to solicit clients. Either way we map it out month by month and then input the content into Later, which is an automated posting system. That way my company's social media is not taking up a huge chunk of my employees time and we can work on our actual goals.

Thanks to David Mitroff, Ph.D., Piedmont Avenue Consulting, Inc.!

I definitely use it to increase brand awareness but I have found that the more time I spend learning about who is engaging with my content, the better the solutions I am able to provide because I better understand the customer. It can be really easy to post content and disappear, only to look at the overall numbers. The better approach, for me, has been understanding why my audience is attracted to my brand and learning more about other things they engage with. I do this by spending some extra time checking out what's happening on their social profiles and getting to know (virtually at least) the people who engage with my pages the most.

Thanks to Tremaine Wills, My Last Dime!

We use social media to establish our brand in the minds of our audience, as well as promote our products to an audience that may not know we exist. The great thing about social media is that you can reach an almost limitless amount of consumers, but you can also tailor your ads to reach an audience that is appropriate for your niche. Those who enjoy your product might stick around and become loyal customers, and you can use social media advertising to attract new potential customers that are already interested in your niche.

Thanks to Garrett Greller, Uncle Bud’s Hemp!

We create super detailed and unique custom wedding dresses, and our mantra is You bring your vision, we do the work.. The issue we often run into is that brides have been so limited by what they see in stores that they do not even realize all the things available to them. We therefore continually engage our audience by showing closeups for gorgeous gowns, sharing fun polls to introduce them to unique design elements, and showcasing videos of past brides. From a technical and operational standpoint, that means a strict 5 to 7 posts a week, translated in English and French, and scheduled via tools like Facebook Creator Studio or Buffer. We also post around 20-30 stories a week manually.

Thanks to Dafra Sanou, JoSaBi Mariées!

Instagram is one of my greatest tools to make more connections and gain more clients. I use it everyday to reach out to and connect with new people. This has lead me to some of the most interesting people I have ever met! I have also been able to make very notable friends like Caleb McLaughlin from Stranger Things on Netflix, and many others. I love using Instagram and other social media to do the same. It is definitely something that is useful to me and my business, and most of all I have a fun time using it.

Thanks to Daniel Booter

Meetanshi is a team of Magento developers and marketers who not only complete their tasks in the office but enjoys the work hours thoroughly. Social media is a platform where we can reflect this culture which helps us in the hiring process. Our company always welcomes new talents that can join our journey of exceeding E-commerce excellence. However, such talents would want to work in a “happy place” which is our office! And our social media platforms reflect them without a doubt!

Thanks to Shivbhadrasinh Gohil, Meetanshi!

We highlight their expertise and little personal things about them. This is to show that the company is proud of them being on the team. Social media is also one way to interact with possible clients or partners using the chat feature. I think it is more personal and fast than emailing us for questions. Faster response = more leads.

Thanks to Stefanie Siclot, Growth Rocket!

Two common mistakes that businesses make on social media are not realizing that social mediums are a free, dynamic conversation stream into the minds of your present and future customers, or, if they do use social, simple treating it as an endless, self-praising collage. We love asking questions to our followers, running giveaways (that don't include our product), and sharing topical news and information that's important to them. For all the distractions out there, it's a real privilege to have your customer base follow you online, whether you have 10 or 10,000 followers. A simple exercise is to pick your favorite product or service, and visit their social media streams. Are they giving you what's interesting and relevant to you, as their loyal customer? If not, well now you know what not to do. If yes, use this as a springboard to get ideas for your own base!

Thanks to Eric Cutler, TOOTRiS!

Our social media strategy isn't one where we sell, sell, sell. Instead, we believe in starting conversations around what our local community cares about. We create illustrations and Videos that celebrate local holidays, social events, and other relevant occasions that the community likes to take part in. This strategy works for us because a lot of people love the creativity we put into the content and choose to hire us for their marketing activities.

Thanks to Amit Richard, COdesign!

#17- Drive traffic to the website

We are a news and media website for now almost three years now and depend on website visits. We follow simple steps on social media. A relevant link is added while posting an image. We add out content in the story with the article link. Updating pin frequently. The best trick which worked for me and still chips in good traffic is to comment on Tweets. This looks like spammy but isn't. I use a few tweets in my article, depending on the topic and after content is published. I go on a tweet and comment on the link of the article I published. The trick gives me good traffic every month. With these simple steps, our website generates around 35% to 45% of the monthly traffic from social media.

Thanks to Nayan Malpani, aTrendHub!

Lead generation is the imperative purpose of using social media for businesses and the best way to do so by creating a niche-specific community. Even before the creation of products or offerings, build a dedicated social media community (preferably a Facebook group if service is being offered) engage with the audience's problems then offer your services. The audience is eager to take assistance from the provider they have interacted with already.

Thanks to Bilal Uddin, Within The Flow!

The first one is to get new leads. Especially LinkedIn. LinkedIn has helped us get plenty of fresh leads for our business. Having advanced filters available, you can target your ideal clients. The second one is to build credibility and create thought leadership. Through social posting and sharing, we position ourselves as thought leaders in the industry. This does not provide new leads, but it makes the leads move smoothly through the sales cycle. It is much easier to close a lead if they trust your credibility.

Thanks to Dancho Dimkov, BizzBee Solutions!

In order not to miss out on a huge opportunity to connect with your prospect leads, any business has to work on their social media strategy… and use employee advocacy to maximize their reach and engagement. Basically, it’s when your employees to share your content on social media. Employee advocacy is proven to be highly effective. One of the most efficient ways to encourage employee advocacy is by featuring them as industry experts. For example, Intercom uses this approach featuring their employees to share industry trips about the sales process and strategy on Instagram.

Thanks to Lisa Evans, MyJobQuote!

As a digital marketing agency, we heavily invest in social media platforms as our business is more about connecting with people and developing relationships. Businesses invest in us to make their services available online. Search engine optimization helps us in connecting with people in a formal way, but social media marketing helps in connecting in an informal way. A perfect combination of both of these is essential, which varies from business to business. Social media platform mainly covers Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The audiences for each platform varies, so it is substantial to target audience considering the suitable social media platforms. We use Facebook and Instagram for our overall brand-building campaign, announce updates, backlink activities, run contests, and giveaways, etc. Twitter requires a fixed number of characters to deliver a piece of information, i.e. 280 characters, and lastly, LinkedIn helps in generating lead and revenue. I believe that the right combination of social media platforms is essential for any business.

Thanks to Jitesh Keswani, e intelligence!

Valley Networks uses social media (primarily Facebook and LinkedIn) in four important ways. 1. To build awareness for our brand in the MSP industry (MSP stands for Managed Service Provider). 2. To publicly thank our current clients and describe to our friends why they are important to our community. (we friended all our clients, so when thank them we can tag them in the post). Our clients love being mentioned on social media and this also helps with their social media efforts. Ultimately, we build a stronger relationship with our clients as they appreciate being promoted to the community and see that we care about what they do. 3. As a way of marketing to new clients through a FB remarketing campaign, along with a “look-a-like” campaign to get our testimonials to new prospects to generate leads. 4. As an SEO tool. Posting to our page with links back to our website (industry articles) helps slightly boost our rankings in the search engines. In particular, with Google.

Thanks to Matthew McKernan, Valley Networks or IT Support!

These chats are often hosted by other Twitter accounts in similar industries to ours and are focused on topics that a wide range of small business owners and entrepreneurs may respond to and engage with other participants for a lively discussion. This is a fun way to network with other like-minded businesses and their owners and make new connections in addition to having a great conversation together.

Thanks to Deborah Sweeney, MyCorporation.com!

We use social media to share and disseminate useful and informative content (like how-to guides) that are evergreen and that oftentimes, take months or even years to gain traction but that provide a huge amount of value for the business long term. This is something of an unusual approach to social, which is usually trend-based and timely, but playing the long game definitely pays off if you have the time and patience.

Thanks to John Moss, English Blinds!

There is something to be said about a customer choosing you over another competitor. However, there is nothing better than a repeat customer. A person willing to invest their money on you multiple times will legitimately help in so many ways. From word of mouth to income, they should be your focus. Using your social platforms to gently remind your past customers that they need to pay you a visit sometime soon. Plant the seed in their head, water that seed and let it grow. As long as you are honest, friendly and real with your consumers, they will return. If you suggest it, they may even leave a review for you on Google, Yelp, Facebook or other media outlets. This exposure always leads to more business.

Thanks to Mr. Brian James

Social media is a must for me in my business!! It’s my job to get in front of as many people who may need my help. I use social media as a platform for education. I love sharing anything that may be valuable to someone who’s thinking about buying or selling. I also share my values and who I am so people can get to know me and see if I’m a good fit.

Thanks to Maxine Peck, DreamHomesByMaxine!

Without Social Media I would not have a business. I have a local online Media resource – A website, email newsletter and Facebook and Instagram accounts with a brand providing resources and ideas for Moms in Plano, TX. It all started with a Facebook group, which I created 6 years ago – that now has over 15,000 Members. That group provides questions that I can create content to answer, and problems I can solve with the information I share. Without Facebook and now Instagram too, I would not have a business. Social Media provides the ability to build an audience of engaged people who follow you, love what you offer and consume your content and gives you a chance to build valuable relationships.

Thanks to Abbie Alter, Plano Moms LLC!

Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are generally used to display my work and to funnel potential clients to my main website. At these big social sites, it's also a great idea to always display your latest work or products and to grow your following for social proof. This is how your business creates validation for potential clients.

I use social media predominantly to connect with my audience – both current and future and I also use it to advertise my products and services. So in a way, social media is my funnel and where I may meet potential clients and customers, but will then transfer them to my website where they can make purchases.

Thanks to Julie Ann Dokowicz, Girl In Heels Travels!

#5- A number of ways

A lot of potential clients first find me via social media. I use my social media plateforms as a form of advertising what services my company offers as well as to define us as experts in our field. Recently I have found TikTok to be great way to get your brand infront of tons of traffic. Social media should be used to educate, entertain and then sell. This way you are providing value to your audience.

Thanks to Jon Torre

Social Media empowers myself and my company to paint a story of who we are as a business culture and as individuals. With the amazing work we do and the interesting clients we work with, social media provides a platform to give those people shout outs, celebrate our wins and of course have fun with creative content. Ultimately, we aim to maintain a presence and stay top of mind by making quality social media posts. If nobody was tuning in, what would be the point right?

Thanks to Fabrizio Moreira, Secret Hit Music!

#7- Humanize our organization

You must have seen healthcare organizations seeming a little sterile. This is wonderful depending on the angle of view of the organizations, as it encompasses the sanitation of the machinery, but it also may be missing in some places when we consider trying to communicate your personality to patients and the public. As a healthcare company we use social media as a means of interacting with and engaging with our patients or clients. We ‘re showing off our personality a bit. To put it another way, humanize our organization. We seek to respond more regularly to the comments and inquiries.

Thanks to Dr. Vikram Tarugu, Detox of South Florida!

One of my services is helping businesses with social media strategy. I implement the same process with my own company. I sit with my team and we come up with what we want people to see and what we want to promote. From there we map all of the posts out month by month. We use social media mainly to promote company events and to solicit clients. Either way we map it out month by month and then input the content into Later, which is an automated posting system. That way my company's social media is not taking up a huge chunk of my employees time and we can work on our actual goals.

Thanks to David Mitroff, Ph.D., Piedmont Avenue Consulting, Inc.!

I definitely use it to increase brand awareness but I have found that the more time I spend learning about who is engaging with my content, the better the solutions I am able to provide because I better understand the customer. It can be really easy to post content and disappear, only to look at the overall numbers. The better approach, for me, has been understanding why my audience is attracted to my brand and learning more about other things they engage with. I do this by spending some extra time checking out what's happening on their social profiles and getting to know (virtually at least) the people who engage with my pages the most.

Thanks to Tremaine Wills, My Last Dime!

We use social media to establish our brand in the minds of our audience, as well as promote our products to an audience that may not know we exist. The great thing about social media is that you can reach an almost limitless amount of consumers, but you can also tailor your ads to reach an audience that is appropriate for your niche. Those who enjoy your product might stick around and become loyal customers, and you can use social media advertising to attract new potential customers that are already interested in your niche.

Thanks to Garrett Greller, Uncle Bud’s Hemp!

We create super detailed and unique custom wedding dresses, and our mantra is You bring your vision, we do the work.. The issue we often run into is that brides have been so limited by what they see in stores that they do not even realize all the things available to them. We therefore continually engage our audience by showing closeups for gorgeous gowns, sharing fun polls to introduce them to unique design elements, and showcasing videos of past brides. From a technical and operational standpoint, that means a strict 5 to 7 posts a week, translated in English and French, and scheduled via tools like Facebook Creator Studio or Buffer. We also post around 20-30 stories a week manually.

Thanks to Dafra Sanou, JoSaBi Mariées!

Instagram is one of my greatest tools to make more connections and gain more clients. I use it everyday to reach out to and connect with new people. This has lead me to some of the most interesting people I have ever met! I have also been able to make very notable friends like Caleb McLaughlin from Stranger Things on Netflix, and many others. I love using Instagram and other social media to do the same. It is definitely something that is useful to me and my business, and most of all I have a fun time using it.

Thanks to Daniel Booter

Meetanshi is a team of Magento developers and marketers who not only complete their tasks in the office but enjoys the work hours thoroughly. Social media is a platform where we can reflect this culture which helps us in the hiring process. Our company always welcomes new talents that can join our journey of exceeding E-commerce excellence. However, such talents would want to work in a “happy place” which is our office! And our social media platforms reflect them without a doubt!

Thanks to Shivbhadrasinh Gohil, Meetanshi!

We highlight their expertise and little personal things about them. This is to show that the company is proud of them being on the team. Social media is also one way to interact with possible clients or partners using the chat feature. I think it is more personal and fast than emailing us for questions. Faster response = more leads.

Thanks to Stefanie Siclot, Growth Rocket!

Two common mistakes that businesses make on social media are not realizing that social mediums are a free, dynamic conversation stream into the minds of your present and future customers, or, if they do use social, simple treating it as an endless, self-praising collage. We love asking questions to our followers, running giveaways (that don't include our product), and sharing topical news and information that's important to them. For all the distractions out there, it's a real privilege to have your customer base follow you online, whether you have 10 or 10,000 followers. A simple exercise is to pick your favorite product or service, and visit their social media streams. Are they giving you what's interesting and relevant to you, as their loyal customer? If not, well now you know what not to do. If yes, use this as a springboard to get ideas for your own base!

Thanks to Eric Cutler, TOOTRiS!

Our social media strategy isn't one where we sell, sell, sell. Instead, we believe in starting conversations around what our local community cares about. We create illustrations and Videos that celebrate local holidays, social events, and other relevant occasions that the community likes to take part in. This strategy works for us because a lot of people love the creativity we put into the content and choose to hire us for their marketing activities.

Thanks to Amit Richard, COdesign!

#17- Drive traffic to the website

We are a news and media website for now almost three years now and depend on website visits. We follow simple steps on social media. A relevant link is added while posting an image. We add out content in the story with the article link. Updating pin frequently. The best trick which worked for me and still chips in good traffic is to comment on Tweets. This looks like spammy but isn't. I use a few tweets in my article, depending on the topic and after content is published. I go on a tweet and comment on the link of the article I published. The trick gives me good traffic every month. With these simple steps, our website generates around 35% to 45% of the monthly traffic from social media.

Thanks to Nayan Malpani, aTrendHub!

Lead generation is the imperative purpose of using social media for businesses and the best way to do so by creating a niche-specific community. Even before the creation of products or offerings, build a dedicated social media community (preferably a Facebook group if service is being offered) engage with the audience's problems then offer your services. The audience is eager to take assistance from the provider they have interacted with already.

Thanks to Bilal Uddin, Within The Flow!

The first one is to get new leads. Especially LinkedIn. LinkedIn has helped us get plenty of fresh leads for our business. Having advanced filters available, you can target your ideal clients. The second one is to build credibility and create thought leadership. Through social posting and sharing, we position ourselves as thought leaders in the industry. This does not provide new leads, but it makes the leads move smoothly through the sales cycle. It is much easier to close a lead if they trust your credibility.

Thanks to Dancho Dimkov, BizzBee Solutions!

In order not to miss out on a huge opportunity to connect with your prospect leads, any business has to work on their social media strategy… and use employee advocacy to maximize their reach and engagement. Basically, it’s when your employees to share your content on social media. Employee advocacy is proven to be highly effective. One of the most efficient ways to encourage employee advocacy is by featuring them as industry experts. For example, Intercom uses this approach featuring their employees to share industry trips about the sales process and strategy on Instagram.

Thanks to Lisa Evans, MyJobQuote!

As a digital marketing agency, we heavily invest in social media platforms as our business is more about connecting with people and developing relationships. Businesses invest in us to make their services available online. Search engine optimization helps us in connecting with people in a formal way, but social media marketing helps in connecting in an informal way. A perfect combination of both of these is essential, which varies from business to business. Social media platform mainly covers Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The audiences for each platform varies, so it is substantial to target audience considering the suitable social media platforms. We use Facebook and Instagram for our overall brand-building campaign, announce updates, backlink activities, run contests, and giveaways, etc. Twitter requires a fixed number of characters to deliver a piece of information, i.e. 280 characters, and lastly, LinkedIn helps in generating lead and revenue. I believe that the right combination of social media platforms is essential for any business.

Thanks to Jitesh Keswani, e intelligence!

Valley Networks uses social media (primarily Facebook and LinkedIn) in four important ways. 1. To build awareness for our brand in the MSP industry (MSP stands for Managed Service Provider). 2. To publicly thank our current clients and describe to our friends why they are important to our community. (we friended all our clients, so when thank them we can tag them in the post). Our clients love being mentioned on social media and this also helps with their social media efforts. Ultimately, we build a stronger relationship with our clients as they appreciate being promoted to the community and see that we care about what they do. 3. As a way of marketing to new clients through a FB remarketing campaign, along with a “look-a-like” campaign to get our testimonials to new prospects to generate leads. 4. As an SEO tool. Posting to our page with links back to our website (industry articles) helps slightly boost our rankings in the search engines. In particular, with Google.

Thanks to Matthew McKernan, Valley Networks or IT Support!

These chats are often hosted by other Twitter accounts in similar industries to ours and are focused on topics that a wide range of small business owners and entrepreneurs may respond to and engage with other participants for a lively discussion. This is a fun way to network with other like-minded businesses and their owners and make new connections in addition to having a great conversation together.

Thanks to Deborah Sweeney, MyCorporation.com!

We use social media to share and disseminate useful and informative content (like how-to guides) that are evergreen and that oftentimes, take months or even years to gain traction but that provide a huge amount of value for the business long term. This is something of an unusual approach to social, which is usually trend-based and timely, but playing the long game definitely pays off if you have the time and patience.

Thanks to John Moss, English Blinds!

There is something to be said about a customer choosing you over another competitor. However, there is nothing better than a repeat customer. A person willing to invest their money on you multiple times will legitimately help in so many ways. From word of mouth to income, they should be your focus. Using your social platforms to gently remind your past customers that they need to pay you a visit sometime soon. Plant the seed in their head, water that seed and let it grow. As long as you are honest, friendly and real with your consumers, they will return. If you suggest it, they may even leave a review for you on Google, Yelp, Facebook or other media outlets. This exposure always leads to more business.

Thanks to Mr. Brian James

Social media is a must for me in my business!! It’s my job to get in front of as many people who may need my help. I use social media as a platform for education. I love sharing anything that may be valuable to someone who’s thinking about buying or selling. I also share my values and who I am so people can get to know me and see if I’m a good fit.

Thanks to Maxine Peck, DreamHomesByMaxine!