5 Ways to Build Your Social Media Platforms

Social media advertising offers many benefits that are unavailable on other marketing channels. When used properly, it can maximize your reach online and establish a strong connection with audiences. Successfully advertising your small business on social media ensures your business will thrive by giving you the chance to increase brand awareness and gain more opportunities for market research.

Building a social media platform can seem daunting, especially if you’re new to the channel and unsure how to approach it. However, it’s much more accessible once you get started. Here are some tips for growing your social media audience to help you get the best results from your campaigns.

1. Know Who Your Audience Is

To connect with your audiences, you need to know who they are. You must learn specifically who you want to target and find out where they spend their time online. Keep in mind that you can't reasonably be present on every platform. That’s both inefficient and generally difficult to manage. Instead, select the platforms your customers use regularly. That way you can focus more selectively and let these channels inform the content and tags you’ll use to attract audience attention.

It's also important to remember that social media is less about selling and more about interacting with customers to help them solve specific issues. When using social media as a business, you're engaging with your audience more than selling to them. It is a digital marketing medium where your goals are more effective when trying to provide value to build awareness, rather than being pushy.

2. Set Realistic Goals for Your Social Media Growth

Your social media needs to start small with clear, specific, and achievable goals that help you expand. Narrow your focus to the people most likely to become customers. The best basis to start is targeting local customers within a particular geographic area to increase foot traffic to your physical locations. That gives you more of a concrete basis to start your plan since it’s easier than trying to attract people in other areas who won't be able to visit your stores or offices as quickly.

3. Be Consistent with Your Posts

Consistency is vital for your social media posts, as it drives engagement and builds brand awareness. For most businesses, the ideal posting frequency is around once per day, but this will vary from platform to platform. To make sure your social media posting is consistent, you can also use social media software to schedule your posts ahead of time. It enables you to spend more time focusing on growing your business while automatically maintaining your social media presence.

Apart from posting consistency, brand and thematic consistency are equally important as you tailor different content to different platforms and their respective audiences. When posting on Facebook, keep your content and language friendly and entertaining. LinkedIn campaigns may benefit from formal messaging and content that resonates with professionals. The more you understand each platform and audience segment, the more effectively you can connect with them. In the process, you'll be able to build a solid brand for your business.

4. Be Creative with Visuals and Videos

Images are crucial on social media. People are more interested in visual content and images than text posts, so you need to include images and video whenever possible. Whether on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, people like to learn by watching videos that businesses post. That will keep a large segment of your audience consistently engaged while further appealing to them with quality production. Keep your social media videos and other visuals casual, since your content will likely appear between pictures of friends and family. 

5. Promote Your Social Media Presence

While your audiences may be inclined to share your posts and grow your audience through word-of-mouth, you shouldn't rely on your audience to grow on its own. Instead, regularly promote your social media presence to expand your reach. Launch paid advertising campaigns on social media and promote products, like software and eBooks on different platforms. Make sure that people are aware of you beyond your social media profiles and get the most from your campaigns.

Also, you should link to your social media profiles from your website and other platforms. You can do so by including social media icons in your footer with links to your profiles. You also can encourage people to follow you on social media through blog posts and email marketing campaigns.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage and Fuel Online Success

Social media is one of the most effective ways to connect with nearly any audience segment without a huge expense. A well-implemented social media strategy helps you maximize your exposure online. You can then increase brand awareness and recognition, or promote your products or services, complementing the rest of your online and offline marketing efforts. Growing your social media audience is a crucial way to excel and develop a strong brand identity.