We’ve all heard it a million times – social media is the next best digital marketing tool and we should all be using it. With over 27% of purchases originating from social media across all generations, business owners have an opportunity to take advantage of more than just making timely posts.

Utilizing social media helps create brand recognition and widens the audience that your business has the opportunity to reach. It’s an affordable option for marketing and offers maximum control for creating and branding your message.

But how can social media help you gain more customers?

How to Leverage Social Media to Ensure Customer Growth

It’s important to see social media as more than just an avenue to broadcast a few pictures of your products. Considering there are over 3.4 billion social media users, getting the highest ROI with your social accounts is a game changer.

Use these tactics to ensure that your social media efforts will continue to yield new customers.

Create a Connection

It’s easy to get in the habit of making posts that simply draw your customers to buy something. The problem is–everyone is already doing that. Instead, use social media to give your brand a personality that people can relate to. Business accounts on social media commonly overlook the advantage of Instagram stories and Facebook Live. These are a great opportunity to entertain and connect with your target audience.

Try showing off your office space, answering common questions, or sharing a new product in these videos. You can even use Facebook or Instagram stories to hold a Q&A session or ask your customer’s opinions (free feedback is always a win!). Doing so makes your customers feel like they are included in the process of your brand and allows them to gain an understanding of your company values.

Captions and hashtags can also help you create a persona and relate to your customers. Be funny, witty, and catchy to entice people to stop scrolling and see what you’ve said each time that you post. Hashtags in particular can help people find and track your posts! The more recognition you get here, the more that people are going to want to take part in your brand and have the potential to become a customer.

You don’t just want people to just stumble across your posts, you want them to look forward to hearing from you. Showcase how active and thriving your business is–people want to be a part of that!

[Tweet “Create a connection with your audience. You don’t just want people to just stumble across your posts, you want them to look forward to hearing from you.”]

Provide Immediate Customer Service

We all avoid calling a customer service line to have our questions or concerns addressed. And waiting for an email back from a service desk is purely inefficient. Instead of making customers endure this pain, invite your customers to use the comment section on your social media accounts as a place to ask questions and gain more information directly from the brand.

Not only will this provide timely service to your customers, but anyone who visits your social media accounts will see that your business takes their customer satisfaction seriously. This tactic lends to building trust and credibility amongst past and potential customers.

Providing support on an easy platform that everyone is willing to use feels like a no-brainer. The best part is that your customer can ask you a question and your whole audience will be able to see how it is answered. With social media continuing to rapidly grow, it’s important to address how this digital marketing tactics can help you provide a rich customer experience to ensure that customers old and new receive timely help.

Your Bio is Your Friend

We’ve all seen an interesting social media post and consequently visited their account. What is the first thing that we look at? Their bio.

Just like a website, most people are going to spend their time looking at the top of the page – or above the fold. Customers want to land on your account page and find all of the information they need within a few seconds. It’s important that you don’t just describe what you are, but that you answer all of the most common questions directly in the bio. You don’t want people to have to scroll through various past posts in order to get the information that they need.

But what do they need? Include contact information, what you offer, and most importantly a link to your website. Utilizing your bio to easily link to your website is a great tactic for converting visitors from your account into paying customers.

However, this link needs to be informational and tell your customers where they are going to land. Make sure that your domain name and url line up with why your customers would be at your site (domain names are cheap and help build credibility). Just launched a new line? Put that in your link!

Pro Tip: Make sure your website is built with a mobile first mentality. If customers are arriving to your site via social media, they are most likely on a mobile device. Don’t lose them with an inefficient site.

[Tweet “If customers are arriving to your site via social media, they are most likely on a mobile device. Don’t lose them with an inefficient website.”]

Publish Motivated Content

Using social media to market your brand isn’t just about what you post. You can’t forget that everyone is using social media to reach their customers.

Make sure to do your own research of what people within your own vertical are talking about. What do they want? Do they feel like they are missing something? What are the conversations and trends happening within your market? This will give you good insight to what content you can produce that would address the gaps that potential customers have.

You can try this by using Facebook analytics to see which content gets the most attention so that you maximize your shares and awareness through creating useful and successful content. Posting authoritative content will ensure that you are asserting your brand as an expert in the industry.

Takeaways

Expanding your social media marketing plan is inherent to the continued growth of your business. Too often, business accounts only focus on how often or at what time of the day they make these posts. With so many variables and valuable content to share, it’s important to stay sharp and take advantage of how social media can bring the customers to you and help you keep them!

Build relationships with your customers and allow your brand to be relatable to your target audience. Optimize your bio with helpful information that tells your customer exactly what to expect. You don’t want them leaving your brand’s page just because you didn’t share enough information.

Make customer service easy and quick by monitoring your comments and consistently providing a positive customer experience. Create content that answers the uncertainties related to your brand or exposes something new.

How are YOU ensuring a high ROI with the use of social media? Share any tips or tricks you have for making your social media go to work for YOU!

Ciao,
Miss Kemya

This is a guest post by Madison Crader. Madison specializes in content related to small business digital marketing and building brand awareness. She has a passion for helping entrepreneurs grow their business and set long-term goals.