Utilizing Social Media When Scaling Your Business

Scaling your business can be simultaneously exciting and overwhelming — exciting because you’re making more money and a name for yourself, overwhelming because there’s a lot that goes into growing your business. Intense planning, adding more people to the team, and upgrading business tools are just a few of the many considerations you have to make.  

Fortunately, there are actions you can take to minimize the challenges associated with scaling –  including utilizing social media. Social media has many uses in business, but it can be particularly advantageous when scaling your business.   

Connect Your Scaling Goals With Your Social Media Marketing Strategies 

First, it’s essential to understand the difference between scaling and growth. Of course, both are rooted in taking your business to the next level. However, when your operation grows, costs typically increase with it. But when scaling your business, the goal is to keep costs down and increase efficiency as your revenue and capacity rise. 

You will use social media differently when the goal is scaling versus growth. Define your specific goals for scaling and connect them with specific social media marketing strategies to help you achieve them. 

For example, let’s say your goal is to get more quality leads on the hook without increasing your marketing budget. In that case, you could create a social media campaign for new customers and drive traffic to a consultation landing page with a link in your bio. 

It’s all about connecting specific social media marketing strategies to each scaling goal so that you have something specific to track your progress. 

Find Out What Your Customers Want 

You can also use social media to find out what your customers want from your organization. Keep your customers at the forefront of every decision you make when scaling your business. If they don’t want or won’t benefit from the adjustments you’re considering, there’s little point in making them. 

So, ask questions to find out what your customers are looking for. How would they want to see you scale your business? What would make your brand, products, and services better for them? How do they see their relationship with your business evolving? 

Create surveys and polls with questions that help you define your direction for scaling, and post them on your social pages. Talk about your plans on live streams and ask for feedback in the comments. Engage with your followers one on one. And implement social listening tools to see what people are saying about your brand. 

Find out what your customers want to ensure you’re putting your resources to good use. Put in some time investigating which methods work best for each platform. What increases engagement on Instagram may not work as well for Twitter and so on.

Leverage Compelling Content 

In addition to finding out what your customers want, distribute compelling content to them as you scale your business. Keep them updated on how things are going, ask for their input when appropriate, and keep them connected to your brand with content they’ll find valuable. 

Don’t make your content all about the changes happening in your business. Instead, sprinkle those pieces into your social media content strategy. The goal is to keep growing your customer relationships as you scale. So, you have to continue publishing content they’ll find helpful. 

Pay attention to how they react to the content you put out, so you know if your efforts are helping you reach your goal. You can also use your content as an additional opportunity to engage with your audience.

Consistently Engage With Your Audience 

Aside from distributing compelling content, you’ll need to engage with your audience on social media consistently. Engaging with your customers regularly builds trust and loyalty. 

When you scale your business, it’s going to affect your customers. Their feedback, both positive and negative, will come in handy if they question your new direction. 

Keep building trust and loyalty with your audience by responding to every comment, direct message, mention, and shoutout. Leave comments on your customers’ pages. Live streaming to show your face is also a good idea.

Gather and Analyze Data From Your Campaigns 

You can also improve your ability to generate leads and increase conversions on social media if you lean on data. Properly analyzing data gathered from your individual social media campaigns can help you identify where it makes the most sense to invest your time, effort, and money.  

Use the built-in analytics tools on your social media platforms to get insights into how each campaign performs. You can find out who engages with them the most, their specific behaviors, and demographic information. Then, adjust what isn’t working and maximize what is. 

It’s important to note that you can collect a lot of data on social media. Sitting in front of massive datasets can lead to data analysis paralysis. You start over-analyzing the data in front of you so much that you cannot extract any meaningful insights — and therefore, you can’t use those insights to drive better campaigns.  

It’s best to develop specific questions you want to be answered through data to focus your efforts. Staying flexible about what you learn and including more people in the data analysis process can also help fend off data analysis paralysis. 

Conclusion 

Scaling your business is an incredibly inspiring time. Using social media won’t just help you find the information you need to achieve your scaling goals; it will also help you continue to strengthen your relationships with customers throughout the entire process.