You can’t make a business successful without proper marketing. Although there are many conventional and non-conventional marketing ways still in use, the rise of social media has started a whole new game.

If you are a business owner, disregard of it’s being online or offline, you can’t ignore the importance of social media.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other such platforms offer unique, powerful, and effective marketing opportunities for your business.

Almost all of us have a personal account on one or another social media platform, but if you want to use that for growing your business and boosting your income, you would need to explore it.

In this blog, I am going to discuss how you can start using social media for the benefit of your business from A to Z. Let’s do it.

What can you Achieve with Social Media Marketing?

Although an average person spends about 28% of his online time using social media, some people make social media marketing feel like something superficial and shallow.

This is not true though.

When you use these platforms with transparency and a sense of authenticity, you can accomplish a great lot for your business.

You can:

• Work on building a relationship with your community, and strengthen it
• Work on brand awareness
• Keep your customers, audience, and enthusiastic followers updated about your products
• Increase your website traffic by redirecting your audience to your website
• Generate leads

There is one more point – last but not least – you can provide value to your audience and establish your expertise in your field.

Which Social Media Platforms you can Use?

There are many social media sites that people use all around the world. Some platforms are more popular at a particular geographical location than others. If this is the case, such sites could not be as beneficial for a business that does not deal in that location as for the one that does.

Got my point?

However, there are some social media platforms that are popular equally among most parts of the world. In this section, I will discuss only those platforms.

The ones that can be beneficial for all businesses for marketing purposes – including yours.

Facebook:

I don’t think you were expecting another name here in the first place. Were you?

In the early 2000s, after launching Facebook, it almost vanquished all other social media platforms, held the crown, and still enjoys it.

Today, almost 15 years later, Facebook has become one of the most favorite marketing platforms of marketers and business owners.

In these years, Facebook has grown tremendously.

Your brand page on Facebook shows everything your customers need to know about your business.

They cannot only know your working hours, but they can also locate your business’s location on the map easily.

They can post reviews, read reviews by other customers, and keep themselves updated about your products and services in an engaging way.

This is not it.

Now, you can also add sublime CTAs to your page that helps you in achieving your social media marketing goals.

A lot of businesses focus entirely on Facebook. They invest all of their energy, budget, and efforts to this platform. And no doubt, it has boosted sales of many businesses and helped them in earning millions in a short time period.

However, after the last algorithm update, many businesses experience a decline in their posts’ reach, which obviously, decreased their revenue.

Nevertheless, you can combat this situation by playing your cards smartly.

A good strategy could be sharing content around your brand (post videos as well), engage your audience in meaningful discussions, and avoid sharing any outbound links for some time.

If you want to reach new customers quickly, you can always try Facebook Ads. Depending on your product, these ads are economical and can bring results for you quickly.

LinkedIn:

For marketing on LinkedIn, you should not only create your business page but create a personal one as well. As compared to Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms, most users on LinkedIn are professionals, and you can expect discussions with higher caliber there.

The best way to use LinkedIn for your business is to post content which is not only valuable for your peers, but for your potential customers as well. It should be engaging, thought-provoking, and contain some practical pieces of advice that can benefit others.

If you are in a B2B business, LinkedIn is one of the most important marketing platforms that can take your business to new heights.

On your page, introduce your business in a way that caters:

• People who are looking for your business
• People who don’t know anything about your business

At this point, you might be thinking that it seems fine to introduce your services or products to those who are looking for anything like what you do. However, what’s the point of introduction to those who have no idea what on the Earth your business is all about?

Well, here comes two possibilities.

• They might need your service/product but are unaware of that. With your content, you give them the awareness that they are in need of what you are offering.
• They might not need your product/service at the moment, but they could need it in the future. In this case, you would be in their mind, and they will automatically think of your business to get the product/service from.

You can also get benefit from this platform by running targeted paid ads – just like any other social media platform.

Twitter:

This platform has always its highs and lows as a marketing platform. Many people don’t even know that they can use Twitter to market their business.

Despite its fluctuating popularity, many businesses are using Twitter for years and enjoying success in their businesses.

However, marketing on Twitter is a bit different from that of Facebook. You can use this platform as an effective marketing tool if you use it to generate discussions that can ultimately benefit your business.

Many people don’t even try to get engaged with their audience.  All they do is to dump their links and blogs, complaining about its effectiveness as a marketing tool.

You can engage your audience by creating thought-provoking content, interesting polls, and posts with questions. This type of content helps you in getting comments, retweets, and responses.

Another effective way of engaging your audience is to chat with them in comments leading to a healthy discussion.

Instagram:

Instagram is a social media platform with increasing popularity with every single passing day. Although it is owned by Facebook, it has its own voice.

Unlike the above-discussed sites, Instagram is all about visuals. You can see stunning pictures and videos from various niches.

Most users on this platform are young, energetic, and fun-loving. This platform enjoys much higher engagement rates when compared to other social media platforms.

To use this platform effectively for your business, use all the available options there.

Create stories, interesting posts for newsfeed, encourage user-generated content, and above all, use #hashtags heavily but smartly in your posts to encourage discussion.

YouTube:

Who doesn’t know YouTube?

This largest video sharing platform has become a part of our daily lives.

YouTube is owned by Google and is almost as old as Facebook.

Many people think of it as a platform where they can watch cute videos of pandas, but did you know that it has grown in one of the best marketing platforms of all time?

You can use YouTube to boost your revenue by many folds if you know how to market on this platform correctly.

Like any other form of digital marketing, keywords play an important role in YouTube marketing. Use your keywords everywhere – in the title of your video, in its description, and in tags – to Rank your Videos Higher on YouTube.

The best way to promote your business on YouTube is to educate people through your videos. You can create how-to videos, tutorials, Q & A sessions, and other useful content.

In the above example, Neil Patel shares his experience and insight into digital marketing with his audience.

Like all other examples, you can run paid ads on this platform as well.

YouTube is often considered a mixture of social media platforms and content marketing.

However, while using this platform to market your business, always send traffic back to your website. In fact, this is a crucial part of marketing on YouTube.

How to Start Marketing on Social Media?

As we have discussed social media platforms for marketing your business, let’s see from where you should start all this.

Be Sure About your Goal:

This should be the first question you need to ask yourself.

Obviously, the ultimate goal of every business is to create value for its audience and generate revenue, you need to know what do you want to achieve with social media marketing.

Do you want to establish a smooth relationship with your audience?

Do your goal is to generate leads and nurture them?

Or do you want to find employees for your business?

Once you know your goal, you would design a strategy that will lead you directly there.

Pick the Social Media Platform you Want to Work On:

Although all social media sites could be useful for your business but remember, don’t start with all of them at once.

Remember slow and steady wins the race. Don’t you?

Choose one or two platforms to start your marketing and invest all your efforts in it. Once you are successful there, move forward to another platform.

Usually, people start on Facebook. However, the second one you choose depends on your business.

For example, if you own a B2B business, you would prefer LinkedIn over Instagram. Similarly, if you run a fashion clothing line for women, your preference would be Instagram instead of LinkedIn. Right?

Schedule your Content:

Plan your content ahead of time. Use a content calendar to keep yourself organized. It helps you in planning what type of content you want to share with your audience and prepare it in advance. This way you never miss an opportunity.

Use Curated Content:

There would be many influencers and businesses who are actually not your competitors. Follow them and keep sharing their content from time to time on various social media platforms.

Keep Monitoring:

Even after all the above four steps, your job isn’t finished yet. It’s time to keep an eye on your analytics to see what type of content your audience likes to engage with most.

Moreover, keep finding opportunities to get engaged with your audience. For instance, encourage them to ask questions, and then help them genuinely. This helps in relationship building and It is important as this is what social media is all about.

Conclusion

There are many other social media platforms as well that can be useful for your business, I have discussed the most used ones though.

No matter which platform you are using, make sure you build a community that helps and supports each other.

Have you decided on which social media platform you are going to start your social media marketing journey?