4 Steps to Generating Business Using Social Media
4 Steps to Generating Business Using Social Media
As a small business, using social media can be a daunting task. It requires you to determine which social channels to use, figure out how to use them, create and post content daily, engage and monitor these channels daily, analyze what’s working and what isn’t…and more.
It’s enough to make your head spin.
In fact, you might prefer to avoid using social media if you can.
You can’t. Not if you want to grow your business. Social media has pretty much replaced print-related advertising. You need social media in order to fill the top of your sales funnel.
There are 4 things you can do to get started.
1. Recognize Social Media is Essential for Business Growth
For the last several hundred years, print advertising was the only way to reach a widespread audience.
If you were a business, you used the telephone book, newspapers, magazines, and other physical places to place your ads.
But over the last two to three decades, digital advertising has been replacing print.
This is where social media steps in.
If you haven’t already, it’s time to embrace social media if you want to grow your business. Get into the dirt and do all the things you need to do to create effective digital marketing strategies that attract and engage your target audience using social media.
You can do this organically first without needing to use paid advertising by following the next three steps below.
2. Post on Social Media Consistently
As a small business, it can be easy to forget about posting for a day or two or more.
But when you do this, you’re working against the algorithms on the social platforms that favor consistency.
Social platforms like to reward people who use their platforms often. That means, when you post and engage on a social platform every day, your audience is much more likely to see your posts. When you post inconsistently, your audience is less likely to see your posts.
So, one of the most important things you can do, no matter which social platforms you’re using, is to post and engage daily to help build an audience organically.
3. Save Time by Reusing Content You’ve Already Created
One of the biggest, but preventable, barriers that keep businesses from daily posting is the million-dollar question:
What am I going to post about today?!
Guess what?
You don’t have to recreate the wheel. You don’t have to have a new idea or a different twist for every post you write. The human brain needs to hear a repeated message anywhere from 6 to 20 times before it remembers it.
Whew! That should take a lot of the pressure off. You can say the same message several times and it will still sound new to your audience.
You can repurpose content by:
- Taking a previous post that performed well and finding a different way of saying it again in the future.
- Taking a previous post that performed poorly and finding a different way of saying it to get better performance.
- Taking a longer form of content, breaking it up into smaller segments, and spreading it across your different social platforms.
- Trying different ways of presenting the content, like written form, video, images, or a combination.
Don’t worry about sounding like a broken record. No one will notice.
4. Building an Engaged Audience Takes Time
It can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to build the top of the funnel (where you’re casting a wide net) to see what works and what doesn’t.
How do you know when you’re doing something right on social media?
- Your audience is growing.
- The number of views on your posts is increasing.
- Reactions and comments on your posts are increasing.
- You might be receiving an increased number of direct messages.
If you’re not seeing these things, keep being consistent anyway and follow the social media cycle below.
The Social Media Cycle
STEP 1: Analyze
STEP 2: Experiment
STEP 3: Implement
STEP 4: Repeat
Keep rotating through this cycle and eventually you’ll start to see the positive returns social media can organically bring to your business without needing to use paid advertising.
4 Steps to Generating Business Using Social Media
4 Steps to Generating Business Using Social Media
As a small business, using social media can be a daunting task. It requires you to determine which social channels to use, figure out how to use them, create and post content daily, engage and monitor these channels daily, analyze what’s working and what isn’t…and more.
It’s enough to make your head spin.
In fact, you might prefer to avoid using social media if you can.
You can’t. Not if you want to grow your business. Social media has pretty much replaced print-related advertising. You need social media in order to fill the top of your sales funnel.
There are 4 things you can do to get started.
1. Recognize Social Media is Essential for Business Growth
For the last several hundred years, print advertising was the only way to reach a widespread audience.
If you were a business, you used the telephone book, newspapers, magazines, and other physical places to place your ads.
But over the last two to three decades, digital advertising has been replacing print.
This is where social media steps in.
If you haven’t already, it’s time to embrace social media if you want to grow your business. Get into the dirt and do all the things you need to do to create effective digital marketing strategies that attract and engage your target audience using social media.
You can do this organically first without needing to use paid advertising by following the next three steps below.
2. Post on Social Media Consistently
As a small business, it can be easy to forget about posting for a day or two or more.
But when you do this, you’re working against the algorithms on the social platforms that favor consistency.
Social platforms like to reward people who use their platforms often. That means, when you post and engage on a social platform every day, your audience is much more likely to see your posts. When you post inconsistently, your audience is less likely to see your posts.
So, one of the most important things you can do, no matter which social platforms you’re using, is to post and engage daily to help build an audience organically.
3. Save Time by Reusing Content You’ve Already Created
One of the biggest, but preventable, barriers that keep businesses from daily posting is the million-dollar question:
What am I going to post about today?!
Guess what?
You don’t have to recreate the wheel. You don’t have to have a new idea or a different twist for every post you write. The human brain needs to hear a repeated message anywhere from 6 to 20 times before it remembers it.
Whew! That should take a lot of the pressure off. You can say the same message several times and it will still sound new to your audience.
You can repurpose content by:
- Taking a previous post that performed well and finding a different way of saying it again in the future.
- Taking a previous post that performed poorly and finding a different way of saying it to get better performance.
- Taking a longer form of content, breaking it up into smaller segments, and spreading it across your different social platforms.
- Trying different ways of presenting the content, like written form, video, images, or a combination.
Don’t worry about sounding like a broken record. No one will notice.
4. Building an Engaged Audience Takes Time
It can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to build the top of the funnel (where you’re casting a wide net) to see what works and what doesn’t.
How do you know when you’re doing something right on social media?
- Your audience is growing.
- The number of views on your posts is increasing.
- Reactions and comments on your posts are increasing.
- You might be receiving an increased number of direct messages.
If you’re not seeing these things, keep being consistent anyway and follow the social media cycle below.
The Social Media Cycle
STEP 1: Analyze
STEP 2: Experiment
STEP 3: Implement
STEP 4: Repeat
Keep rotating through this cycle and eventually you’ll start to see the positive returns social media can organically bring to your business without needing to use paid advertising.
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