How to Properly Promote Your Business on Social Media in 2021

What’s great about being a small business owner is that it’s easier to build relationships with the community you’re in, especially if you’ve been around for quite some time.

People know you - they know where to find you, and you know who your most loyal clients are. In other words, you’ve already established a steady customer base.

But, in these competitive times where more and more players are joining the market, it’s no longer enough to rely on your repeat customers alone. Although they remain to be a crucial part of the success of your business, don’t get us wrong, you also need to make the effort to find new ones.

Using social media to market your business is one of the most effective ways you can reach those who don’t know about you, get your existing customers to spend more, and discover new customers.

However, you can only enjoy the benefits mentioned above if you market your business the right way.

If you’re a small business owner who isn’t quite convinced on why you need to use social media to grow your business, you’ll find this article helpful.

And, if you’re currently using social media to market your business but are not seeing the results you were hoping to get, we’ll teach you the right path to success.

As your go-to Florida internet marketing company, we will share with you several proven and tested tips that helped our clients effectively promote their business on social media this 2021.

Let’s get started!

How Do You Properly Promote Your Business on Social Media?

1. Start with a Goal

Before you start promoting your business on social media, it’s important to set your goals first.

What is it that you want to achieve from being on this channel? Is it to attract new customers, engage your audience, or drive more revenue?

It’s vital to identify what your goals are so you’ll be able to determine the type of content you’re going to share on your social media accounts.

In case you didn’t know, there are different types of social media, with each of them having different purposes.

Let’s take a look at them below:‍

• ‍Social Networks: People use social networks for sharing information and interacting with others. Examples are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.‍
• Photo Sharing Networks: Instagram and Pinterest’s highly visual layout makes them the perfect platform for engaging users and showing them your creative side by posting curated photos of your products or services, behind-the-scenes snippets, and so much more. ‍
• Video-Sharing Networks: Primarily used to shore long-form videos, these platforms are great for engaging your audience and educating them. YouTube and Vimeo are two of the most popular video-sharing networks.‍
• Interactive Media: TikTok and Snapchat are mainly used to engage the younger audiences, particularly the Gen Zers. They’re ideal for showing BTS, your brand story, and showing the fun and authentic side of your business.  ‍
• Discussion Community: Discussion forums or communities are primarily used for sharing, discussing, and finding information, news, and opinions. You can use the platform to build trust by answering questions related to your business or field.

For each of the channels you plan to use for your business, you must set a different objective so you don’t send the same message and sound redundant to your audience.

Facebook and Twitter: Increase brand awareness by posting promotional messages and providing content that highlights your brand personality and values, like client testimonials and posts that feature the people behind what makes your business successful, like your employees.

Instagram: Generate leads and sales by alerting customers about new products, promos, and curated images of your products.

YouTube: Grow your business’ audience by providing educational, informational, and entertaining content, like how-tos and tutorials.

TikTok: Showcase your brand authenticity by being transparent and show behind the scenes of running your business, joining challenges, etc.

2. Decide Which Platforms You Want to Focus On

There’s nothing wrong with having an account for every social media channel available. However, trying to manage all of them at the same time and producing content for each of them can get overwhelming, especially if you’re just starting out.

It’s best to focus on two to three platforms you know your target audience is mostly using. So, make sure to do your research on where your ideal customers spend their time online.

Here are some demographics you may find useful:

Facebook:

• Facebook has more than 1.8 billion daily active users.
• 32.4% of all Facebook users are aged 25 to 34 and 21% are 45 and older.‍
• 56.4% of them are and 43.6% are females.

Instagram:‍

• There were more than 854 million monthly Instagram users in 2020.
• 51% of all Instagram users across the world are female.
• The platform is mostly used by teenagers (84%) and only one third are ages 25 to 34.

Twitter:‍

• Twitter has about 353 million monthly users.
• 57.1% of Twitter users are aged 25 to 49, while 28.9% are within the ages of 24 and 34.
• 70% of Twitter’s advertising audiences are males and the rest are females.

YouTube:‍

• YouTube has over two billion users across the world.
• The average user spends about 17 minutes and 22 seconds on YouTube per day.
• 77% of YouTube users are aged 15 to 25.
• 72% of US internet male users use YouTube and 72% of all US female internet users also using YouTube.

LinkedIn:

• LinkedIn has over 722 million members worldwide.
• 43% of LinkedIn users are female and 57% are male.
• 59.9% of LinkedIn users are aged 25 to 34, and 20.3% are aged 18 to 24.

Pinterest:

• Pinterest has over 442 million monthly active users in 2020.
• 60% of the platform’s users are female.
• The largest active demographic in the US on this platform are ages 30 to 49, which are mostly moms according to Pinterest.

TikTok:

• TikTok has about 14.95 million daily active users and about 63 million monthly active users.
• 53% of all TikTok users worldwide are male and 47% are female.
• In the US, 32.5% of TikTok users are aged 10 to 19, and 29.5% are aged 20 to 29 

3. Get to Know Your Audience

After knowing which channels your ideal customers are spending most of their time online, the next step is to get to know them on a deeper level.

You can do this with the help of social media analytics tools, such as Facebook Insights and Instagram Insights. You’ll soon start to understand who are interacting with your pages, who are looking for your products, what their behaviors are, the types of content they’re engaging with, and more.

Here’s what else you should know about your ideal customers:

• The time they’re most active on every social channel they’re on
• The type of content they’re most responsive to
• The types of messaging that resonate with them
• The types of visuals that grab their attention

With the help of the information you collect, you can create buyer personas to build more targeted strategies to run highly-effective campaigns and produce content that will resonate with your target audience on social media.

4. Stalk Your Competitor or the Brands You Look Up To

Go to your competitor’s accounts and see what they’ve been posting, which posts are getting the most engagement, and what type of content their audience are most responsive to. Then, use the information to get an idea of what you need to publish in your accounts.

 There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other businesses or brands that are doing really well on social media. Make sure to use these ideas to create better posts that best represent your business and will resonate with your target audience.

As an Internet marketing company in Florida, we’ve done this ourselves. We’ve studied our competitors and the successful businesses we look up to and we take inspiration from what they’re doing online. Just remember to always produce your own content. Plagiarism is a big no-no. If you do decide to repost for inspo, don’t forget to credit the owner of the post.

5.  Create a Social Media Calendar

A social media calendar serves as your guide on when, where, and what to post on social media. It helps keep your content marketing organized, well-distributed, and on track, allowing you to properly promote your business in the most effective way possible.

You can create a social media calendar on a spreadsheet, Google calendar, or in your social media management app if you’re using one.

When making a social media calendar, each of your entries should contain a combination of the following elements:

• The exact date and time you’re going to publish a post
• The post’s creative assets, like photos or videos (but you can add them later once you’re created content for it)
• The caption to be written together with the post
• Links and hashtags
• Which social media channel and account to post
• Type of post (ex. story or a feed post)

While it’s crucial to plan out your entire social media marketing activities for the entire month, you need to leave room for flexibility so your accounts remain active. That way, you’ll constantly engage with your audience and help you achieve goals.

Thinking about what stuff to post in advance allows you to curate better content than thinking about it on the spot and posting it immediately. It also helps ensure that your posts are consistent and in line with the goals you want to achieve.

6. Curate Engaging Social Content

After setting up a social media calendar, it’s time to create your content.

Your posts should be branded and consistent with each other. This means using a particular theme or filter for your photos, videos, and using similar creative touches. You want people to recognize that a post is yours the moment they see them on their social media feed.

So, what types of content should you be posting this 2021 that will engage your ideal customers? As a top Florida Internet marketing company, we suggest you try these trends:

Stories and time-sensitive posts, like flash sales, behind-the-scenes, and exclusive promos to tap into your followers FOMO (fear of missing out)

Short-form videos are really popular right now, especially with the rise of TikTok and the recent launch of Instagram Reel. Use them to share hacks, tips, and maybe even serve some teasers so your audience will go to YouTube to checkout your full video content.

Brand authenticity posts that showcase your brand personality and values. This can humanize your brand and show your audience that you’re relatable. Examples of these are posting photos about your employees, greeting them on their birthdays, showing what the company does to celebrate small wins, your outreach programs, etc.

7. Audit What’s Working and Not Working

The only way to know what works best for your business on social media is to experiment and test things out, so don’t be afraid to fail the first time you do this. Just make sure to keep track of your progress and see what’s working and what’s not, so you can better refine your strategy and get rid of what’s not being fruitful.

You’ll know by your KPI or Key Performance Indicators.

Here are some social media KPIs you should be tracking:

KPI for Reach

• ‍Follower count tells you how many people are keeping up with your brand or business. the more followers you have, the better. ‍
• Impressions tell you how many times your post has been viewed or seen. ‍
• Post reach tells you the number of unique accounts that were able to see your post. ‍
• Web traffic allows you to see if your posts with links are effective at driving traffic to your site. ‍
• Share of voice tells you how strong your online visibility is compared to your competitors.

KPI for Engagement

• ‍Clicks tell you how effective your copy and creative assets are at driving people to check out your posts.‍
• Likes tell you if your posts are good enough for your audience to engage with. ‍
• Shares tell you if your posts are engaging enough to be shared. ‍
• Comments are a good indicator that your posts are engaging.‍
• Profile visits tell you that your posts are effective at driving people to check out who you are and what you have to offer.

KPIs for Conversions

• ‍Sales revenue tells you if your efforts of promoting your products or services on social media are paying off. ‍
• Lead conversion rate tells you how effective your social media marketing strategy is at generating leads. ‍
• Non-revenue conversions tell you if your posts that aim to get people to sign up, fill out, or download are effective.

Before we end, there’s an important tip we want you to keep in mind: Always respond to messages, comments, reposts, mentions, and other types of engagement as prompt as possible. There’s a better chance that they’ll do business with you if you reply to them as soon as possible and constantly engage with them.

Looking for the Best Florida Internet Marketing Company?

Use this article to get an idea of how you can effectively promote your business to succeed on social media. Always remember to measure and track your progress so you can refine your strategy according to your needs, goals, what works for you, and your audience.

If you feel like you need professional assistance, we can help! Digital Resource is the best Florida internet marketing company you can trust.

Our team of social media experts specializes in working with small businesses across various industries and assisting them in creating a strategy that is geared towards achieving business goals and success. Click here to see how we’ve helped other small businesses in Florida succeed on social media!