As an entrepreneur it is crucial to know the most effective way to expose your product or service to your target market. Social media has become an inevitable part of the future, its popularity and usage having exploded in the last decade. The number of social media using adults has increased from 7% in 2005 to 69% just 10 years later, demonstrating the startling increase of social media influence in society today.
Why is social media so effective?
It is estimated that an individual spends an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes on social media and messaging apps per day. With so many people spending much of their day online, social media has quickly become the most effective way of reaching your target market and securing future customers.
By utilising social media tools, creating a brand presence online, using visuals, receiving online feedback, and increasing web traffic you will become a successful entrepreneur in the 21st century.
The great thing about social media is there are so many apps and tools that you can use to best reach your goals successfully. Different social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, reach different age groups and have different strengths and weaknesses. 79% of adults aged between 30–49 years, and 68% of adults aged 50 to 64 years use Facebook in 2019. Therefore, Facebook is an excellent social media platform to target an older audience.
Companies like YESpbm can assist with the creation, development and success of the use of these platforms.
Use multiple platforms and tools
The most effective way to use social media as an entrepreneur is to advertise and promote over multiple platforms. Let’s say your product is reusable straws, Snapchat may be the best platform to appeal to the younger market, as youth are your target market, but using Instagram or Twitter is the best way to promote a sustainable, eco-friendly product. By using all 3 of these social media platforms, you increase exposure of your product and potential future sales.
To successfully reach your business goals, it is essential to use social media strategically. Strategic branding creates a consistent and recognisable image of your business, making it easy for customers to remember and eventually favour your brand.
Branding is so successful online as it is very effective in keeping potential customers interested and/or surrounded by your business. Features such as ‘re-posts’, ‘comments’, ‘hashtags’, ‘tags’ and the option to send to group chats, allows your brand to be a constant topic of conversation.
Using social media influencers to promote your product, by creating posts, positive online reviews and recommendations, creates brand awareness for your product. The more customer awareness you get, the more customer loyalty your brand has, and therefore, potential sales. 77% of customers have claimed to maintain loyal relationships with their preferred companies for over 10 years. Creating a brand presence for your business online ensures future success.
Success with images and visuals
Using visuals to advertise your product adds to the success of your business. People on social media prefer to engage with visual content as it allows them to retain information more effectively.
Evidence suggests that online users can only retain 10–20% of what they read or hear about, but when the information is visual, what they retain shoots up to 65%. Images capture the users attention and can increase web traffic or brand awareness significantly. Tweets with images are 150% more likely to be retweeted than tweets without images, a massive increase considering the only difference is an image.
Using images, and visuals to advertise your business, increases the awareness of your brand, web traffic, and the future success of your company.
Feedback & Review Gathering
Receiving feedback is one of the best ways for a business to show customers they care and enables the product to be improved and customised effectively. Through online forums, comment threads and surveys, your business can receive feedback on your product and current customer satisfaction. There are many tools that can help you generate reviews automatically such as YESLink. These reviews can be automatically published across all your social sites and review accounts.
Another way to gain feedback through social media is to create short online surveys, a study conducted by Market Force showed 83% of customers complete at least 1 survey in the past year.
Putting online surveys and review forums in place is effective in showing your customers you care about what they think, and you will make changes to suit their needs. This strengthens their loyalty to your business at the same time as improving your product.
Another way to gain feedback through social media is by creating posts and asking a question in the caption, this allows for several responses in the comment section, allowing your business to monitor general customer opinions. Online reviews are another important way to use customer feedback to increase sales and making sure they are visible on your social media page is crucial.
Young customers are 99% more likely to rely on online reviews than older generations, and 66% of customers stated they were more likely to trust a brand with many reviews. Taking time to create online surveys, display product reviews and posting questions about your products, increases customer loyalty, and sales.
Increase Web traffic
By combining these different steps and by advertising and promoting your product on social media, your business will be provided with potential customers through increased web traffic. By advertising your business on multiple different social media platforms and being active by posting regularly, using hashtags, and throwing giveaways, you maximise customer attention.
Web traffic from social media is helpful to your business as it draws quality customer attention. Because social media enables you to build connections with customers through online interactions, the web traffic you receive via social media is promising and filled with potential customers. Web traffic increases quickly through social media as it is easy for your page and business to be shared with just a click of a button, making it easy for potential customers to locate and look at your page. Increasing web traffic allows your business to maximise customer attention.
If you’ve hit a wall or your business is just not working out, using social media to promote your business could be just the thing to get everything running smoothly once again.
Social media has proven to be the most effective way to achieve success as a business, so investing time and effort in utilising social media tools and creating a brand presence pays off.
Social media is one of the keys to becoming a successful entrepreneur in todays market, unlocking endless new opportunities with the sky as the limit.
Talk to YESpbm today about how we can help build, develop and grow your social media influence and Personal Brand today.
