How to Grow your Business with Social Media
Social media could be highly influential and valuable to your business growth. It’s a great way to market your business and connect with potential customers.
According to Statista, social media users will increase to almost 4.41 billion by 2025, spending approximately 147 minutes per day on social media platforms. With the growing number of social media users, it’s vital to maintain a social media presence for your business. Using social media wisely could also help assist the growth of your dropshipping business.
Whether you’re just getting started on your entrepreneurial journey or looking for ways to grow your existing dropshipping business, we've put together an easy-to-follow guide that will help you grow your dropshipping business.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
Why should your business build a strong social media presence?
Every business wants to attract its target audience, for which you need to create content that resonates. The better your social media visibility, the more trust you build with your audience, even before developing a direct relationship. It’s the first step to attracting your target audience.
Social media analytics also help you better understand your customer's problems, needs, and desires. This could ultimately help you create content that captivates attention and offers value.
Which social media channels should you use for business?
So, you know how valuable building a social media presence is to your business’ growth, but you might be wondering where to get started? With so many popular social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube, it’s hard to work out which platforms to prioritise and how to reach your target audience.
Every social media platform has its strengths and could yield different results. Make sure to choose channels that support your content strategy and align with your business goals. Maintaining a social media account means just that: maintenance. It isn’t a one-time task. You continually need to generate content to entice potential customers and retain existing customers. Generally speaking, it’s wise to prioritise 1-3 platforms and focus on doing them well.
How to use social media to market your products
Social media is a great way to initiate positive interaction with customers, build mutual trust, and promote your dropshipping products to generate more sales. Managing and maintaining social media accounts may sound daunting, but it’s also a fun job. So remember to enjoy the journey as you and your brand get social.
Below are some ways to build your social media presence, market your products, and grow your business.
Create a plan
The first step is to create a social media plan for your business. It starts with setting your goals. Your goals could range from creating brand awareness to increasing engagement or generating leads and boosting conversions. Having a well-crafted social media plan ensures that your efforts don’t go to waste but support your specific business goals. When you’ve set a clear goal, you know what you’re trying to achieve and what steps you need to take to achieve the goals. You will also be able to plan your posts and schedule them in advance.
Consistency is key
Consistency is the number-one rule. For your audience to recognise your brand, you need to be consistent. But at the same time, you should note, this shouldn't come at the expense of creating quality content. Keeping a regular posting schedule will help your business stay on top of customers' minds, and when you’re memorable, you’re more likely to generate leads and sales.
Visual content works best
Gone are the days when posting lengthy paragraphs got you noticed. With our attention span shorter than a goldfish’s, you must create engaging content that encourages people to break from scrolling. According to HubSpot, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. This shows the supremacy of visual content in media. Posting stunning visual content could earn you a high level of customer engagement.
Use the right hashtags
Using a hashtag with a relevant keyword makes your content more discoverable by the right people. It increases customer engagement and helps to drive traffic to your content, boosting likes, shares, and views. You can use hashtags on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok. The top tip would be to use short and easy to remember hashtags. Another tip, limit the number of hashtags you use. It could make you look spammy.
Leverage social media tools
Using social media tools could automate and simplify your daily tasks. For instance, Hootsuite enables you to direct followers’ mentions and comments in one dashboard and respond to them faster. With the help of social media tools, you could track when your target audience is most active and post at peak times to increase engagement. Software such as Later and Content Studio allows you to schedule your posts on various platforms, monitor online behaviours surrounding your brand, and conduct audits to get data-driven recommendations for future content.
Encourage positive interactions
Social media engagement is a crucial consideration when marketing your ecommerce store. The more you engage with your followers, the more likely you are to convert them into loyal customers. You can encourage positive interactions by posting content people can engage with, responding to comments and mentions, organising contests and giveaways, using emojis, and asking questions. Also, remember to add a call to action (CTA) at the end to encourage your followers to like, share, and comment.
Switch to a business account
For business purposes, refrain from using your personal accounts and consider switching to business accounts. It’s free to switch. You can add your business information such as location, contact details, and ecommerce store website. You also get access to several helpful features, such as a contact button for your profile, website links in your stories, access to social media analytics, and options for advertising your business.
Now that you know how to use social media to your advantage, it’s time to get social and develop a social media marketing strategy to grow your business.
Learn more about how to start and scale your ecommerce business with Dropshipzone.