By Bilna Sandeep - Founder of Homepreneurs Club and Business Coach
Did you know that "71% of consumers say they found themselves using Social media more in the past year", (as per the Sprout Social Index Edition XVII: Accelerate).
Now, this statistic is just one example of how important it is for small businesses to be present on social media, especially in this age when every Generation is spending more time on Social media.
Here are 3 key strategies that have helped my personal brand grow..
1. STOP! Don't rush into Social Media Marketing before you define your ideal customer!
This is one of the most important exercises and often Small business owners tend to overlook it. Defining your ideal customer is the first step to building a successful social media marketing plan.
Be very specific while you do this exercise. Ask questions like, where are your ideal customers located? What's their age? What problem are they facing currently (related to your product)? what do they want to feel after they buy your product (solution to their problem)?
Your exercises should even contain questions like what Netflix series are they likely to watch, what social media platforms do they spend their time on?
The more specific you are with defining your target audience, the better your messaging gets in each post you create for Social media. Imagine that REAL ( ideal customer) and create each content with intention as though you are speaking to that person.
2. Building Connections
No matter what strategies you learn from different courses you may attend about Social Media, there is one that cannot compete with any other - "Building Connections". This is especially true in the case of small businesses. When you are starting off, you don't have a big audience to start with and it is very important that you target the people who matter to your business.
“People do not buy goods and services. People buy relations, stories, and magic” - Seth Godin.
Use the power of storytelling to get your brand voice out to your ideal customers!
Spend time to leave meaningful comments on other businesses in your niche as well as your ideal customer accounts. Encourage your customers to talk to you over DMs. This creates a personal connection and helps conquer the algorithm of most platforms because the machine language marks you as their close connection and shows all your posts to those who are constantly on DMs with you.
Bonus tip: You can also create an audience on Facebook Ads manager to target people who are specifically in touch with you on DMs and this set of audience is still free from all the iOS updates.
CAUTION: Never try to SELL on DMs. Instead, use it for speaking to your prospective customers as you would speak to a new friend you met at a party!
3. Social media for Customer care
As per the Sprout Social Index, when asked How consumers prefer to leave feedback about a product or service? – 31% said they prefer to leave feedback to brands through social media. Followed by 18% by email and surprisingly only 11% by customer service number or 8% by the Brand Survey!
Do you see how valuable it would be to get feedback about your products from your customers?
You can use the Poll option on LinkedIn, or the quiz and poll stickers option on Instagram stories to collect this valuable feedback from your customers. And to make their experience even better, you can reply to everyone who responds to these polls and establish trustworthy relations with them. Even when you even have your own website, people are likely to send you inquiries through your Insta DMs and it is always wise to invest in a virtual assistant who can reply to customer queries quickly before a lot of them change their minds or have already made the buying decision from another brand.
These 3 strategies might seem quite simple, but if you implement them consistently it is going to give you amazing results and help you increase your revenue drastically. A few points for you!
Consistency is the best strategy on Social media
Don't try to focus on everyone. Target only your ideal customer while creating content for Social.
Never SELL, but focus on Serving. Create posts that are VALUABLE. VALUE = informative, entertaining or engaging.
There are no competitors. You stay in your own lane and look for Collaborations.
Not everyone is your client and be ready to say NO to those who are not your ideal customers.