Social media has grown to be one of the most powerful tools for business promotion and growth in recent times. There are several social media platforms, and almost every business utilizes at least two of these platforms. If used properly, social media provides a variety of benefits to businesses. It can increase brand awareness, sales, leads, and conversions, reach a wider audience, etc.

Although social media is a powerful tool, the inability to effectively use this platform can leave several business owners with little or no results. There are several ways many successful businesses use social media to get outstanding results, but only a few people know how to.

This brings us to the question – How do businesses use social media? This article shall show you how businesses use social media, how it benefits them, and how it can also benefit you.

They Run Social Media Paid Ads

It’s not enough for business pages to frequently upload posts and reply to comments, so they do more. Most businesses use social media ads to get their products and services to a broader audience, thereby increasing their reach. Through this medium, business owners can drive sales and grow their business.

Paid social media ads are available on almost every social media platform, and they offer similar services. However, some social media platforms may provide specialized ads. For example, Facebook offers comprehensive targeting tools that allow businesses to develop and run successful business campaigns.

Through these Facebook ads, businesses can amplify posts and increase their reach, click-throughs, impressions, and engagements. These ads are usually customized depending on the needs of the business.

Patronize Social Media Influencers 

Building a business social media account and following is great but isn’t enough to increase sales or brand awareness. However, businesses can make use of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing forms a significant part of social media marketing, and it happens to be quite popular because several businesses use it, and it works effectively for them. This tool is popularly used on platforms such as Twitter and Annalect and is run by influencers.

Social media influencers are simply people with a large following on their pages and increased post engagements. Most social media users trust these influencers and are more likely to purchase a product/service when influencers tweets or posts about it. For this reason, several businesses make use of social media influencers to increase their sales and also boost brand awareness.

These influencers exchange services for money or product samples. They advertise business products or services by taking strategic photos or videos, and writing about the product/service to increase visibility. They can also give honest reviews or feedback on products/services and even provide tutorials.

A unique and effective way business owners also use this tool is by getting social media influencers to share and promote some unique discount codes. Everyone loves discounts and so is more likely to patronize the business, and this increases sales.

For example, Daniel Wellington has used this method since it was founded in 2011. As a wristwatch maker utilizing this strategy, he made over one million wristwatch sales within three years. In 2015, Daniel Wellington’s brand was able to generate $220 million worth of revenue. This was calculated to be about a 214% boost from 2014. Even up till this moment, you can still find top influencers and even upcoming ones promoting various discount codes for Daniel Wellington’s wristwatches and other products.

Several businesses on social media use influencer marketing platforms such as Grin to promote their brand and increase sales.

Referral Campaigns

Referral campaigns are a great and fast way to increase social leads. These campaigns involve referring to a friend or friends to a product/service. Businesses use this as a way to increase following and engagement amongst their followers. They use this as a strategic way to win over potential customers, making it easier for them to trust friends and family’s recommendations.

For example, Marketo organizes an annual referral campaign event, Marketing Nation Online. During this event, every follower, customer, or participant is encouraged to refer friends through their social media platforms. Participants who can refer to the highest number of people stand a chance of winning an Amazon gift card.

In these campaigns, business owners create attractive offers and incentives, not just for the referee but also for the referees. These offers could either be in cash or kind. By doing this, they encourage and motivate customers to recommend their business to friends and family.

This, in turn, grows their customer and follower base significantly and increases brand awareness too.

Leverage Trends

There’s always a piece of news, topic, or story trending across all social media platforms. Most successful businesses utilize these trends to promote their brand names. Trending topics on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook can be used to create content to improve engagement. This, in a word, is called Newsjacking.

Most times, businesses use these trends to create specific content that spurs interests and heightened engagements. Though this has been instrumental to businesses, many businesses have also lost thousands of customers by making the wrong move.

Build and Maintain Social Media Communities

A lot of successful businesses build and maintain social media communities on most social platforms. This way, it is easier to keep in touch with their customers and stay connected, thereby creating loyal customers for themselves. Through these communities, business owners can increase reach and visibility. They are also able to stabilize their businesses and sustain a growing market trend.

A prominent brand that has used this as a means to increase personal branding is Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines makes use of Twitter to build brand awareness and social media communities too. They have successfully created a brand name through outstanding graphics and photos. This, in turn, increased brand awareness as well as their social media community.

Several businesses, both B2B & B2C, build their social media communities by:

Hosting social Media Discussions: Business owners effectively build a lasting and loyal community online by hosting a social conversation on brewing and exciting topics. Doing this helps to increase activity and engagement on the business page and visibility also.

Giving incentives to the community: Providing incentives, offers, and giveaways for the community is another excellent way businesses build and sustain their social community.

Building personal customer relationships: Businesses develop their communities by developing and sustaining personal relationships with customers. They do this by giving timely responses to questions, posts, and messages. This way, customers feel connected and encourage others to join the community.

Giving followers a chance to be heard: By allowing customers to share their opinions and views, online businesses provide them with an opportunity to feel heard. They value their customer’s input and let their customers know they do.

Consistent Branding Across All Social Media Platforms (And Website Too)

Successful businesses that have thrived on social media take branding seriously. They create a branding style unique to their business and stick to it. Their logos and company colors are their identity, and they don’t change them except an upgrade.

These businesses ensure that their chosen identity – logos and colors remain consistent on every social media platform and their websites. Doing this ensures that they stand out, are easily recognized on every platform, and boost brand awareness.

To Get Feedback

Successful business owners know the importance of customer feedback and do not take it for granted. They utilize customer feedback on these platforms to re-strategize and offer better products or services. They give priority to customer comments, likes, and shares, related to their content, product, and service.

Provide User-Generated Content

Consistently creating and providing excellent social media content is not as easy as it looks. However, many businesses are still able to achieve this and, in turn, increases their conversion rates. By effectively utilizing testimonials, images, and even blog posts of customers, business owners can continuously provide and create great content. Thus the name, user-generated content (UGC). This content isn’t just great for social media platforms alone but also for their websites.

Through user-generated content, businesses can achieve several marketing goals at once. These contents go a long way in proving the authenticity of the product/service and helping increase sales. Although social media is an excellent platform for posting user-generated content, some businesses go as far as linking them to their websites to increase traffic.

Conclusion

Business owners do not just create social media accounts, publish content, and acquire followers. That is not enough; neither is it healthy for a business. They put several things in place to see that their business thrives and grows online. The social media space is the new market, and every business these days try as much as possible to leverage these platforms. Business owners work towards building a unique brand name, offering personalized customer experiences, increasing leads and conversion, and driving sales.

Without these basics, it is unlikely that any business would thrive online. In this article, we have studied how businesses utilize and maximize social media space to grow. Whether you are a new business owner or an old one, ensure that you study these guides and implement them. That way, you would be able to grow and sustain your brand, an online presence, and increase your business productivity.