What Should Be Your Social Media Strategy For A New Online Business?
Owning and running an entirely new business is quite challenging. That’s especially true for those who are not aware of the social media marketing. The social media world is quite vast. Every day there are dozens of new platforms gaining momentum in the digital marketplace.
Surviving for new businesses without a strong plan is quite tough, if not impossible. Strategists and digital marketers have to follow certain criteria to drive necessary results for their online business.
With the most organized and effective efforts, you, as the business owner and manager, can rank your site at the top. However, you must have clarity and patience. There are shortcuts. Nowadays, your target audience is smart and not as easily persuaded.
They are already exposed to popular marketing strategies; many of them are using those plans themselves to be content creators and whatnot. Below are reliable digital marketing strategies that you should follow for you to achieve you business goals.
Set Up Your Company Profile on Different Social Media Platforms
Plan the exact information needed for each social media platform you want to experiment with. That can be done with steps like these:
Be Informed About the Top Social Media Platforms
As mentioned earlier, the internet never has a shortage of social media portals. But, it’s impossible to create an account on each one of them. To make the most use of the available time and resources, the best step is to know which are the core social media platforms. For instance, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Quora are the best to generate traffic for your new online business website. Whereas, platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram Reels, and others are best for fast reach and video content exposure.
Know Which Social Media Platforms Your Target Audience Uses
You cannot find your target audience on every platform. They are typically loyal to one or two platforms at most. Research, find and pick those. It can be done through a detailed market survey or study. Otherwise, you can hire digital marketers who already know which platform has your subset of customers or viewers for your new online business to influence.
Know Which Platforms Are Easiest to Target
Social media portals like Instagram and Facebook can be difficult. That’s because the audience there is already educated enough. Many of them are already content creators, influencers, business owners, and entrepreneurs. If you are offering something innovative, but nothing new in the market, you have to find less penetrated social media websites or platforms. There, the audience will likely be less educated or knowledgeable. Otherwise, if you have a strong marketing technique and strategy, you can always make your new businesses trend on the most influential websites like Instagram and Facebook.
Establish a Genuine Corporate Website
There are steps you must follow to own a website—the digital address of your business for newcomers and new traffic.
Set A Budget
Don’t invest in service providers without knowing how much you can spend. This is the most important step. Having a predefined budget will narrow down your choices and help to decide which website developer works best for you.
Consult Website Developers
Talk to the website developers in your reach – consulting with developers will give you a better idea of their design capabilities so you can decide what works best for your needs. It’s a vital step which you have to follow. After multiple consultations, you can decide on a developer who knows how to rank your business rapidly and with full credibility. This will also be limited by your budget.
Choose a Website Design That Is Creative, Effective, Responsive, and Interactive
Each page on your website must be clearly in line with your business vision, mission, and short-term goals. But that’s not done without creating an interactive, responsive, creative, and unique website design. Whenever a customer or viewer visits your site, they should feel inclined to keep browsing. This can only be accomplished with by standing out from your competitors.
Inform Your Social Media Circle About The Launch
After launching your site, you need to promote it to your immediate social circle. These will be the first people to interact with your website and share with their close friends and family. This will initiate ‘word-of-mouth’ sharing and help to grow your website views.
Design Trendy, Interactive, and Relatable Content
Once you have a website and social media profiles, the next trick is to create content. This can be done through:
Infographics with Stickers to Create an Everlasting Impression
The advantage of a new online business is that they have a fresh start and gives you the opportunity to establish your online reputation. There are no negative impressions in the customer’s mind. To establish a fun and memorable brand, you can create a sticker and use them in infographics. By doing this consistently, viewers will be able to recognize your brand.
Memes Expressing Mood, Culture, and Relevant Information to the Target Audience
Memes are the most popular way to pass on brand values, messaging, and identity to those who matter the most. With memes, you can increase engagement on your pages. You can set the mood and inform your viewers. In brief, highly engaging memes are a positive sign of the customer’s productive mindset about your brand.
Hashtags for Better Reach and Exposure
Social media strategies are incomplete without the use of hashtags. You have to know which social media platform allows how many hashtags at once. These hashtags are the way to target the customer who would be most interested in your product. Use a combination of trending, unknowing, personalized hashtags on your social media posts. You can even begin a new challenge using these hashtags. Then, you will know how many of your viewers are really influenced by the hashtag you created. A new and trending hashtag can become the identity of your new online business. So, be cautious about the hashtags you choose.
Schedule Your Social Media Posts
Sitting online all day is of no use. There is a specific time and manner to post your content online. When you follow that, your new company will grow as a brand in no time.
Utilize Popular Content Management Tools
Make the most use of online content management tools. Without them, it’s practically impossible to handle all of the social media platforms. These tools allow you to sync all your social media platform IDs at one place. You can also write and keep the post in the funnel. Then, set a timer. This way, you remove the burden of being online each time you want a post to go live and your posts still go to your social media platforms at your preferred time.
Know When Your Target Audience Is Most Active Online
Scheduling content is a waste when you don’t understand and consider the right time for your target customers or viewers to be online. For this, take help from social media tools or experts. They often know when is the most useful time to be online and publish a post. Otherwise, every social media business or public account has the feature of built-in insights. Read and understand these insights. You will automatically know the best time to publish content and get the maximum reach for your new online business.
Be Consistent!
It takes time for your brand and business to be retained in your target audience’s mind. You must be patient and consistent – as many businesses and online digital marketers say, persistence is the real key to earn value. When you schedule your content, it has to be regular. If you are irregular, the customer will lose sight of your brand. For them to become loyal, they have to know that you are not going to vanish—that your business is open.
Set Up A Content Calendar
To be sure your posts are consistent and clear, you should set up a content calendar. With this calendar, your business never falls short or misses the opportunity to share important content. For this, you can brainstorm ideas with your team. If you have never made any content calendar, try setting it up for a few days or weeks. When you master it, you can move on to make a content calendar for an entire year!
Participate in Contests, Live Sessions & Webinars
This is the part that is highly creative and considered less profitable by larger, matured companies. However, new online companies or businesses can use webinars, live sessions, or innovative contests to attract new customers. This is a new chance to make a space in the digital market space. Often, while participating in these events, you get new leads, deals, and increase your network. This is necessary so you can communicate your business value and offerings to the target customers.
Address Your Customers’ Questions
As you are new, you have to create an impression in your customer’s mind that will compel them to come back. One such technique online to follow on different social media portals is to be highly responsive. Customers would love to choose those brands which are easily available, accessible, and definitely answerable. Thus, your target customer must get each of their answers ready from your end. For this, you have to brainstorm the possible questions your customer can have in their mind. You will also take help from social media account managers who handle the correct response time.
Try Video Marketing
When it comes to ranking your new online business as soon as possible, video content works the best on social media platforms. You must make the most use of it. Try innovative, effective, and relatable video ads. For that, you must know what the current mindset of your targeted set of customers is. You can easily make short clips, reels, and long videos to impress and engage a different set of audiences who would end up buying your products/services in the long run.
Study Your Competitors And Keep An Eye On Their Strategies
One of the effective ways is to conduct a SWOT analysis of your competitors. But that
should be in the parameters of their online behavior. Know how many posts do they
publish, what is their response time, how often do they appear online, and how often do
they create any event for their regular or new customers. Knowing such things as a new business owner online will give a lot of insights about the social media strategies which even the experts might fail to gauge on your behalf.
Be Quick to Follow New Market Trends
Let’s be honest and genuine here. You cannot simply depend on a single social media strategy for the entire year. You have to be quick and adaptive. There can be any news, event, or situation that goes viral at any given point of time. For instance, nobody would have imagined the pandemic and lockdown would lead to a worldwide recession this year. However, brands with stable, quick, robust, and adaptive nature are still standing intact in the market. To be such a brand, you have to deploy a research time. They must know what the latest marketing trends in your industry are, and you can incorporate them into your business and revenue models online.
Ask For Testimonials From Genuine Clients and Brands
Testimonials are something which often new companies ignore. But these can be beneficial to you in multiple ways. Some of them are mentioned below.
Trust and Loyalty Factor
Your new customers would not know how to trust you simply by checking your product offerings online. They need something concrete. That’s where testimonials work the best. The remark left behind others on your social media profiles or corporate website is the right proof that you know what you are offering, and you know how to offer it.
Establish A Good Reputation
People find it hard to trust those service providers who never handled a single project before. That’s viable and just reason. There is no way for anyone to trust you when you did nothing before. But testimonials are proof that even if you are new, you know a lot. That’s more than enough.
Those who want to take your services must know about the quality of your products/services. They get to know it all from the testimonials left on your website or any social media platform. They ensure whether you are the right company to invest in or not. They learn about your work ethics, culture, response, and the overall quality just by knowing how you have completed the previous order.
Compel Your Visitors to Visit Your Website
The new leads must spend time on your website. You must give them ample reason to. That’s one of the ways to get into their heads. That happens when they read the real testimonial left behind other customers, suppliers, vendors, or any other stakeholders associated with your brand. When they read such testimonials, they are more curious to know what you offer. Such new people and customers would definitely love to see whether you are really offering what the testimonials talk about.
Send Out Email Offers to New Subscribers, Followers, Buyers, etc.
One of the stunning ways to touch other’s hearts is through email marketing. It’s such a great tool that you simply cannot miss. Whenever there is a new subscriber, buyer, viewer, or visitor who is leaving behind their email details on your site—make the best use of it. Drop them occasional emails so they know when you are offering something new, attractive, and available. This typically occurs during the holidays.
Conclusion
You can easily and smartly build your brand even when you are new in the market. You have to know which content to use online, how often, and when.
This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.
