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How to promote your business on social media

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The GoCardless content team comprises a group of subject-matter experts in multiple fields from across GoCardless. The authors and reviewers work in the sales, marketing, legal, and finance departments. All have in-depth knowledge and experience in various aspects of payment scheme technology and the operating rules applicable to each. The team holds expertise in the well-established payment schemes such as UK Direct Debit, the European SEPA scheme, and the US ACH scheme, as well as in schemes operating in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. See full bio

Last editedDec 20202 min read

A social media presence has become a requirement for businesses today, but you don’t necessarily have to keep up to date with cutting-edge trends to be successful. Keep reading to learn how to build a social media presence more effectively.

With top platforms like Instagram and Facebook hosting billions of customers, social media offers an easy way for small businesses to extend their reach. Not only can you grow your profile through targeted advertising, but you can also fine-tune your brand’s voice and interact with both existing customers and new leads. At the same time, you can increase website traffic, build authority, and improve your customer service. A strong social media strategy should boost your follower count and engagement each month, translating into potential sales.

You won’t see benefits like those mentioned above by simply setting up a Facebook profile and calling it a day. Active, regular engagement is the key to increase social media presence. You can do this by following our social media management tips:

Customer service is vital for boosting retention rates, both on and offline. When thinking about how to promote your business on social media, keep customer service at the forefront of your strategies. Instead of waiting on hold for a phone call or crafting an email, many customers now turn immediately to social media to get a response from businesses. Once you’ve set up your profiles, be sure to monitor them carefully for any queries. You can also set up chatbots to cover responses when your team is unavailable.

2. Make yourself easy to find

Customers won’t know how to find you on social media unless you tell them. Include social media icons on your website, post social media feeds on a sidebar, and make sure to promote your accounts in any marketing campaign. Make blog posts shareable on social media, including a call to action in your content to encourage likes, follows, and shares.

3. Set clear goals

As with any business plan, part of building your business on social media involves goal setting. Which metrics will you use as markers of success? You might focus on gaining new followers, generating leads, driving web traffic, or increasing sales. It’s important to sit down and define which goals you’ll be pursuing as part of your social media management strategy. Driving sales through your Instagram profile involves different tactics than improving customer service via Twitter.

4. Engage visitors with visuals

Active engagement is a must when it comes to building your business with social media. Engage with your followers by chatting, answering questions, and liking responses. Visuals also offer an easy way to boost engagement. Social media users love browsing colorful, striking images on Instagram and quirky videos on TikTok or Snapchat. Live videos get far more engagement than other types of content on Facebook. Whether it’s photos of your team or behind-the-scenes videos with insider tips, get creative with your visuals.

Use popular hashtags and viral videos to increase social media presence. Part of successful social media management is staying on top of the latest trends, so you should use these platforms for yourself as well as for followers. Platforms like Twitter make it easy to see what’s trending with a list of current topics; use these as inspiration for your next post. At the same time, you don’t want to parrot what’s already out there. Instead, use trending topics as a springboard for your own fresh takes.

If you don’t have the time or budget to enable constant social media activity yourself, there are plenty of tools that can help. Buffer, Hootsuite, and BuzzSumo are just a few examples. Ideally, businesses should be tweeting multiple times per day and posting fresh content. Look for social media plug-ins or apps that let you schedule your posts, manage accounts from a single dashboard, and post at the optimal times of day when followers are online.

The main thing to remember when looking at how to build a social media presence is to stay active, creating consistent content and replying to followers wherever possible.

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