Growing Your Social Media Audience

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A brand’s social media presence is the visibility it has on social media platforms and the connection it builds with its community. The stronger the presence, the more trust the brand can build with its audience before developing a direct relationship beyond this marketing channel.

The presence of a brand on social media does not rely on a single metric. However, a high engagement rate, growing brand awareness, and a positive brand perception can all be results of a strong social media presence.

Krystal Wu, social media community manager at HubSpot, explains that visibility and presence are two different things. Being present means participating in the conversation and engaging with others. If people are not aware that you are participating, your engagement will have little value.

“A social media channel has no presence if there is no audience who values it. Use social media to listen, monitor, and analyze your audience’s behavior,” said Wu. “That information will allow you to gain consumer feedback, improve new or existing relationships, and expand your brand’s social presence.”

Having a strong presence does not necessarily mean that you are successful. Resonance is what matters.

Importance of Social Media Presence

If you want to have a successful social media presence, you need to create content that is tailored to the interests and needs of your target audience.

Building trust with your audience is essential if you want to convert them into paying customers.

Being active on social media gives you a better understanding of your audience.

“While there are a ton of growth ‘hacks’ to boost a brand’s social presence, I think the greatest value goes back to knowing your audience,” said Ariel Boswell, social media analyst at HubSpot. “The ability to know your audience so deeply to where you understand what captivates their attention and pair that with content that provides value at that moment is a recipe for success.”

Building relationships with members of your community gets you closer to understanding what they need, so you can provide them with a product or service that meets that need.

How To Increase Social Media Presence

Engage Your Audience

After publishing a post on social media, you can quickly gauge your audience’s reaction and learn something new.

You can connect with your followers on a deeper level by creating opportunities for them to participate in discussions, quizzes, polls, and live videos.

You can learn a lot about your audience by doing things like this, which will help you create campaigns that are more likely to be successful.

Manage Your Community

If you don’t manage your social media account, it’s like having a car that’s always close to running out of gas. You won’t get very far.

Community management drives a brand’s growth, image, and social success, says Wu. It’s fundamental to building a social media presence.

“Being proactive by reaching out to other brands, fans, customers, and followers in similar industries helps build that community around your brand,” said Wu. “People start to recognize the name, the types of conversations that brand is having and its level of knowledge in that specific market.”

This part of social media management entails being proactive and looking for conversations that will attract viewers.

It’s like going to a party. You have to talk to people and make friends.

“Without doing these proactive pushes, just putting a brand on social and not tying in the community efforts won’t get it very far,” Wu added. “Community management is the center of the customer journey, like the flywheel model, crafting the relationship between the brand and customer.”

Stay Active and Be Consistent

Ever scroll past a brand and do a double take because you forgot they existed? No brand wants that reaction.

Brands need to be visible on social media to stay relevant. It’s easy to forget about a brand if it’s not active on social media, so companies need to post regularly to stay top of mind.

Many brands start out posting frequently, but then taper off until they are only posting every once in a while.

“Success doesn’t usually happen on your first, second, or even third try. Social media is playing the long game and once brands realize that it doesn’t usually blow up overnight, that’s when consistency comes into play,” said Wu. “In social, you need to test, experiment, analyze, and even take risks to learn what strategy your brand should move forward with to connect and build an audience.”

If you find that you’re running out of content or ideas, it may help to post less often, and to focus on fewer platforms. It can also be helpful to plan your content a month or more in advance, and to have your creative assets ready, so that you’re never left scrambling.

Understand That It’s a Long Game

Many of the errors companies make on social media are due to their haste in trying to expand their audience.

You might get impatient and try to find shortcuts to generate results quickly by using get-rich-quick schemes. However, these strategies will only help you on the surface and not in the long run.

Although you may initially think that they will help you to achieve your goals and connect with your audience, you will eventually realize that this is not the case.

“Don’t take the ‘easy’ way out by paying for views and followers,” Wu said, “because you’ll eventually run into a wall where you have this audience but no engagement, no one converting or signing up for your content.”

Building a sustainable presence organically, through real data from your target audience, is the most effective way to grow. This approach allows you to better serve your audience by tailoring your methods to their needs.

Stick To Your Brand Voice and Aesthetic

Your brand should be consistent across all platforms. This means using the same colors, fonts, and language.

Your brand identity should be consistent across all marketing channels in order to avoid confusion for consumers. An inconsistent brand identity makes it difficult for your audience to connect with your company.

Make sure your brand strategy aligns with your social media strategy.

How to Use Social Media for Business

These are some of the aspects of business that can benefit from a social media presence:

  • Marketing
  • Customer service
  • Sales
  • Recruiting and hiring
  • Crisis management

Use Social Media for Marketing

When you incorporate an effective social media presence into your small business marketing plan, you can reach customers and prospects where they are. Here are some tips and best practices for creating a successful presence on social media to market your brand:

  • Craft a social media marketing strategy. The best way to ensure success on social media is to go in with a plan. This means devising a social media marketing strategy that includes each platform you plan to use. 
  • Post consistently. Your followers value a steady presence, so follow a consistent posting schedule. While being consistent, avoid posting too much, which can be off-putting for your followers.
  • Develop a clear voice. Create a consistent voice and tone in your social media presence – one that resonates with your audience and influences how they see your brand. Listen to your audience and find ways to relate to them without looking like you’re trying too hard. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to show a little personality. This helps present your business as adaptive, friendly, and relevant.
  • Have fun with social media. Provide fun ways to generate more leads and engage with your customers, like running social media contests, linking to your website or special offers in your profile bio, and hosting live videos with exciting updates or news.
  • Know your audience. Use your analytics tools to see demographic information, customer behavior, and social media trends to inform your content. Knowing what your audience wants to see from you and responding accordingly can go a long way toward boosting your engagement rates.

Use Social Media for Customer Service

Since many customers already use social media to communicate, it makes sense to use it for customer service as well. Social media communication can help you address customer problems quickly and efficiently, leading to a loyal customer base.

  • Respond to customer issues quickly. Many businesses approach social media as another channel for self-promotion and don’t always respond when customers comment on their posts or tweet at them. According to research from Convince & Convert, 42% of consumers expect a response to a complaint on social media within 60 minutes, and nearly one-third expect a response within half an hour. Monitoring social media channels and responding to concerns promptly can help you build strong relationships with customers.
  • Use hashtags strategically. How hashtags operate within a social media platform’s algorithm is likely to change frequently, so stay updated on your social platforms’ hashtag recommendations and best practices. Hashtags help keep topics organized and easy to navigate, especially on platforms like Twitter. You can also add more information and curate content to your hashtags.
  • Take public conversations private. Many angry or frustrated customers leave public comments on a brand’s Instagram and Facebook accounts or tweet at a business. While you shouldn’t ignore these messages, it’s not always wise to handle the entire encounter publicly. Show other customers that you value their input and time by sending an initial response requesting to continue the conversation privately.

Use Social Media for Sales

One of the most direct and lucrative ways to experience the power of social media is through increased sales. You can boost sales on social media in various ways:

  • Advertise on social media. The major social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have advertising platforms that help you reach your target audience and monitor your ad campaigns.
  • Sell on social media. Facebook and Instagram offer sales platforms and shoppable posts that make it easy for businesses to start selling online.
  • Work with brand ambassadors. Finding social media influencers or enthusiastic customers to act as brand ambassadors is an effective way to boost word-of-mouth buzz about your business and boost sales.
  • Improve your business with social listening. Social listening is a process in which organizations take a macro view of what customers are saying online about the brand and use the information to improve the business. Social listening provides a broader view of industry trends and customer sentiment that may directly or indirectly impact a brand and its sales.  

Use Social Media for Recruiting and Hiring

Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are excellent ways to recruit potential talent in the modern hiring process. Social media recruiting through these sites allows employers to access a broad candidate pool and efficiently sort through viable recruits.

A business’s social media platforms are very important for recruitment. People who are looking for jobs are more likely to be interested in working for a company whose social media platforms show that the company has a strong brand and shares the same values as the potential employee.

Use Social Media for Crisis Management

What did you post to your business’s social media in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings? Whether you chose to send a heartfelt message or stay silent for the week, you were probably unsure of the best way to proceed given the tragedy.

There is no single book of etiquette that provides guidance on how businesses should use social media to react to tragic events. However, there are several schools of thought on the matter.

Here are some tips for using social media during a crisis:

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.

You should usually avoid being silent in a tragic situation.

Keep a social media strategy close at hand so you will be less surprised and more prepared for a crisis.

Choose your words wisely and always speak from your heart.

If you hear about a tragic event, check your calendar and don’t post anything that isn’t essential.

Look for ways your business can meaningfully help.

 

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