Recently, I was approached by Biz.Yourself, an awesome website, a hub for all things biz, to share my top social media tips with their readers. There are heaps of tips I could share, however I wanted to pick the ones that will make a real difference to any small business.
Here they are:
4 Top Social Media Tips to Skyrocket Your Business
One of the biggest challenges of starting a new business is how to get your word out and get customers. You can have the best business idea, the best product or service yet if you are unable to spread the word, your potential customers will not even know you exist. The chances are that you will give up on your business well before the customers will have an opportunity to get to know you.
Luckily with social media and other internet marketing tools, this task has become less daunting. If you don’t have a massive marketing budget, using social media to market your business is the way to get your word out to the masses, reach your target market and collect quality leads to turn them into customers.
While it sounds so easy, there are some ‘DOs and DON’Ts’ of social media marketing. To help you get on the right track, I prepared 4 most common mistakes people do with social media with a solution how to fix them.
#1 No Strategy
Like with anything else in business you need to think before you act. Not having a social media strategy will result in un-resourceful use of tools. This means wasting time using the wrong social media platform and not achieving any results.
How to fix this?
Think about your target market; who are your customers? Where and when do they ‘hang’; is it Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest etc? What is their behaviour? Once you getter information, create a strategy of your social media use.
#2 Too Many Social Media Accounts
I’ve seen it too many times; businesses trying to manage too many social media accounts yet they are nowhere truly present. This results in spending too much time with too little results and lots of frustration.
How to fix this?
If you’ve done your social media strategy you know where you customers are. Use one or two social media platforms regularly. This means your customers will get a chance to know you better, which will result in better relationship and a higher level of trust. And you want that because the quality of the relationship is what determines the sale.
On the other hand, using less social media platforms will free up heaps of your time that you can use to run your business to success.
#3 Ignoring Statistics
Yes, I know stats are boring. But unless you measure, analyse and test your marketing efforts, you will never know what works and what doesn’t. You might be wasting your energy and money on things that don’t work. Imagine how much more you could achieve, if you put more in to things that work. And unless you look at the stats you will never know.
How to fix this?
Make a weekly commitment in your diary to follow the stats of your social media. It’s actually rewarding when you see positive results and when you find out the formula that works for you.
#4 Not Collecting Leads
While collecting fans and followers is fun and it gets the word about your business out, the real value to your business are leads, which you can turn into customers. You need to figure out how to turn your fans and followers into customers. Otherwise, you are wasting your time.
How to fix this?
You need to get your fans/followers to subscribe to your emailing list. Once they are on your list, you have better chances to turn them into customers during your email marketing campaign.
To collect leads you will need to get an account with emailing service provider such as Aweber or Mail Chimp and then incorporate a sign-up form to social media account (where possible) or drive traffic to your website.
Connecting social media with email marketing is the key to your success online. A subscriber is a warm lead. While they might not be ready to buy from you as yet, they’ve expressed an interest in you and in what you are doing. Now is your turn to show them why they should become your customer.
Always post information that is relevant to your target market and be regular with your postings. A simple search online will give you heaps of common tips about how to use social media. These 4 tips are my top tips if you are serious about doing business with social media. If you follow them, you will have success and you will grow your client base.