Many busi­ness­es strug­gle to find the resources need­ed for large adver­tis­ing cam­paigns or flashy PR stunts, and they turn to social media.

Over 75% of all inter­net users use social media. By the end of last year the Inter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union said that there were 3.2 bil­lion peo­ple online.

Even now, in 2020, social media is often over­looked or han­dled bad­ly by busi­ness­es that could great­ly raise aware­ness for their busi­ness, cre­ate engage­ment, and dri­ve traf­fic to their sites by using social media correctly.

The fact is that many busi­ness­es don’t under­stand social net­work­ing enough to use it effec­tive­ly. Most social net­work plat­forms are free. There’s an ini­tial rush to sign up, with­out any great con­sid­er­a­tion of strat­e­gy, brand­ing, which plat­form for which mes­sages, or the audi­ence that they need to reach. These busi­ness­es then become over­whelmed by the task they have tak­en on. They have no real under­stand­ing of social media mar­ket­ing, and just leave their accounts unmanned and abandoned.

First impres­sions on social sites are very impor­tant. Accounts need to be set up cor­rect­ly with brand­ing; logos, bios, images, all need to be seam­less across all networks.

Start­ing and main­tain­ing a pres­ence on social sites does take a lot of work, but, han­dled cor­rect­ly, a social media strat­e­gy can help your busi­ness grow.

Busi­ness­es that use social net­works cor­rect­ly, realise ear­ly that post­ing lots of self-pro­mo­tion is a neg­a­tive step. Social media is not a broad­cast medi­um – your busi­ness needs to start slow­ly and sure­ly, not rush to fol­low every­one pure­ly to gain num­bers and to get fol­low­ers, but rather to steadi­ly build a tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ty of engaged customers.

9 ways how to use social media for growing your business

You can grow your busi­ness on social sites through:

• Pro­mo­tions
• Brand Cam­paigns
• Cus­tomer Service
• Engage­ment – lis­ten­ing to your audience
• Shar­ing your mes­sage – enabling oth­ers to share your message
• Col­lab­o­ra­tions
• Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Strategy
• Blog Posts
• Brand Lead­er­ship

Social media gives busi­ness­es a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to build a strong online pres­ence, and to cre­ate author­i­ty in their field, estab­lish­ing them­selves as a brand leader.

The type of knowl­edge and time required to effec­tive­ly lever­age social sites does­n’t usu­al­ly come from in-house. Social net­work­ing is con­stant­ly chang­ing, and a well-trained, expe­ri­enced com­mu­ni­ty man­ag­er will be keep­ing up with these changes and trends. The com­mu­ni­ty man­ag­er will enable you to you grow your brand, with a well thought out social media strat­e­gy, imple­ment­ed on your behalf.