Social media is a vast virtual landscape that may seem nerve-racking, but if used properly it can open up a whole new world, and many more customers, for your business. This guide will teach you about various strategies you can use social media to attract your target audience.
Using Social Media To Reach New Audiences
There’s no escaping the fact that social media plays a huge part in socialising nowadays In the days before the internet, most businesses relied on word of mouth and of course other forms of advertising to find new customers. While word of mouth certainly still has its place in the world, no business should underestimate the value of a social media post.
It’s a big wide world out there, and billions of people are using social media every single day; that’s a lot of potential customers for you to engage and connect with.
Having said that, growing an audience on social media is a very difficult endeavour.
Users are bombarded with posts from their friends and family, not to mention various other businesses (i.e. your competition). Growing loyal followers won’t happen overnight, but Rome wasn’t built in a day either. Strap yourself in; this blog will give you the tools to help you grow an active and engaged audience on all the major social networks.
Planning your social media strategy
Before you start posting, you need to plan how you will use your social media accounts. There is no point in merely posting any old status or image and just hope for the best.
Very few people will come across your posts if you don’t strategise accordingly.
You must first know what type of people you want to see your posts, and then plan on how you will reach them to build relationships with your target audience.
Each platform has its user base and content strategy.
Your strategy can be tailored to promote your brand and products, making sure that your target audience has the best chance to engage with your posts.
Common goals of this kind of approach include increasing conversions, building brand awareness, or to help drive traffic to your website.
Your social media accounts need to post content that is both original and relevant to your business and the industry you work in. You need to know what to post, how often you need to post, when to boost your posts, and generally how to fully utilise your social media accounts.
Attracting your target audience
The benefits of using social media
Gain audience marketing insights
Targets the specific demographic you are searching for
Increase loyalty and engagement from stakeholders
Increase web traffic
Attract and convert leads
Timely and cost-efficient
Connect directly with your audience
Increase the exposure and reputation of your brand
Increase your business’s sales
Set goals for your social media strategy
Social media campaigns
Social media campaigns increase brand awareness, social media user interaction and contribute to your KPIs and business goals. Unlike general social media marketing work, campaigns focus on targeting and working on a specific business objectives.
By understanding your company’s social media presence and learning what works best for your business, your campaign can be modified to best suit your needs.
Campaigns allow you to:
Develop and implement brand-specific campaigns to fulfil your objectives.
Measure and increase ROI.
Make connections that last.
Provide you with helpful analytics, insights, and recommendations.
Find opportunities to take advantage of within your social media communities.
Campaigns should be tailored for each platform to maximise how much engagement your posts receive for your business to accomplish its goals. Every social media platform needs to be used differently to achieve maximum results, as you will see below.
Using Facebook
Facebook is perhaps the most versatile platform that you can use in different ways to find your target audience.
While you should most certainly use your Facebook page to promote your products and services, 80% of your posts should be made purely to engage with your followers.
Refrain from publishing posts that are solely made to advertise your products or services or look like big giant ads. Followers will find this off-putting.
There are many factors to consider for utilising Facebook to promote your business.
Growing your Facebook audience
Facebook is a great tool to use to get people to visit your website.
In fact, 40% of website traffic. Keep in mind that people are more likely to click links displayed in the link format than the links in captions.
Facebook campaign objectives
Page post engagement. This type of ad promotes your page posts. Specifically, it can boost statuses, photos, videos, weblinks, or can increase engagement from users (i.e. likes, shares, and comments).
Page likes. After someone clicks the Like button to follow a Facebook page, your posts will sometimes appear in their newsfeed. The
more likes your Facebook page gets, the bigger your audience grows.
Clicks to websites. These drive traffic to your business’s website.
Events. If your business is going to have an event that you want to promote, create an invitation for it on Facebook. Users who see event invites may consider going, which increases the number of people attending it.
Facebook ads
Facebook collects various types of data about its users, such as demographics, education levels, interests, hobbies, and much more.
You can use this information to advertise your company to your target audience.
Facebook is one of the biggest paid social ad channels, including Facebook ads into your marketing plan is a must. Although you have to pay for this service, it is worth every cent.
The most visible and effective type of Facebook ad is a newsfeed advertisement. These ads appear along with other posts in the user’s feed. These ads have the word “Sponsored” displayed on them, meaning that it’s upfront about being a paid ad. However, as these ads can be commented on and liked just like any other type of Facebook post, users will see that your ad is legitimate and not a scam.
Organic Reach
Despite using paid ads being a necessity to promote your business via Facebook, it is still possible for your posts to organically reach users.
An organic reach is the number of people who see content from your Facebook page that you did not pay for. However, you have to persistently post on Facebook to increase your organic reach.
Think of it like dring to dig a hole with a spoon….
A lot of effort for not a great deal of return.
Metrics for measuring your posts
Metrics for measuring your posts
Photos that your company took will feel more organic and specific to you than any old generic photo that can be found online. Users can tell the difference between original and generic images. Original images humanise your brand, hence making it more appealing to potential customers.
How to use hashtags
There are two types of hashtags that businesses should use for their posts:
Branded hashtags: These may contain your business’s name or products that are directly connected to your business. 70% of hashtags are branded.
Community hashtags: These hashtags are broadly used by Instagram users for general use, rather than relating to a particular company, helping your Instagram account gain more followers.
Send tweets frequently, but at optimal times. Tweeting regularly, preferably 3-7 times per day, will help maximise engagement. However, the best times to tweet is during weekdays.
Have an alluring Twitter bio. This section not only explains what your business does, but its visual appeal can determine if people want to follow your account or not.
Use compelling visual content. Tweets with images are more likely to grab your followers’ attention. Therefore, those tweets get more likes, shares, and retweets than purely text tweets do.
Hashtags. Twitter uses hashtags the same way Instagram does, in that it increases the likelihood of your tweet’s reach. Tweets with hashtags get 12.6% more engagement than tweets without hashtags.
Engage with your followers. This may seem obvious, but it has to be said that by responding to your followers regularly via tags, retweets, and replies will make your business seem more appealing simply because you acknowledged them. Your followers may do the same for you, and their followers may start following you.
If you are trying to attract businesses more so than the general public, LinkedIn is the best place to make great connections that lead to conversions and raise brand awareness.
By utilising effective strategies for both B2B and B2C leads, LinkedIn Marketing can help make you a leading company in your industry.
Get your employees to follow you
Share content regularly
When you share updates from your company page, these will appear on your public page as well and will be indexed by Google.
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Create your social media accounts today!
Social media is one of the most effective marketing tools in the digital space, and you cannot afford not to utilise it and help your business grow. Call Adaptify today on 1300 423 566 or fill in our online form today to get in touch with our social media team.
