Social Media for Business: How to Bring In New Clients
Social media is a fickle friend. Some days you do really well, engagement is high, and people are loving your post. Then other days it feels like a flop, no one wants to hang out with you, and people don’t seem to care about what you have to say. How can you, as a business owner, combat this? How can social media become a huge part of your business strategy to bring in more clients and ultimately more revenue? There are a few ways to become a social media rockstar when it comes to your business, and all of them are easy to integrate into your business today.
Making Social Media Goals
When you’re starting out on social media it can be about connecting with friends and family. But when you use social media for your business, it’s about connecting with current and future clients. You’re going to want to set up a game plan for your social media accounts and be clear about your goals. Whether that’s to gain four new clients from social media in a month or to grow your group on Facebook to over 1K members in three months, be clear on what your goals are.
There are a ton of social media platforms, and there are even more ways to use all of them. After deciding what your goals are, figure out which platforms you want to use. It’s best to choose based on where your ideal clients are already at and active. If your ideal client is on Facebook, be sure to add that to the list of platforms you want to use. If your ideal client is on Twitter, focus on Twitter. It’s okay to have more than one social media platform to engage on, especially if your clientele is a large group of people.
Always be Authentic on Social Media
Being authentic is a major key in social media. Potential clients and onlookers to your brand can spot when you are being authentic, and when you are not being so authentic right away. People are smarter than ever and want someone they can trust and someone they feel connected to. Choose social media platforms where you feel comfortable, and where you can be genuine to others.
If you do choose to use multiple social media platforms, make goals for each one. It will help your engagement and ability to be found on each, and in turn, will bring more clients through the doors of your business. Let’s say your business really talks about the joys of being able to work from anywhere in the world, all of the content you put on social media will be about that core topic, but the way it’s presented will look different for each platform. Instagram might show off what the freedom lifestyle looks like as you travel from place to place each month. Facebook might be showing people your latest adventure and how they can achieve the freedom lifestyle too. Twitter is where you might bring snippets of your day to people to show them the best of the freedom lifestyle. Lastly, LinkedIn might be where you are an expert on living the freedom lifestyle and talk about how it’s changed your business.
With all posts, be genuine in what you are saying. Put out unique content that no one is talking about yet. If you’re struggling to create new content for all of your social media platforms, repurpose old content. Change it up based on the environment of the platform, but your core message will always be the same!
Be Consistent on Social Media
Once you make your goals for social media and decide what platforms you are going to use, be present and consistent. The more that people see and interact with you, the more they are going to trust you. Set a goal for how often you want to post and where you want to post. Add this to your weekly calendar so you don’t forget and you let social media become something you do when you feel like it. Prioritize the platforms where your main audience already is, and then where you want them to be. If you want people to interact with you on Instagram but your main audience is already on Facebook, post on both, and even mention your social handles where people can follow you on multiple platforms.
Planning out social media posts and setting goals is great for your business, but it can also be overwhelming to post on multiple platforms multiple times a week. That’s where content planning comes in. Using a social media content publisher can make sure that you are not overwhelmed, and you are not taking more time than needed on social media. There are a few ways to pre-plan your content. One is with a content planning app, where you would insert the post and schedule, and your content will automatically go to the platform. Another way is to pre-plan your content in the drafts area of each platform, so all you have to do is hit publish each time you want new information up for your audience.
Connect with Your Audience
With planning out your content you should also plan out time to connect with your audience by answering comments and messages from them on social media. A general rule is to spend four to six hours a week planning and engaging on social media. Connecting with your audience is the whole point of social media, so be sure to spend time each week doing this.
When it comes to social media it doesn’t have to be hard, and it definitely doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With a few easy steps and a few hours each week, social media can be the one place where you can advertise and grow your business with minimal effort.
