An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Social Media Marketing

Social media is exploding like never before. From connecting with friends and family to following celebrities and brands, cute cat videos and everything in between, social media is a powerful medium to connect with people from all walks of life from different corners of the world, all while keeping up with industry trends. 

However, in the dynamic world of digital marketing, social media is a tough nut to crack.

Despite being one of the most commonly used marketing channels, it is equally just as challenging. With frequent platform updates and dynamic algorithms happening as quickly as a snap of a finger, it can be extremely hard and overwhelming to keep up with it. 

In a bid to keep up, most entrepreneurs follow the “spaghetti on the wall” approach. They randomly throw a bunch of graphic posts and reels together and pray that it sticks.

If you have a business, you’ve likely done the same.

But no worries! In this blog post, we’ll help you understand how you can deploy an organic social media strategy to build your brand presence.

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What is Social Media Marketing?

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Social media marketing is an online marketing channel that involves the practice of using various social media platforms to market and promote a business. It is done by fostering a close-knit community, engaging with customers, building a strong brand presence, and eventually driving sales. 

Social Media Marketing is both an art and a science: it requires creative thinking, emotional and intuitive decision making as well as the more logical and strategic analysis of metrics and numbers.

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Why do you need Social Media Marketing?

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1. Increase Brand Awareness

Each passing day there’s a new brand popping up. As the competition rises, you need to differentiate your brand to gain exposure and customer attention. With the sheer number of people coupled with the rapid, fast-paced power of social media, you can catapult your brand reach and also ensure that your brand stays on top of mind. In increasing your brand’s visibility, you increase your chances of attracting and nurturing top-of-the-funnel leads. It helps to build customer loyalty and also positively influences the buying behaviors of your audience. 

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2. Analyze your Competition

Social Media is an excellent place to analyze and understand what your competitors are up to. By observing their profile and account activities you can understand what the market responds to and what doesn’t, it puts you in a better position to glean what is working best for them and what you should avoid. 

It could also act as an inspiring factor to borrow ideas and thoughts for your marketing. You could also use the opportunity to talk about topics that your competitors are not talking about or focus on a demographic that your competitor is not targeting.

One of the best examples of competitor analysis on social media is the Facebook Ad Library. It is an open library of all the ads that brands run on Facebook.  You can filter based on location, start date, and the platforms that the ad is on. By going through this database you can understand what type of ads they run and how often they run. 

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3. Build Brand Credibility

In the present-day scenario, social media validation is a massive deal breaker.

A consistent and organic social media footprint can be the difference between staying relevant as a company and being dismissed by a competitor.

The numbers prove it! About 54% of social browsers look for social media presence before considering making a purchase. When prospects see your company actively posting original content, it automatically builds a positive image, legitimizes your brand, and cements customer trust.

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4. Cost-effective

Social media provides your brand with a vast audience of consumers from all over the world for literally pennies on the dollar. From creating an account to using app features to building a community, you can do it all, absolutely free of cost. Compared to paid advertising, social media marketing provides you with a much safer and cheaper option to experiment with new marketing angles and strategies. 

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How to get started with Social Media Marketing?

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1. Know your audience

The foundation and driver of social media lie in nurturing and cultivating relationships. To turn a profit out of your social media efforts it is vital to understand your customer inside and out. You will be better equipped to serve them only when you know their needs, desires, and wants.

Conduct customer research and build out a customer persona.

Customer research (or consumer research) is a set of techniques used to identify the needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations of your current or potential customers.

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Here are a few ways to get to know your audience:

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1. Survey and interview your existing audience
2. Conduct Focus Groups
3. Use Polls, Questionnaires, and Surveys
4. Hang out in forums, and discussion groups of your target audience
5. Start conversations and engage with their comments 

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2. Choose your social media platforms

Once you understand your customer avatar, you need to find out their ideal hangout spot. Finding the right social media platform can seem overwhelming, considering the dozens of platforms with huge potential. Different platforms attract different audiences and hence need careful and strategic consideration. Resist the urge to make assumptions about this step.

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Here’s a rundown of a few commonly used platforms

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• LinkedIn – Started initially as a social network exclusively for professionals, LinkedIn worked extremely well for B2B audiences. However lately, it's been picking up speed, gaining potential and eyeballs from entrepreneurs and other service providers.

• Facebook – Being the Kickstarter of the social media revolution, Facebook is a great place to run paid ads and bring in new leads from a cold audience. Facebook Groups play an ideal role in community building and are a great way to connect with your ideal audience.

• Instagram – Instagram works like a charm if your products or content have a visual appeal. It works perfectly well for both image and video formats. With IG Lives, Stories, and Reels, video is having a true limelight moment on IG. That means – video is what Instagram prioritizes now!

• Twitter –  Despite being a more low-key platform, Twitter is a powerful marketing channel for brands to engage in conversations and build brand awareness.

• Tik Tok – The social media darling of today is quickly attracting a wide range of people from all walks of life. With a heavy emphasis on short-form videos, they are perfect for creating organic viral content.

Although there is a better advantage of having an omni-channel for your brand, this doesn't mean that you need to set up shop on every platform. If you’re still in the phase of building your brand presence and cultivating your audience, pick the relevant social media platforms based on your industry, target audience, and concentrate your efforts on 1-2 channels before spreading your content all across social media. 

For example, Facebook has the highest user base of people from the ages of 35 -50, while Instagram and Tik Tok are beloved by Gen Z’s.

However, if you’re looking to target B2B decision-makers for your SaaS product you'd be better off playing up your Linkedin strategy rather than using Facebook. (Yes, even if the age group metric points to Facebook)

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3. Define your social media marketing goals

A social media goal is simply an intention that you want to achieve through your strategy. Whether it is to generate leads or attract more followers, it should align with the business objectives and at the same time be quantifiable. You could consider using one of the go-to goal-setting methods of the SMART framework.  

It stands for:

• Specific: Are your goals defined clearly and precisely?
• Measurable: Are your goals easy to measure and track? 
• Achievable: Is it achievable and realistic?
• Relevant: Do your goals align with your business goals?
• Time-sensitive: Can it be achieved within a specific time frame?

Once you’ve defined your goals identify your KPIs (key performance indicators) and metrics to keep track of them.

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4. Content creation

With your goals set in place, you’re now ready to start creating content for your channels. When it comes to content creation, you need to find the sweet spot between content that’s relevant to your brand and your target audience.

Come up with content buckets and start mapping out the topics. Space out the topics over a week to keep the audience engaged. Mix them up with original content and curated content like testimonials and UGC.

If you’re running short on ideas go back to the drawing board and pull up your customer pain points. This is where your customer research proves beneficial. Use their commonly faced challenges as a starting point to come up with fresh content ideas. 

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Here are a few tips to keep in mind while creating content:

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• Focus on delivering value in terms of educational, inspirational, or entertaining content.

• Build relationships and engage with your audience by listening to their challenges and striking up genuine conversations.

• Harness user-generated content and branded hashtags to further boost brand presence.

• Post content during times when your audience is most likely to engage with it. Do this consistently without giving up on quality. 

Speaking of posting, you might want to consider creating a social media calendar. This helps you and your team to collaborate, track and publish them consistently.

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5. Track and Tweak

The success of your social media efforts may go unnoticed if you don’t track and measure the key metrics that you set in place earlier. Social media has become increasingly robust with native analytics to guide and monitor your strategy making it all the more convenient.

Which posts are bringing in the most conversation? When is the best posting time? Which post brought in new followers? All these answers are now easily available with a few quick taps.

As you track and measure you need to fine-tune your strategy based on the feedback you receive through your analytics. 

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Before we wind up we want to leave you with a few important social tips:
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• Leverage stories - Stories are increasingly becoming a common feature on most social media platforms. They are easy to create and consume. Make sure to include CTA’s in your stories and wherever possible include links to drive traffic to your website.

• Chatbots are increasingly becoming a “thing” – Chatbots are A.I. (artificial intelligence) mechanisms that are used to automate various processes. In the social media realm, they are most commonly used in DM’s to offer customer service to prospects.

• Use influencers and brand advocates – To boost your brand growth and reach a new audience, consider banking on a trustful bunch of influencers and brand advocates.

• Don’t always sell – Social media is meant for communicating and building relationships. Engage with your audience and make their needs your topmost priority.

• First impressions matter — Optimize your profile with the right keywords and communicate clearly what you do, who you help, and how you help. Use keywords that your ideal customer would use.

• Social Media Marketing is not a one size fits all approach — While a certain strategy could be successful on Instagram, it wouldn’t work as well on Tik Tok. Each platform is different so consider coming up with platform-specific strategies as well.

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Conclusion

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At the end of the day, social media isn’t going anywhere. However, the dynamic and competitive nature of social media will continue to shape and shift with new features and rising trends. As a result, you need to stay on your toes and keep abreast with the latest developments and upgrades.

If you’re looking to up your social media game but don’t have the bandwidth to do it all by yourself, then reach out to Growthhub.

At Growthhub, we’re obsessed with helping businesses like yours get the growth it deserves. 

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Get in touch with us and we can match you with savvy influencers in as little as 24 hrs. We screen and pre-vet the marketers on our platform, so you don’t have to. Book a call with us today!

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