How To Use Social Media for Your Business; 2023 Ultimate Guide

According to the latest Statista figures, Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities.

Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2021, over 4.26 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost six billion in 2027.

Almost Half of the People around the world are on some form of social media platform, and this is expected to keep growing! This trend clearly explains why a lot of businesses continue to leverage people’s presence and interest in social media. In fact, a lot of SMEs and new businesses have found a great ally in social media as it enables them a cost-effective means to make their online presence known without the need to build a website right away.

The use of social media for business promotion

Ever since Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter began offering business services in the last decade, the use of social media for business promotion rapidly increased. From then on, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media sites jumped on the bandwagon, making it clear that social media can be a viable, lucrative vehicle for raising brand awareness, expanding one’s business network, finding suppliers, and online selling.

Although social media was not considered a major vehicle for promoting business initially, the years have shown us that the traditional way of spending thousands or even millions of dollars on television ad placements and advertising on print and billboards is no longer feasible. People not only spend a substantial amount of time on social media browsing through their friends’ profiles and updates; they also show their support and engagement to certain brands on these platforms.

This is why today, a lot of businesses wisely invest their advertising money in different mediums, combining the old with the new, including social media marketing. If you have a business and you’re planning on investing more in your social media marketing strategy, it would help to know the pros and cons of using social media for your business.

Pros of using social media for business

Social media allows side hustlers and small businesses to get more mileage out of their marketing budget. That is because advertising costs are typically much lower than with traditional above-the-line marketing mediums. Aside from this, it also provides the following advantages:

2. Immediate feedback and customer interactions

If you’re one to engage and converse constantly with your brand followers, you’ll find it easy to get honest feedback from your customers. Add to these customer reviews that you can also quickly respond to, especially when there are disgruntled customers who have expressed their dissatisfaction with a product or service.

Remember to not allow negative criticisms to affect how you deal with your customers online. If you get negative reviews, use these as an opportunity to appease your customers and make them feel special. Invite them to your establishment with the assurance of something better. This will show other customers that you are professional, honest, and gracious, and this can quickly earn the goodwill of even your dissatisfied customers.

3. Global reach

If you are expanding your business overseas, social media, combined with effective prospecting methods, can make it easy and convenient for you to connect with a global audience and promote your business. And you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to accomplish this. All you need is the right marketing strategy that’ll get your message across to your target demographic.

Cons of using social media for business

Social media can do a lot of things to help grow your business. Conversely, it also has a few downsides that need to be efficiently addressed to ensure your business only benefits from it.

1. Security threats

LinkedIn was hacked in 2012 by Russian cybercriminals who stole the passwords of nearly 6.5 million user accounts. Back in 2018, Facebook was hacked, leading to the hijacking of 50 million accounts. Just this year, the social media giant’s Twitter and Instagram accounts were both hacked by the “OurMine” hacking group.

These cyber incidents clearly indicate that no one is safe on the Internet, including well-funded social media platforms. So, if you do your business on social media, you are also exposing yourself to the threats posed by cyberattacks.

2. Trolls and misinformation

Trolls pose a significant threat to establishments and personalities because of the rapidity with which they can alter public opinion. Although corrupt business practices like as corporate espionage and intellectual property theft have been used, trolls who are triggered to propagate bad comments on anyone, including businesses, can harm even the most carefully crafted online reputation.

This is why it is critical to have a dedicated social media manager or employees to maintain your company’s social media accounts. It is also beneficial to provide good, quick customer service to ensure that you have satisfied consumers to back you up.

3. Slow results

Just as there are billions of people on Facebook and other social media platforms, there are also millions of businesses promoting themselves on the same media. This means you will be competing with thousands of others in the same business and vying for the attention of your target customers.

Wrap Up

So, if it’s your first time venturing into social media advertising and promotions, make sure you have the patience to wait things out. This is especially true when you’ve just recently created your dedicated business page. Getting your business brand out there can take time and would require some investment. Having the right strategy to achieve your business objectives.

8 Important social media tools every small business should know

Online businesses require three types of representation: first is a professional logo design and brand identity, a great informative dedicated website, and social media profiles. Great social media tools are required for this. Let’s take it a step further.

Websites receive traffic from two sources: organic (from search engine pages) and social media (through links on social media platforms). A social media presence is essential for any new website or online business. The reason is simple: the average internet user spends more time on social media than on any other website.

However, you can get the best of both worlds by transforming your website into a social hub using a social media aggregator, as you can pull all of your posts into one place.

Well, making a dedicated social media page is not enough. A business needs to monitor the performance of its social media page, to evaluate its effectiveness. It is essential that website owners keep a check and balance of how social media presence is impacting their business.

Growing Your Followers on TikTok

The Essential Guidelines. Do you want to become successful on TikTok? If yes, you should have a strong presence on this platform. When you have a bigger audience, you will increase your brand’s visibility. And this in turn will boost sales, maximize brand awareness and develop long-lasting relationships with your target audience.

Today, there are platforms that are available to enable you to opt-in for more followers quickly. That will help you for a while. If you want to use the platform to its full potential, you will require genuine TikTok followers who will care about all that you have to say.

A few guidelines to grow your followers on TikTok are:

1. Recognize the target audience

One of the most crucial things you can do to grow your TikTok followers is to recognize your target audience. And similar to other social media sites, even TikTok users can cover various demographics, niches, and locations. This kind of content that works correctly in one group might fail to work for another group. Hence, before you start developing a TikTok influencer or marketing strategy, it’s essential to narrow down your target audience for the platform.

The moment you’ve recognized your target audience, it is essential to generate content specifically for your audience. While your objective is to have increased TikTok followers, it’s necessary to approach the content generation to entertain or educate your target audience to have real connections. It’s essential to attract the correct followers who are interested in your brand and the services and products you offer.

2. Make the most of trends

TikTok trends are a great method to generate a unique brand positioning while also adding to the overall brand personality. TikTok focuses on current events. You have the opportunity to drastically increase your followers by using trends. However, there is no hard and fast rule that you must participate in anything just because it is popular.

It would be beneficial if you used your judgment about which trends to follow and ensured that you were seen by your target audience. It would be beneficial if you educated your followers. TikTok can be used to create informative and entertaining videos.

3. content that offers value to the followers

The ideal TikTok content for influencers and brands is entertaining and educational. It’s a great idea for using smart TikTok content for sharing data about the services and products, that can best cater to your audience and ensure that their lives are simpler.

4. Opt-in for hashtags

Hashtags are gaining prominence on almost all social media platforms as it makes it simpler to come across collections for the content you prefer. When you use hashtags, it enables you to expand your audience. It’s mostly so when you have a blend of trending hashtags, branded hashtags, general hashtags, and business-specific hashtags.

Last but not least, you can always cross-promote the videos. Marketing can’t sustain itself because of TikTok alone. This platform doesn’t survive in a vacuum. A competent online marketing strategy has to comprise various other social media platforms that people use. Anywhere the target audience spends time online, you should be there. Using all these tactics you can grow your TikTok followers.

Agora Pulse is a multi-tasked manager social media tool. It helps you to manage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram; all from one single platform. Apart from serving as an analyzer tool, Agora Pulse allows handling social media in a much easy way. It offers post-scheduling, auto-moderation, usage by multiple members, and other such features. It also allows interacting with followers and figuring out more active of them.

EveryPost is the perfect social media manager plus analyzer. The tool is one of the most fantastic social media tools. It allows posting the same content on multi-channels including Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Twitter.  It also acts as a content management tool due to its function of customization. You can fetch a post from any other source, customize it and then post it on various channels.

Apart from this, EveryPost also offers the flexibility of managing teamwork. So many members can manage their social media accounts by using the same tool.

HootSuite is one of the most popular social media tools. The most important use of this tool is managing all of the social media accounts of your business, through one single app. Hence, there doesn’t remain any need of opening so many tabs, just for switching from one account to another one. Popular social media accounts that you can manage using HootSuite, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, Twitter, Mixi, and Foursquare.

HootSuite also offers a scheduling feature for the automation of posts. The customization feature of HootSuite is just a plus. Free as well as premium versions of the tool are available.

Google Analytics has generally reserved a tool for analyzing the search engine ranking of any website. The tool is equally effective for gauging social media performance as well. A good feature of Analytics is that it is free and everyone can use it. Hence, beginners who can’t afford advanced social media tools can get accurate insights. Google Analytics offers social media reports. It also offers a single sharing platform for catering to multiple social media posts.

Buffer is another interesting, easy to use, and features social media analytics tool. The most prominent function of Buffer is to schedule any social media post. If you find any post interesting, then click on it and add it to the buffer extension. The post would automatically get posted on selective social media channels. Buffer is also a widely used tool by online businesses. It is equally popular among startups as well as Pros. It can manage social media accounts including, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

The free version of the Buffer is available; luckily paid version is also not too much costly.

Feedly offers you an opportunity to act as a curator in the best way. The way Feedly works is very much unique compared to the other social media tools. It lets online businesses to get an insight into what is trending. It compiled popular discussions in the form of a magazine and helps you in decision-making. When it comes to scheduling of posts then Feedly does its task by integrating with Hootsuite and Buffer.

MeetEdgar social media tool offers an edge on post scheduling. Unlike, other tools, it offers to make a scheduling library that further makes the task easier. In this way, you are saved from the hassle of re-posting while gaining an equal amount of attention. The making of a library also offers complete customization in terms of content.

Bitly is another popular and widely used social media analytics tool. It is more specific for e-mail marketing. It also helps in managing Twitter and Instagram posts. Apart from giving insights into social media traffic insight, Bitly is also a popular link shortening service too.

How To Use Social Media Marketing For eCommerce

The fight for social media dominance continues as more and more brands discover how important it is to establish a presence on Facebook, Instagram, and other popular SM platforms.

Even brands that have already established themselves are working hard to attract new followers and receive engagement on their content. They also usually have dedicated individuals or agencies running the profile.

For a new brand, entering the social media marketing game could prove to be quite difficult without a proper strategy. 

Organize Giveaways

Giveaways are a simple and straightforward method to announce a social media platform about a brand joining it. 

Social media users love to participate in contests even if they do not necessarily need a prize when liking and sharing the post is all it takes to enter. 

Pick what you would like to give away. For example, it could be custom merchandise with your business logo design, a slogan, or other brand elements you might have.

Since you can automate production with print on demand companies, there is no need to invest in your own manufacturing equipment. Order the goods in bulk and use them for social media giveaways.

Make sure that you actually send prizes. Some businesses like to fool their followers into thinking that they are giving stuff for free but never send those prizes because they announce fake profiles as winners. Do not do this because it will come back to bite you and ruin the brand’s reputation. 

Appeal to Younger Demographics

According to statistics, in 2023, about two-thirds of millennials in the United States said they would prefer to shop for leisure, sports, and hobby products largely online. Only roughly 14% of millennial shoppers stated they would prefer to purchase such items mostly in-store.

If you want to appeal to younger demographics, you will need to spend some resources to determine what kind of content attracts their attention. Investing in younger audiences is a good approach because you can grow a substantial number of followers who will remain loyal to your brand so long as you stick to the policies that attracted the demographic in the first place.

Focus on Content Quality

Collaborate With Influencers

Influencer marketing plays a prominent role in today’s digital advertising game. People are more likely to trust a celebrity they follow on social media than a random corporation. The trust between an influencer and their audience is one of the primary reasons why influencers can make a living by promoting various goods and services.

Collaborating with influencers ought to take your brand’s standing on social media even further. Even a simple shoutout from an A-tier celebrity ought to attract new followers and offer a big boost to overall engagement.

The more influencers you collaborate with, the more beneficial it will be for the brand. Also, remember that you can also focus more on micro-influencers rather than top celebrities. The former might have fewer followers, but micro-influencers are known for their great engagement rates.

Stick to a Schedule

When publishing social media content, make sure that you create a schedule and stick to it. If it is two posts per day, find the best time to publish the content. Usually, brands post one message around the afternoon and another around the evening, depending on where the majority of their followers are from.

It might take a while to test various times to determine when your posts get the most engagement, but it is worth the effort. Also, keep in mind that if a schedule works for Twitter, it might not have the same results on Facebook, and vice-versa.

Respond to Comments

Be sure to respond to as many comments as you can. Show your followers that you appreciate their questions, encouragement, opinions, and other comments. It might even be worth hiring someone whose job will be to respond to social media comments. If there are too many comments for you to respond to, you will struggle and overwork yourself, and that is one of the biggest pitfalls among social media marketers.

Monitor the Data

Keep tabs on engagement rates, what type of content is receiving the most attention, and which is getting ignored. Knowing the actual information rather than guessing will ensure that you or another person managing the social media account can make the right adjustments, such as changing the post frequency or publishing different types of posts.

Learning About Instagram Impressions, Tracking, Improvement, & More

Browsing through social media feeds may be fun, but things change when you get to the backend where all types of data are stored, such as impressions, reach, and engagement. Suddenly, it feels like a new universe. While you don’t need to bother about these stats if you are just a casual user, your dependence on them heavily increases when you run a business or try to make money through this social media channel. So, let’s focus on impressions right now.

How do impressions differ from reach and engagement?

It precisely refers to the number of times a user passes by your post. It considers the encounters with your count. For example, if one person saw the same content twice, the impression for that post on Insta will be two. However, if you check the reach, the count will be one because it recognizes unique views or visitors for an uploaded post. Since impressions indicate growing awareness about your brand, it becomes a critical insight for the business. Or, precisely, you can expect more conversions or views based on this metric.

As hinted at already, reach considers the number of unique views on a post. On the other hand, engagement stands for the number of times someone shared or saved your content or commented, liked, or followed the same. Tagging your profile or mentioning your brand, using a brand-related hashtag, sending DMs, and visiting a story or link are some more examples of engagement. However, engagement and engagement rate are also two things. Engagement rate compares interactions VS viewership of the post. For example, suppose you got 100 visitors on a post. But only 50 of them reacted to it. Therefore, your engagement rate will be 50 percent.

Knowing the difference between reach and impression is quite essential to measure the performance of your campaigns. Hence, you can simplify these things by remembering that reach indicates the total number of people, and impressions count the number of times someone saw your content.

 How to track impressions on Instagram?

It is simple to track this metric. First, you visit the insights dashboard where all data is stored. Next, you can go to ‘activity,’ scroll down to find the option of impressions. If you wish to check the impressions on the latest post, you can click on it and then insights. You can see the result at the bottom.

Why focus on impressions?

You can worry about showing too many ads to your audience. You would want to keep a tab on this to figure out how many impressions they receive. If something attracts just a few or nothing, it is a signal that there is a requirement to tweak the content. Considering all this, it becomes essential to go deeper into this metric. For example, you would want to learn how many impressions you can expect from a single user on average. Going by experts, users should see an ad multiple times as this demonstrates familiarity. Advertisers call this “effective frequency,” which stands for the number of times a user comes across your ad before interacting with it.

Some businesses recommend that three exposures can also suffice when it comes to raising awareness. However, it would be best to remember that effective frequency can vary based on business nature, products, and services. If you want to know what can be a reasonable expectation for your type of brand, you can study a competitor’s activity in your space to get some idea.

How to leverage impressions?

Because impressions are what get your brand or business noticed by your target demographic, they are worth enhancing. The more you appear in their newsfeed, the more exposure you have. While organic methods are important, you can also consider purchasing Instagram impressions from reputable firms to achieve your ultimate aim.

Do you have any doubts about this strategy? To enhance sales, you must employ genuine approaches. As a result, it can be a dependable instrument in your marketing arsenal. When you invest in impressions and reach, you are essentially working to improve your engagement and conversion rates. Furthermore, this exercise is crucial for moving your organic game forward.

In a rapidly growing space, you cannot wait for things to evolve at their pace. You have to decide their momentum. Ultimately, you see all the data and study and compare them to meet your business objective. If you don’t maneuver your actions, you may not enjoy the outcome as much as you had expected. And it can be due to the slow rate and delays.

In this context, you need to know that impressions can become better as your brand becomes bigger. Still, at every stage, there will be a need to push for a specific cause. Buying Insta impressions, reach, or engagement can come in handy in those situations. Don’t worry about the cost. Some credible third-party agencies offer a bulk of them for a tiny amount.

How To Create a LinkedIn Business Page

Businesses use a variety of social media networks, whether they are huge or small. LinkedIn is one of the most popular networks, where businesses can locate potential clients, recruiters can find excellent prospects for job openings, and everyone can network. Leverage this network directly by posting content or indirectly by using tools like the sales navigator to generate leads. You can also have a logo designed for your LinkedIn Business Page profile.

Start by Building your LinkedIn Company Page

You must have a corporate page, which you may create when you enter your profile. Click on Interests, then Companies, and finally Create from the navigation bar. On the create a company page, enter a valid email address and the name of your company.

Enter the Company’s Information

The second most important step is adding more information about your company. You should add information to your LinkedIn Business Page, such as the description and the name of your company, the URL of your site, address, specialties, the industry you are in as well as services or products offered.

Use the Right Phrases and Keywords

The use of phrases and keywords is important in LinkedIn. SEO on your page is as important as having a company logo. The phrases and keywords in LinkedIn should match those on your website.

Ensure You Add Visuals

A modern logo is important as it not only reminds people about your company, but it helps customers identify it with ease. You should add a normal and square logo to your LinkedIn profile. You can get a professional to design a logo for you or do it yourself by using an online free logo maker.

Add Specialties

Add more information about the services or the products that you offer. This is the perfect moment to talk about your best-selling or successful products and services. It is a good way to represent your company branding.

Add Career Information

The 6^th step is to add your career information. There is a section for careers where you can post job vacancies in your company. Although you can do this for free by adding the job description, you can add images and videos later but only when you upgrade to the Silver of Gold membership.

Let Your Employees Be Your Ambassadors

Once you use a logo maker to come up with your LinkedIn logo, you can link your company’s page with your employee’s profiles. They then become your ambassadors. You need to list yourself as their employer.

Make Your Employees to Be Administrators

For those employees that can add and edit content, you can make them the administrators. Choose the most ideal candidates who have proved they can abide by the rules, culture, and ethos of your company.

A logo maker helps you come up with a logo that best represents your company. When you have a logo, and you have successfully created your LinkedIn profile, you can add engaging content that is relevant and can be shared. When you use this social network properly, you will be surprised by how much your marketing campaign and promotions will be enhanced.

Create Your Own LinkedIn Business Page