Promoting on Social Media

The winter weather can often make work a little quiet at this time of the year. Whilst we’d all always prefer to have a full diary, a little downing of the tools can actually open up opportunities for business growth.

If work is thin on the ground at the moment, why not take advantage of your spare time and promote your business on social media? You can network too and build a relationship with your customers.

Here’s some tips to get you kick started

If you’re not too familiar with social media for work, or networking as a whole, here are some tips to get you started:

Use social media to your advantage

• Simple and easy – It’s easy to get started using social media for business purposes. Most of us use social media in our day-to-day lives, so there’s a level of comfort with the tools. Just remember to try and keep your business and personal page separate, so customers know what you’re about. But that’s not to say you can’t fill your business page with ‘reality’; giving your business page personality will help create authenticity, which in turn will help build a following.
• It’s free – It doesn’t cost anything to create a business Facebook page, start posting on Instagram, or create a presence on Twitter. Just remember to keep your content relevant to your business and useful to your customers.
• Take great images – Don’t forget to take images of your projects and recent installs. Then post these on your socials, with a description that explains the customer journey and the product used. Think of it as a free online brochure to showcase your work.
• Evaluate – If you’re already using social media for work, now’s the time to take a step back and evaluate your existing efforts. Make sure to activate the business page tool on Instagram – that way you can see what posts perform the best.
• Keep social consistent and regular – This helps to build a following. Followers are attracted to good, regular content. Helpful customer tips go a long way to keep potential customers coming back to your pages, hopefully leading to a sale.
• Use LinkedIn – If you’re not confident in your image taking and not too comfortable posting images to Instagram and Facebook, then LinkedIn is a great alternative. It’s a more b2b sales focussed platform, where you can build your business offering via your personality. It’s a great b2b tool and an easy way to build a professional following.

Know your customers

• Different platforms – The average internet user has 8.4 social media accounts, so you can connect with them on different platforms for different purposes. For example, Pinterest and Instagram is great for inspiration, where Facebook and Twitter are ideal for more information-based content. But don’t feel like you have to sign up to all of them. Social media is free, but it can be quite taxing on your time when you’re updating lots of accounts with unique content.
• Identify your target customers – Who is your ideal customer? Identify your perfect customer and then tailor your content to that specific audience. That way you’ll attract customers who are more likely to convert to a sale.
• Build relationships – The unique benefit of social media marketing for small business is that it allows you to talk directly to customers and followers. You can build relationships over time, rather than asking for a sale upfront.
• Some useful stats – More than 44% of internet users use social networks to research brands. Part of that discovery is getting to know who you are as a brand and what you stand for.

Know your competitors

• Social inspiration – It’s one thing knowing your customers, but getting familiar with your competitors can help too. You can take inspiration from their posts – see what works for them and what doesn’t. While you don’t want to copy them, learning from what others have done is a great way to reduce your learning curve and give you ideas on content.
• Don’t be afraid to follow them – Engaging with competitor posts helps to build your profile. Their potential customers may not be sold on their offering, which gives you a chance to make your profile known.

We hope that gives you enough to get started on social media. It can be a little daunting at first, but once you get going with it, you’ll build confidence, and with that, build your social following! Good luck on your journey.