The year is 2024 and social media is not only the new wave but a regular staple in many people's lives that we all should be pretty sure is here to stay in one form or another.
Despite what many might think, social media is not only for people to share pictures of their cats, every meal they eat and their feelings with the world, but it is also an extremely strong tool for businesses and it is often overlooked or thought to be unnecessary.
It is imperative that your business have a good online social media presence and properly targeted interaction on the platforms that are relevant to your business. Obviously, the amount of effort and activity you need to regularly put into your social media presence depends on the type of business you have. For some, the bare minimum of having an account, good reviews, recent and frequent, good quality activity, might just be enough.
But not being present at all is just not an option in today's day and age if you hope to be able to reach larger levels of growth and stand out against the competition.
Are you not sure where to start? Do you need to upgrade your current status? Let us help with your social media marketing and/or keep reading for some great tips!
Social media summary
The internet is an ever-expanding online ecosystem with everything to offer from shopping, entertainment to food delivery. All made possible by some simple TCP/IP protocols built on the world wide web. Even with all the rapidly growing options on the internet, the vast majority of people tend to spend most of their time on only a few dozen websites. Those websites predominantly being, you guessed it, social media platforms.
So what does this mean and what does it have to do with your business? Well for one, when you are advertising, you want to be out and displayed where people are spending the majority of their attention. The super bowl is a perfect example. Why do the thirty-second super bowl ads cost so much? Because everyone knows there will be a massive amount of attention and eyes on the televisions at that time their ad will be displayed. Not to mention the way the commercials that are run have turned into almost an event in and of itself. Hence the four million dollar price tag for a thirty-second video advertisement.
Even if you have no plans on advertising on social media, it is still vital that your business establishes a solid presence on the relevant platforms where your target audience can be found. Keep reading below to find out more!
Why is social media important for businesses?
Think of social media as an interactive billboard on the information superhighway. If there was one major road into the town where your business is located, wouldn't you want a billboard somewhere along that road? Now imagine as they are taking that road into town, they drive closer and closer to town down that road. While they are driving they get to see not only your billboard but all of the pictures, posts, reviews, options and services your business has to offer. Let’s not also forget or downplay the fact that as soon as they see this virtual billboard they can press a button to contact you directly, book an appointment, order/buy, and so much more! The possibilities are endless.
One recent realization was the fact that people will start their search on social media while looking for a company to buy from or hire, as a search engine. If they don’t start their search on social media, they will usually use it as a directory, looking for validation of legitimacy, company history and to get a general feel for the business and what it has to offer. Some might use this as practice themselves but do not even realize it.
So if generally, the majority of the population uses some form of social media for personal use, or as a search engine and as a way to gauge a businesses legitimacy, it should go without reason that developing a strong presence on social media is very important for any business in today's age. There are many ways in which social media can benefit your business. Engagement is just one example. Engagement, in this context, means interactions with your business pages on social media with the public. The more interactions you have, the more likely you are to have loyal followers. Loyal followers mean higher conversion rates on your products or services when you advertise them.
You can also use it to increase the size of your advertising budgets, and promote your product or service to a broader audience. Promotion on Instagram, Pinterest, etc., are great ways to promote your business to wider audiences in a personal and authentic way. You can share your business values in images and use videos to promote your products/services. It’s a great way to keep your loyal customers updated on your business and grow your overall client base as well.
Creating, maintaining and improving your social media presence
Creating and claiming your social media accounts for your business is very important. That social media page is real estate. Make sure to claim your @ tags and your accounts on as many relevant platforms as you can at once. Securing your pages is even recommended before you have a logo. Once you have a name and want to move forward. Grab that virtual real estate!
Maintaining your social media account can be really easy, or very time-consuming. It depends on what level of activity you need to establish your business and grow. No matter what you will always need high-quality content, fairly frequent, and your latest post is always recent. That is the bare minimum for any business. That is more suited for a small lawn care company or something of that nature. It just shows you do good work, you care about how your business looks to potential clients and that you are currently open for business and ready to rock n rollin’! A restaurant or an eCommerce store will obviously need more attention and more frequent posts. Figure out what will work best for your company and do it. If you need help, we are always one call, text, message or email away!
Now let's say you get your social media set up, you are running it to meet your business needs but you want to see some REAL returns and increase your profits. What do you do? The truth is the possibilities are endless. And this is where we at White Hat Web Solutions get really excited! We love to get creative and use the business’s strengths to help make it stand out. Creative social media marketing solutions are some of our favorite projects!
But we get it, you want to try it for yourself. So what can you do without calling anyone? You can create your own little targeted marketing strategy. Research the competition, create advertising packages, target audience research, increase content output, employ targeted advertisement strategies and make sure you have a way to catch the influx of interest!
What are presence and interaction?
Social media has recently transformed the way companies interact with their customers. The customer can now directly interact with you instead of having to go through email or a phone call. The social platform, with all its bells and whistles, gives the customers the power to connect with you on your level. They can simply take a picture, post it and engage with other users.
With the use of tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and many more, they can communicate, ask questions, provide feedback, update news, respond to the questions they receive, and so much more. This is why it is imperative that your business establish a solid active presence on social media. It is a stand-alone billboard that has so many possibilities and advertises for your company for free while bringing attention to what you have to offer.
Interaction is the engagement you receive on your pages from visitors. Why is this important? Engagement on social media means that you will show up above others in the same area or category. If you are pumping out regular high-quality posts and receiving lots of comments, likes, shares, etc., then the platform's algorithm will start to suggest and display your page and content more often.
After all, that is why social media is free, they want to capture people's attention, and advertise to them. So if you are putting out content that is getting people's attention and getting them to interact, you will be more likely to come up closer to the top list of businesses when searched.
Why is it important to have a good presence and interaction?
This is what your clients want. They are looking for something fresh and new. Do you know why? Because they are bored and they need something new. They need results and growth. But, there are many questions you need to ask yourself. First, how is your brand different from the other competitors? Second, how is your business different from other industries? Third, how do you set yourself apart and stand out from the competition in all related industries?
If you know about your competitors, you can easily create a target audience in your industry. You can market your brand better. If you don’t know about your competitors, you have to start from scratch. You at least have an industry in which you can shape your plan around. What do you have to offer the industry? What sets you apart? How does your product work? You have to do some research before you take the first step.
Once that research is done, you have created your presence and started to work on interaction, now is when potential customers start to see you. They see what glowing reviews you have, what great work you do, it is important because never before have you been able to reach customers, have them reach you or put such a positive first impression on them (if you're doing it right) before they even contact you. That sounds pretty important to us, what about you?
Conclusion
Effective social media marketing strategies for small business owners are not about how much you spend, but rather how effective you are in your content creation, overall presence and your interaction with potential customers. Even for professionals, social media can be trial and error until they get something to work. The trick is how good they are at figuring out exactly where you need to be and how you need to be there in the shortest amount of time.
Can you start and run a business without any social media presence at all? Depending on the kind of business and what your product/service is. The problem is not starting and running a business without any social media presence, the problem is growing and scaling the business without using a good social media presence as the valuable tool that it is.
Many people might have a great product they are trying to sell, but very often go nowhere or do anything with it because they lack the proper vision, direction, strategy and execution. They got to pick their favorite character, but they suck at playing the video game. The same could go for services as well. You could be great at your craft but if you can’t bring awareness to your business and get some paying clients, you might be doomed for failure.
White Hat Web Solutions prides itself on treating your business and goals as if they were our own. Creative marketing strategies are one of our specialties, and as we said before, some of our favorite projects to work on. We offer solutions for any business’s needs, at affordable prices to fit any budget. We always guarantee high-quality work and customer satisfaction. We want to help you grow, contact us today!