Tag: business

Having a solid social media strategy is an integral part of any successful marketing plan. Nearly five billion people worldwide use social media. Further, an estimated 37% of social media users engage with brands and businesses on different platforms at least monthly.  

However, marketing on social media takes a bit of finesse and clever thinking, especially when you don’t have a full marketing team at your disposal.  

You don’t have to blow your budget or hire a specialist to organically grow your company’s social media presence. By understanding your target audience, you’re more likely to turn followers into customers. While there are many “black hat” methods to marketing on social media, you’ll see more consistent results if you chase organic growth.   

With that, let’s look at a few ways you can foster organic growth across your social media platforms and the best practices for implementing these techniques.  

Determine Your Target Demographic

We touched on understanding your target audience, but if you don’t have much social media or marketing experience, how exactly do you do that? If you want to organically find your audience, start with existing research. Look at the ages, genders, and locations of people on social media platforms. Who is checking out your competitors? When do they get the most engagement? If you already have a social media presence, when are you getting the best responses, and from whom?  

It’s also a good idea to think about what your business represents. Do you offer a product or service to a specific age group? If so, think about the platforms they might use, the times they might check their social media accounts, and the names they already trust.  

You might also benefit from working with an influencer (either locally or nationally) to market your product or service to the right audience. You have to choose influencers carefully, however — make sure this person is someone that your target audience already knows and trusts. 

Finally, connect with your community in person. If you’re a local small business, you’ll want as many people from your town or city to follow you on social media as possible. One of the best ways to do that is to build trust in the “real world.” Your small business can get involved in your community by: 

• Supporting other businesses
• Hosting charity events
• Participating in local events
• Sponsoring organizations or teams
• Providing tours. 

 When you hone in on your target audience, you’ll start to build more data organically. You’ll then be able to utilize that information to perfect your social media strategy moving forward.  

Stick to Solid Posting Practices 

Once you have a better understanding of your target audience, you can figure out when to post. The great thing about social media is that you can schedule your content to post ahead of time, so you don’t necessarily have to monitor your platforms 24/7.  

However, people tend to use social media at different times throughout the day and week. For example, the best days to post on Facebook are Tuesdays through Fridays, while Sunday is the worst day to post on Instagram. 

When you’re sharing content, no matter what it is, timing is everything. While you can post whenever you want, your goal isn’t just to advertise a piece of content to your followers. It’s to encourage engagement. You can pay for advertising on social media platforms and your content will show up on people’s feeds periodically. However, they’ll know it’s an ad, and they’ll be more likely to gloss over it.  

Instead, research best practices for posting times and utilize your own data to determine when you’re getting the most interaction. As social media continues to compete with traditional advertising, you can use those moments of engagement to “humanize” your business and build stronger connections with your audience, rather than just telling them to buy your product or service.  

Foster Engagement 

Once you know when to post, it’s important to know what to post. The average person sees thousands of advertisements each day, and it’s become easy for people to tune out traditional marketing methods. Most consumers – especially those on social media – want to establish a connection with the brands they utilize. Instead of solely focusing on promotional content, choose to post things that are helpful and informative. Let your audience see “behind the curtain” of your business, especially when it comes to sharing images and videos.

For example, if you’re trying to organically increase your engagement on Instagram, try to implement some of the following strategies: 

• Engage with your audience by making comments and responses
• Use hashtags
• Use location tags
• Post to Instagram stories 
• Post when engagement is highest 

Knowing what you should do is only half the battle when it comes to an effective social media strategy. Certain growth methods might seem good up front, but they could end up costing a lot of money or provide very little return on investment. Some of the most common pitfalls to avoid include:  

• Contests and giveaways that typically only attract temporary followers 
• Paid promotions for short-lived growth 
• Inorganic growth by paying for followers 

The number of followers you have on your platform doesn’t really matter. Rather, it’s how engaged those followers are with your business. That’s why organic growth is so effective and important.  

Whether you’ve been on social media for a while and you’re trying to boost your engagement, or you’re new to different platforms and want to grow your presence, keep these tips in mind to do so organically. This will help you foster healthier professional relationships with your fans, followers, and the local community.