Social media has become ingrained in the lives of billions of people across the globe. The various platforms are utilized to consume news and entertainment, while interactions take place in the form of likes, shares, and conversations. Social media has even gained importance for business in a plethora of ways. GlobalWebIndex reported that 54 percent of users research products they are interested in via social media. With users spending hours browsing their feed daily, it opens the doorway for countless opportunities to get your products seen.
There are various methods you can take to integrate social media into your company, however smaller enterprises usually benefit from a more focused approach. Limiting the scope of your ambitions in the early stages can pay off in the long run. So how can you build your social media footprint using a focused approach? We’ve broken it down into 4 main avenues.
Narrow Down Your Goals
Most businesses start social media accounts with little thought for what they hope to achieve. The approach you take will vary depending on your goals of course, but you won’t have a way to efficiently track success without stats to analyze. Aiming to increase brand awareness, for example, is a different objective than trying to increase sales. Setting out a primary goal can drive your social activity through the roof, with your calls to action focusing on the overall aim.
Study the Main Social Platforms
You may have a preferred social platform that you use, but it doesn’t always necessarily mesh well with your products. Your primary social platform should not only suit your brand, but also offer the capabilities to promote yourself. Instagram, for example, is primarily based on eye-catching images, so a business without a visual appeal may struggle in growing their following, but their message may easily land with users on Facebook. If you are focused on educating people on your new networking product, you may lean more towards Twitter than TikTok. Find the platforms that offer the best chance for your message to cut through, providing the quickest ways to grow your audience and increase brand awareness in your market.
Analyze Your Audience
Identify what your intended market audience is, and find out where they spend their time online. Honing in on the platforms where your main demographic is active on is essential. With mature audiences, marketers find greater success placing advertisements and messages on Facebook. If you are creating a networking product, it would make more sense to use Twitter and LinkedIn than it would to promote on Instagram. If you are looking to target Gen Z users, take a look at TikTok and Snapchat. It’s about growing where your audience is, not growing where they aren’t.
When you have gained some customers, survey them to find out their social media habits. The places your ideal audience spends the majority of their time should become your target platforms.
Build a Small Circle of Influencers
Influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing industries, however you can quickly lose money on a poorly orchestrated campaign. Investing heavily in many influencers will help you reach a broad audience in a short time. Unfortunately, much of this audience will be diverse and unlikely to find interest in your brand and transition to becoming loyal customers. What is the solution you may ask? Focusing on a small number of targeted influencers ensures you find the right demographic most likely to engage with your brand. Campaigns utilizing various micro-influencers with a niche audience saw greater success in promotion than campaigns utilizing solely one large influencer with a diverse audience. You can save money and time by investing into building a circle of carefully chosen influencers who will promote over the long term. If you are a smaller enterprise and would like to begin searching around for micro-influencers in your industry field, you can sign up for Glewee’s Brand to Influencer program here.
In the world of social media, there is no single guaranteed method to building a following. The approach you take directly relies on the time and resources you can dedicate to this process. Especially for small businesses, limiting the scope to a small number of platforms can be the answer. Using a focused method will place a limit on growth, but you stand a higher chance of cutting through the noise and building an engaged audience for your business.
