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- I use Pinterest to boost my business
The best results with 0 investment of time and resources were through Pinterest. What we did was automate Pinterest (Organic) – We used to post manually on Pinterest every now and then and didn't attract any customers/visitors to our eCommerce portal. A few months ago, we installed a Shopify plugin to automatically push product images to Pinterest. The results were unexpected. Most of the Pinterest customers are located internationally, primarily within the US, UK and Canada with a sizeable number in the MENA region. My advice is: Do not ignore any social media platform, automate the ones using their APIs or SMM tools if you can't afford to manually updating them regularly.
Thanks to Akram Tariq Khan, YourLibaas!
#2- Tool to grow my businesses
My team and I have a group on Instagram DMs we send inspiration we find from other Instagram accounts and any other creative ideas that may spark new ideas for content. We communicate on slack almost all hours of the day (The Quality Edit is a passion project, not a job, so everyone is excited to participate). Content is king: we push our content out to all channels across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. We respond to just about every comment in a timely manner (less than 4-5 hours) and also monitor any ads we’re running across social platforms to respond to comments there as well.
Thanks to Lauren Kleinman, The Quality Edit!
#3- I use video content to boost my content
I have noticed video content driving the most organic traffic and growth from social media. With YouTube being one of the most visited platforms that are able to keep a viewer for hours at a time and the huge emergence of TiKTok in the last year. IGTV and Instagram Reels have also been able to establish themselves as competitors in the market. I think it is very clear that video is the future of marketing. One major tip I can offer is to differentiate your video content based on the social media platform you are using. Each platform has a different demographic and trends/types of videos that do best.
Thanks to Jon Zacharias, The Search Guy!
#4- Two goals
We use for recruitment and client acquisition. For recruitment, our company social media accounts serve this purpose well – sharing content related to the team, their achievements, day-to-day work and the overall culture of the business. For client acquisition, however, we don't use company pages, preferring to rely on prospecting via individual employee social media accounts (especially LinkedIn). The reason for this is simple: people buy from people and in our space of B2B using the human first generates substantially more client inquiries than leading with an inanimate company social presence.
Thanks to Patrick Ward, Rootstrap!
#5- I use ads
All business owners need to be more conscious of their spending right now and typically marketing budgets are the first to be revised. At Whom Home, I have shifted most of the marketing budget to ads on Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, Instagram and SEO. My marketing strategy has shifted since the start of the pandemic and will continue to adjust as the world climate changes throughout the next few months.
Thanks to Jonathan Bass, Whom Home!
#6- Establishing a presence in various communities
For example, Facebook groups. Figuring out a way to organically engage and formulate relationships within Facebook groups allow you to genuinely market your product to thousands of members. Especially in this time of a global pandemic, when people are spending so much of their time online. It is important to never underestimate the power and need for human connection. People are lonelier than ever, stuck inside their homes, not able to socialize in person or enjoy typical activities such as restaurants, bars, concerts, and museums.
Thanks to Jason Akatiff, Boundery!
#7- Educate on the marketing industry
We regularly feature fun facts, how-to blogs, and ebooks on our Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. It may seem counter-intuitive coming from a marketing agency. Aren’t we putting ourselves out of business? Through high-quality content, we give our audience a taste of our team’s talent and skill while building trust with them at the same time. We are looking for a specific type of client. We aren’t necessarily looking for DIY marketers who don’t have the budget for a marketing agency. So, by offering articles and ebooks, we’re allowing them to help themselves. When they’re ready, they’ll likely remember us and hopefully become customers someday.
Thanks to Heather Bragg, Bragg Media Marketing!
#8- Deliver short English lessons and tips
Social media is a necessary tool for every online entrepreneur, as it provides an unprecedented way to connect with customers that simply wasn’t possible in the past. This increased level of communication has given businesses a way to deepen their bonds with customers and to keep them up-to-date during uncertain or unusual times.
Thanks to Kevin Miller, The Word Counter!
#9- Researching and sharing
Since people spend a lot of time scrolling on Facebook and Twitter, we use those apps to attract more audience and engage with them so they’ll get interested in us. Also, social media serves as a tool to know what is trendy so we know what our content should be about. Being in line with what is popular at the moment will make the difference between being relevant or useless.
Thanks to Alex Perkins, All the Stuff!
#10- Amplify our content
Our company takes content very seriously and produces 100K+ words of it each month in the form of pillar pages, guides, and blogs for our target industries. We also use social media to share PR hits we get in top tier publications, such as Fast Company and Entrepreneur. Out of all of our platforms, we prefer Twitter since we get the most mileage in how often we can post and overall engagement.
Thanks to Aytekin Tank, JotForm!
#11- Earn publicity through niche communities
One of the biggest benefits social media can have for businesses right now is that it allows them to connect with new customers around their niche and start conversations that can become earned publicity. That's why business owners should be keeping an eye out for online communities that develop around their industry and try to create conversations and provide insights around topics that relate to your offer. Its sounds pretty simple, but the tricky part is being consistent and timely because it's not enough to simply respond to a few comments or messages.
Thanks to David Adler, The Travel Secret!
#12- Influencer marketing
Our industry is highly competitive for ads so, for us, influencer marketing on social media has been a very effective alternative to ads for us. We pay influencers to try out our app and make posts about their experience. We have two distinct markets for our app so we also have two different types of influencers we work with. Not only have we found that influencer marketing is more effective than traditional ads for our business, but it works so well for reaching a highly targeted and engaged audience.
Thanks to Nerissa Zhang, The Bright App!
#13- Communicate our brand voice
It's not just about posting, but genuinely engaging with your customers. With multiple people managing our website and social media platforms, it's important that everyone knows the tone to adopt. Each engagement with customer matters – every message, comment, and post reflects the brand, so it's important to be consistent with the impression you give and the message you get across.
Thanks to Chelsea Hunt-Rivera, Honest Paws!
#14- Interact with end customers
I use social media to interact with end customers and to create online content to validate my products and services. This means it is more of indirect value. As I work on B2B, most of my clients do not interact much through social media but they can always double-check what we do and usually, my social media contents are there to validate that we are genuine and popular. Sometimes they see other products we offer there and contact us back to ask for information about that.
Thanks to Augustin T. O'Brien Caceres, LE Group Industries!
#15- As an adjunct to my blog
I use it to post excerpts of my blog posts, usually raising a question that is answered by my blog post. Since I use MeetEdgar as my social media tool, I create several variations of updates for the same blog post that can be displayed on rotation by MeetEdgar. When I post updates of curated posts or other types of social updates, I usually try to see if these too resonate on the same topic themes around which my blog post for the day is built.
Thanks to Shobha Ponnappa, SOLOHACKS-ACADEMY!
#16- Funnel members of other communities to our own
We post content once per day in LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, Slack workspaces, and sub-Reddits relative to our target customer for 6 days a week. This content includes 4 pieces of new content, 1 self-serving, and 1 repost. From there we funnel those people to our own community where we can be open and transparent about how we can facilitate their goals and objectives and how our service can provide them value.
Thanks to Nick Swekosky, Market Metrics!
#17- I use Twitter to respond to my customers
I run a small automation consultancy and we help businesses streamline their processes using a tool called Zapier. I spend at least 1 hour day answering people's questions, sharing resources, and joining discussions. By becoming a sort of ‘go-to person' for this industry, I've found clients, contractor recommendations, press and link building opportunities, and got answers to all sorts of technical questions of my own.
Thanks to Andrew Davison, Luhhu!
#18- I use Linkedin to build a close and powerful network
Linkedin gives to you the chance to build a close and powerful network. Try to choose a niche topic and be the best around Linkedin, give good feedback, offer materials and resources about it and most important thing is to enjoy the journey.
Thanks to Pavel Mazuelas, Lingbe!
#19- Leverage our user base
We often run referral programs on facebook, instagram, twitter to offer user incentives such as promotion code, voucher. On these programs, users share information on their social network as a hashtag or referral link to invite their friends.I often use social media to create a network effect – a community where you actually build relationships among the people who follow you or are fans of your brands. Social media is the main channel that I got a lot of feedbackand ideas for improving our products/services.
Thanks to LeoNguyen, SixStringTips!
#20- Showcase my photography
Before the pandemic hit, I was using social media to gain clients for photo shoots as well as to sell prints, but I have had to pivot and now I am focusing exclusively on selling fine art prints. I recently linked my products from my website to allow clients to shop directly from my Instagram, which is a game changer. I also use social media as a way to create that like, know, trust within my clients by putting my face and my personality out there in stories so that clients connect with the human behind the photographs and brand.
Thanks to Francesca Dolnier
#21- Scout for potential clients and customers
Social media is one of the fastest ways you can gain new clients. You can also use social media to promote your business at a cheap cost compared to when you will go to advertising agencies. Overall, social media is one way of growing your business without having to incur huge expenses and putting in too much effort.
Thanks to Lewis Keegan, SkillScouter!
#22- Share your most popular web pages
If they like them enough to link to it from your website, this tells Google and other search engines that your content is informative, useful, and relevant, which is likely to improve your search engine rankings. You will increase your online presence and establish your website as a source of high-quality content when you invest time in your social media and SEO strategy.
Thanks to Oliver Andrews, OA Design Services!
#23- Give my audience ways to DIY their creative content
Think 10 second Reels or Tik Toks, brief graphics, and 24-hour Instagram Stories. Because social media makes it hard to search for tips, you have to hit them with the graphics and the short, snappy captions* right away* to get the viewer to stop scrolling and engage. These tips are the exact methods I use as a content writer
Thanks to Tiffani, Your Creative Content!