How to Market Your Business on Social Media

While there are many ways to market your business, social media is one of the most effective. However, for those that aren't savvy on socials, it can be difficult to know exactly where to start.

Whether you're favouring Facebook, tickled by Twitter, or interested in Instagram, our guide on how to market your business on social media, will help you give a good impression, engage current customers and reel in potential patrons.

Why is social media important for business marketing?

Social media is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. It allows you to affordably connect with potential and current customers, build relationships, and create brand awareness. These platforms are also great places to share content that can help educate your audience about your business and what you have to offer.

Social media also allows you to make your business more relatable, as it provides the opportunity to share your business’s personality and tone of voice freely.

If potential customers like what they see on your social accounts, there’s a good chance they'll visit your website to find out more.

But how do you get started? Don't slide into DMs asking for help, simply read below to see our best bits of advice, on how to market your business on social media.

Research and plan

Learning how to use social media to grow your business effectively, will always require time, but much less so if you know exactly where you want your business to go.

The biggest mistake you can make when using social media for business is not having a plan, since simply building up your follower count may achieve little or nothing.

Discerning what you actually want to accomplish and realising how social media can be used to help you to do this, is essential. Your objectives may be anything from wanting to create brand awareness, increasing website traffic or generating leads through your social sites. 

Once you have a good understanding of your goals, it becomes much easier to devise a plan on how best to go about achieving them.

Is this the right platform?

The second step to success is choosing which platforms will work best for your brand.  While Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter are often considered the must have social media accounts for business, the effectiveness of these platforms is really dependent on the intricacies of your brand.

Researching where your target audience spends most of their time online will help you identify the right networks, and you can do this by looking at your competitor’s social media activity or asking your customers directly. It also helps to explore each platform’s features and how these match up with your business aims.

Create a calendar 

How often should a business post on social media? Is daily doing it right, or is it weekly for the win?

While there isn't a definitive answer to the question, since the number of shared posts depends on your business goals and target audience, creating a social media calendar can help outline how frequently you post on your chosen platforms.

That said, the best answer for profitable posting is being consistent.

According to research, brands that post frequently are more likely to achieve higher levels of engagement, as this keeps your business buoyant in their minds.

While it is important to trial what works best for your business, try not to post more than once a day, as it may have an adverse effect on engagement performance.

We suggest you set aside a regular time each day to manage your business' social accounts. However, if you find social media management monotonous, you can use tools like Hootsuite that schedule and post for you.

Sharing is caring

Creating high quality, engaging and informative content makes people want to share it, and as a result, is one of the best ways to market your business on social media.

Whether it's raffles and competitions or insightful industry-related articles, producing 'shareable' content can help you attract customers/followers, generate leads and encourage website visitors to stick around a little longer.

Most importantly, shareability exposes your brand or business to entirely new and out of reach audiences, helping not only to achieve your business goals but also to drive brand awareness and increase website traffic.

Watch your tone 

We recommended you have a single person manage your social media accounts.  Consistency is key, and it’s important to maintain a unified voice. You should avoid overusing emojis, acronyms or abbreviations in your posts – essentially, if you wouldn’t say it out loud, don't write it on social media either.

Most importantly, regardless of your brand tone, you should never post anything that could be considered offensive across your social media. Be sure to always proofread your posts before hitting publish, as a posting faux pas can cost your brand its reputation.

Go for engagement

Engagement celebrates the marriage of two important features that can significantly boost your business, comment and share.

Since the majority of your accounts' engagement performance comes from people commenting about or sharing your posts, you should create content that directly encourages this.

Ask questions to start a conversation, always use images for added impact, and track any mentions of your business and products, and any reactions to your posts.

Replying appropriately to direct comments and mentions will help improve your audience's brand experience.

Don't over-sell

The occasional promotional post is perfect, but too much obvious selling will deter potential customers. 

To avoid this, consider introducing an informal limit - for example, one in six posts, and make sure to mix it up with other types of content, such as behind-the-scenes peeks, funny or interesting images and stories, or data-driven posts.

Video content for the win

Considering video content gets 21.2% more engagement compared to images globally, it can benefit your business to add more dynamic content to your social media accounts [1].

It's important to make sure your videos are high quality and intriguing enough to hold people's attention; after all, you only have a few precious seconds (or minutes) to capture their interest.

If you're posting longer videos, using loop features can be beneficial, it's helpful to use a snapshot of the finished product/end scenes of the video as your thumbnail, so potential customers remain captivated for the duration of the post.

Build a community

Customer service is one of the most effective ways to humanise your brand and create loyalty among customers, and so should be a high priority for any high street or online business. And that's no different when it comes to social media.

When you're responsive to comments and questions, it shows that you care about your customers' experience with your company. It also gives you the opportunity to start a conversation with potential and current customers.

You should also make sure you're monitoring your social media accounts for any questions or complaints, and have a plan in place for how you'll deal with them. Resolving issues quickly and considerately can be the difference between your business holding a good reputation.

Improve your website

Many of your posts will link to your website. Make sure you have compelling product pages and useful content that your audience will respond to.

For example, create a landing page targeting your general audience and then another one targeted at your most engaged followers.

Your website can also leverage the power of social media by including share buttons on all pages to make it easy for visitors to share content with others.

Consider advertising

While the majority of social media sites currently use algorithms that grant greater visibility to higher-performing pages, paying a small cost for affordable ensures your business is seen and can fast-track you to reaching your target audience.

Share social media management with a reliable EPOS system

By choosing the right customer relationship management software for your small business, you can turn your attention to other areas of your business, like operational efficiency and finance. Let your electronic point of sale (EPOS) system handle things like sales trends, customer profiles, and loyalty programmes. Epos Now offers state-of-the-art EPOS systems for hospitality and retail businesses. We let you choose the tools and insights to help your business achieve its goals.

With Epos Now, you can:

• Create personalised email communications using set templates
• Schedule emails and SMS messages to be sent at the most impactful time of day
• Review analytics on engagement with your website and outreach 
• Save customer contact details and shopping preferences for more targeted marketing on our CRM system
• Integrate with the business automation apps that are right for your business

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