How mid sized businesses can use Social Media to grow

Social media have provided businesses of all types and sizes with new opportunities to help their growth. That being said, it is the small and medium-sized businesses who can benefit the most from using social media to reach new customers, since this is an area where more resources and big budgets, which large companies have at their disposal, play a less significant role in their success. If you are looking for ways to grow your business at low costs, below are some suggestions on how you can use social media to achieve your goals.

Choose a network to focus on

First of all, you need to identify which social media networks are the most appropriate for your business and the goals you want to achieve, since all of them offer different ways to interact with your audience. So, instead of trying to be active on all networks, which may seem like a good idea, try to focus on one or two which will yield the best results in terms of boosting brand awareness, attracting customers, and increasing website traffic.

Although significantly different, Facebook and Instagram are two of the social media networks with the largest number of users, offering different options when it comes to marketing your company, which means they are a good place to start for virtually any business.

Raise brand awareness

In order to achieve success, your company needs to start building a strong brand identity and good brand awareness. That being said, social media provides you with options regarding different content you can post, in order to raise awareness and build name recognition among social media users. But how can you know if your posts are reaching the target audience, and whether they are effective? This is where tracking metrics comes into play. Social media metrics are basically indicators of how your social media marketing is performing. When it comes to raising brand awareness, some of the most important metrics are social media reach, brand mentions, and follower growth.

Social media reach represents the number of people who are reached by your posts, while brand mentions show you whether your company is being mentioned on social media, and how regularly. Reaching more people means more potential customers.

Finally, tracking the number of followers you attract can help you determine how effective your awareness-raising efforts are. When tracking follower growth, it is important to take note of the posts or other activities which resulted in the greatest growth in numbers, in order to be able to continue producing similar content or taking similar actions. If you want to take it a step further, consider consulting with a specialist advertising agency, to help you make the most of the options social media marketing offers.

Increase website traffic

The ultimate goal of sharing posts on social media is to attract followers to your website, where you can convert them into customers. Hence, you should use social media posts to inform users about the qualities of the products and services you offer, promote sales and post relevant content pertaining to your niche. Another way to attract potential customers is to post about good online reviews your business has received, or testimonials from people who were satisfied with your product and services. With a large number of companies offering their products online, most users rely heavily on reviews and personal recommendations when choosing where to buy.

An important thing to keep in mind when sharing links to your website is to take the customer to what they are looking for, instead of directing them to your home page and hoping they will browse your website by themselves. In order to understand the effectiveness of your posts in this sense, make sure you keep track of what type of posts attracted the most people to visit your website and, ideally, led to conversion. Pay attention to how the different time, content, and other properties of your posts reflect on their effectiveness in terms of website traffic and purchases.

Create a base of loyal customers

Small and mid-sized businesses rely on satisfied customers to spread the word about their products. Whether you are a local company or an online business, make sure your customers are able to reach you with their questions and concerns using social media networks. Answering their questions in the form of posts when possible will make them feel they contributed to the follower’s community and potentially provide answers to other potential customers with similar concerns. Additionally, addressing any issues they might have promptly will show your followers your company values their support and contribute to building a community of repeat customers.

Mid-sized companies can benefit a lot from using social media in their efforts to grow their business. With the decline in the effectiveness of traditional marketing methods, there has been significant growth in the number of businesses turning to social media to boost their marketing campaigns, due to the unique type of communication with the customers they enable. Are you making the most of what social media offers?