Get new customers using social media and stay in contact with your existing ones.

Facebook and Instagram are daily hubs of billions of people. If your company does not have a social media account then you are losing serious face time with customers. Thanks to its digital-collecting cred, social media is one of the most affordable and targeted channels to interact with your audiences and generate leads.
Let’s dive in to social media uses that are most productive for business, and best practices for creating a social media strategy in this article. And of course, how to evaluate the social media ROI, and which social platform is the right fit for your brand.

Social media Marketing Tips for Business.

We will discuss below; how social media can be used for all business purposes such as:

• Marketing
• Customer service
• Sales
• Recruiting and hiring
• Crisis management

1.Use social media for marketing.

If you add the right social media strategy to your small business marketing plan, you’ll be able to reach customers and prospects where they’re at. Here are some strategies and guidelines on how to be a successful social media marketer for your brand:

• Develop a social media marketing strategy: The way to get the most out of social media is to plan. That’s planning a social media marketing plan for each platform you intend to be on. Learn your customer and their internet location. Don’t try to be everywhere, all the time,” says Robert Catalano, a digital marketing expert at Toshiba America Business Solutions. “Rather, find your audience’s highest frequency of use and do things they value,” says Johnson.
• Develop a content calendar: Your audience loves to stay updated, so keep up with a posting schedule. And be consistent but don’t post so much that it is rude to your followers. Veronica Clerkin, managing partner and founder of AMZG Agency, advised that you’d consult with social media sites on when to take action. “Reflect where your fans are from, their age, sex, title, etc. Consider which days and times your audience is most active, and post for that,” she said.
• Find a voice: Find a voice and tone in your social media accounts — one that resonates with your followers and shapes their perception of your brand. Take notes on your readers and try to get them in a similar boat so that you don’t come across as pushy. Lastly, don’t be scared to be a little person. It makes your company look adaptable, approachable and dated.
• Stay real: You want to have a voice and a social media following that will draw people in but you don’t want to sound like a fake or lazy idiot. And don’t fake it with your posts, if that’s what you’re doing. So too, act real with your audiences,” said Rachael Amato, content manager at Synaptic. “You don’t have to get on every wave or observation. Post content that is real and seems like it relates to your business.”
• Social media: Get more customer interaction on social media, with a good time. For example, if you’re running social media competitions, if you’re doing a live video where they share something new or interesting, include a link to your website or special promotions in your bio. Engaging, fun activities on social media also aid lead generation.
• Know your target: CRM data — Demographic data, customer activity and social media trends to create content. Being in tune with what your readers expect and responding to it is one of the best ways to increase engagement.

2.Use social media for customer service.

So many customers already communicate on social media so it’s a no-brainer to implement it as a customer service platform. You’re able to quickly and easily solve customer problems through social media — and you’ll get a long-term customer.

• Address customer complaints fast: Most companies think of social media as another way to promote themselves; they might not necessarily take notice if someone says something about them or tweets at them. According to research from Convince & amp; Convert, 42 percent of consumers want a reaction to a complaint on social media in 60 minutes and almost a third want it in half an hour. Follow social media and address complaints immediately and you will establish long-term relationships with your customers.
• Tailor hashtags: There will likely be a lot of variation in the algorithm of a social platform for how hashtags work. So, always check your social media outlets hashtag advice and tips. The hashtag keeps things sorted and simple to follow, especially in sites such as X (previously Twitter). You can even fill in more detail and curate to your hashtags.
• Keep all communications off the public platform: Grudges or angry customers post on an organization’s Instagram, Facebook or tweet about an organization. You should not be dismissive of these calls, but you do not have to go out on the ledge with the whole ordeal. Show other customers that you care about their time and ideas by sending them an initial message to request to continue in private.

3.Use social media for sales.

The direct and most profitable way to enjoy the power of social media is via sales. You can increase sales on social media in different ways:

• Social Media Advertising: The big social platforms, like Facebook, Instagram and X have an advertising system that allows you to get your desired audience and track your ads.
• Sell through social media: Facebook and Instagram have sales platforms and shoppable posts, so you can easily sell on social media.
• Hire brand ambassadors: Recruiting social media influencers or passionate consumers as brand ambassadors is a good way to increase word-of-mouth mentions of your brand. This can increase sales.
• Improve business with social listening: Social listening is a process wherein organizations do a macro view of the customer sentiment in the digital world on the brand and apply the data to the business. Social listening gives an omnidirectional overview of the market and customers that may directly or indirectly affect a brand and sales.
• Answer questions fast: social media is not all messages and ads. It’s also about communicating. You can answer questions, give tours or demo your products/services, or give insider views of your company,’ said Kamel Ben Yacoub, co-founder and CEO at B2B social advertising agency Getuplead. “This kind of communication can help buy the products faster and close the deals faster”.
• Build relationships with your followers: When your followers are genuinely connected with you, they’ll be more likely to read and make a purchase or investment in your business.

4.Use social media for recruiting and hiring.

Recruiting talent in the new hiring process through social media is a wonderful medium. Using LinkedIn, Facebook, X etc to hire allows employers to reach a broad pool of potential employees and easily filter out candidates that could make a great fit. Some ways to utilize social media as a recruiter here are some:

• Make a recruitment plan: As with any other business venture, hiring using social media takes some preparation. Candidates are as much your consumers as they are your stakeholders,” said Amato. ‘You’re just as intentional about a talent campaign and plan for it like any other campaign.
• Go where the candidates are: Whether it is looking for customers or employees, you must first know your target. Depending on the profile of your dream candidate, you may want to target your search on one platform. Likewise, be mindful of the content that creates interest — testimonials, videos, graphics, short articles or a mix of the two.
• Prove company culture: Employees care about company culture, and you have a different culture from other companies in the industry. ‘Adopt the candidates and give them an actual experience of what it’s like to work for you,’ said Clerkin. “Tell the story of a day in the life of an employee, share behind-the-scenes footage of things your employees did, take advantage of a viral phenomenon, and really let your business personality shine.” The videos at work need not be perfect but there are plenty of top video apps to edit and record good content.
• Show them what you stand for: You can present your company culture, but you also have to show them what you stand for. People want to work for a company that they are passionate about. Recruits who are attracted to the fact that you’re also a good fit — either in your own projects or the projects you help run — will want to be on your team.
• Force your openings: Your feed is full of constantly new images and videos. — You have to advertise for jobs if you want to be seen. ‘Tell people about jobs — and post about jobs,’ said bread & Butter chief digital officer Samantha Markiewicz. “When we want to sell a position, we need to promote it constantly so people in that space see, share and do things,” he says.
• Have an open mind: Markiewicz also added that a big part of the social media hiring game is responding to candidates. “You also need to have 1:1 conversation with followers about the role,” she said. “We’ll receive 20-30 messages, followed up with questions, from candidates who are interested in applying.”” [Email protected] When we invest in community management and true engagement after a hiring post goes live, we can have those conversations and move great engaged talent up the hiring funnel.”
• Involve your current employees: There is no better way to make people know that they work for your company than to have the people who actually work for you do the talking already. “I’d say the best things to publish are employee content, testimonials, wins and the benefits of your company,” Catalano said. ‘These are the posts that get most reaction, get the most engagement on Toshiba’s pages,’ said Jones.

5.Use social media for crisis management.

If senseless catastrophes happen in the communities, you’re a business in — whether that’s locally or nationally — it’s hard to know how to act. Should you rant at your business’s social media fans or can you be quiet?

There is, alas, no manual on how to run social media marketing when headlines go gruesome. There are a few schools of thought though regarding the business response to a tragedy through social media.

Here are some tips on social media in a crisis:

• Silence is rarely the right action in a tragedy.
• Nothing but bad or offensive statements are worse than none.
• Have a social media plan so you won’t be left behind when something tragic happens.
• Never be afraid to use the right words, never speak from the heart.
• As soon as a tragedy hits, check your calendar and pause all irrelevant content.
• Determine if your business has a value that can be contributed.

What is social media good for?

There are a lot of benefits when it comes to social media marketing for business. Here are 9 Business Benefits Social Media Offers.

• Create brand recognition: Social media is the best source of brand creation and brand recognition. “Social media offers targeting power and reach and scale for almost no other marketing medium,” said Abdul Muhammad II, marketing and branding guru and chief growth officer at MDM Ventures. ‘People are social media 24/7. “Browsers must go where the crowd is.”
• Express your brand voice: Brand voice and human-facing communication with your customers are now more important than ever for businesses. Social media is also the best platform to develop a visual brand — you get to establish an identity and a voice to showcase your brand promise and connect with audience.
• Brand your brand as an expert: Social media is also where companies become thought leaders and stand apart from their peers — establish themselves as experts with useful and relatable content. Whether it’s by generating content for Instagram, crafting thought-provoking blogs for LinkedIn or displaying some fresh thinking in tweets. “Pie your brain in the bud and everybody starts to think you’re the sage,” Ben Yacoub said.
• Increase website traffic: When your followers share your posts they are curious about you. Then they’ll visit your company website and see what your company is about. And that means more traffic to your website, which means more sales for you.
• Enable reputation management: You don’t want to lose reputation — you want to use social media to connect with customers and resolve problems fast. You even can develop a special hashtag that your subscribers can share if they have a question or issue and you want the people who will be seeing it to come by. Also, you can mention the good reviews or comments on social media.
• Provide data and insights: Most social media sites also have analytics, these let you track followers, CTRs, engagement. These figures can help you know what types of content your fans like best and adjust your advertising accordingly.
• Publish targeted ads: Ads on social media are easy to produce and the nice thing about them is you can customize them to your users. It’s been studied that people like their ads personalized to them which increases click through.
• Keep track of the competition: Other than communicating with customers, social media also keeps track of your competitors. Be a sponge and look at your competitors and learn from them what works and doesn’t. Add those points to your social media marketing.
• Share your customers’ voices: Word of mouth advertising is more successful in the studies, and social media allows you to promote your actual customers. Not only can you encourage customer testimonials and reviews, but you can also motivate them to create new content that will be organically published in a user’s feed.

How To Calculate Social Media ROI?

Here are a few points you’ll want to keep in mind as you build, configure and monitor your business’s social media ROI.

• Create short-term objectives: Most companies who have difficulty tracking social media ROI don’t have concrete, hard-to-get objectives. Developing business-targets, and developing your roadmap to meet those business goals is what makes measuring ROI a success.
• Know your long-term goals: Make sure you know what your final goal is: the end point to which all your short-term goals will add up. This end-product will bring your social media in sync. Your destination should also match your company’s brand and messaging policies.
• Decide metrics you need to measure: Once you’ve decided what you want to measure and how, determine what you should measure (engagement, audience, reach, sentiment, etc.). “Social networks offer analytics built-in to measure results but if you want something more in-depth then Google Analytics is worth it,” says Chris Marine, founder and CEO of Campfire Consulting. Learn how you’re going to leverage that information. “Attribution is critical,” added Marine. “If you tag campaigns well and use UTM codes you can pin each action to its origin.”
• Don’t pay attention to “vanity metrics”: There will be a few you’ll keep track of after your social media marketing effort kicks in. Some of these are “vanity metrics”: those which are easily measurable but do not always tell you how successful a campaign was. Seek out more detailed metrics — conversions, for instance, from the traffic a campaign brought in — to give the full story and a proper ROI measurement.
• Get the most out of quality over quantity: Think carefully about what you’re sharing on social media — write well-thought-out posts. You are social media there to benefit your business and reach an end, not simply to be around. – Take the time to look at your images, captions and hashtags in the right places for each platform, and make sure that each post is getting you where you want it to go.
• Compare spending to success rate: Spending is the easiest thing to track. As you go through the data on your campaign performance, take all the money you invested and how it was used into account. “If you’re doing paid ads, you want to keep track of things such as cost per lead and cost per client,” said Sophie Musumeci, founder of Real Entrepreneur Women. “That’s really important because not only are we seeing quantity of leads, we’re also seeing quality leads so we’re always in tune with ROI.

Social media platforms for businesses

The top social media and business tools here is a look.

Facebook

Facebook is a very big social media platform belonging to the social media company Meta. It has an eclectic user base with more than 3 billion monthly active users in 2024, Statista reports. Facebook for business is worth it for every company big or small.

Post on Facebook, whether it be photos or business news that is necessary. With a business account, you’ll get cutting edge advertising and detailed analytics. The business pages are also customizable: you can include contact details, operating hours, products and services you provide, etc.

Instagram

Also, part of Meta, another really popular site is Instagram. It has more than 2 billion monthly active users in 2024, Statista says. From Instagram Live to Instagram Stories, Instagram has a number of ways to benefit your company. Instagram is a visual-oriented social platform (photos and videos) so this is a great resource for any business with a lot of great visual content to offer. It’s also practically mobile, with mobile-first tools and services.

The more artistic niches do better on Instagram but most companies can use Instagram and its huge following if you go after your target group. The Instagram account manager should also be an observant, photography buff — make sure your Instagram profile photo and video are good quality.

X (Formerly Twitter)

X is good for micro updates, interaction with followers and links to your business blog. But the platform is not right for every company.

You can publish short tweets (240 characters or less), videos, images, links, polls and so on on X. It’s also super simple to connect with your followers on this platform through mentions of others in posts and liking and retweeting tweets.

This social media site is probably not the one to get on if you’re an ultra-visual company or your brand voice isn’t strong. But a lot of businesses really nail X because they have their own, brand voice and they use that to their advantage.

Other companies use X for the business, such as handling customers. Activated, X-using customers will go in search of companies to complain or raving about.

If you have interesting content and you can voice it well, then X is an excellent way to get that word out. # Hashtags are used to boost posts and if you get retweeted by a follower who has many followers then your posts will be viral.

We need to eat with the bullet.’ Don’t post just links or media, be sure you’re posting interesting, pertinent content from other X users as well.

Pinterest

It’s an eye-catching site where you can save and share material via “pinning” digital bulletin boards — they can be categorized. For instance, an individual user can have a food board for pins of recipes, another board for photography and so on.

Pinterest for business uses Rich Pins, you can add different kinds of information to the pin such as product details and location maps using these Rich Pins that a brand can use. Every pin on Pinterest has an image or video attached to it, so Pinterest is all about the images. So, Pinterest isn’t the platform to post something like your business hours.

Pinterest works well for small companies but maybe not for all businesses. The most popular category on the site are DIY projects, clothing, fitness, beauty, photography and food. None of this is to say that non-businesses in these groups are unable to make it on the platform, however, it makes Pinterest a very good marketing tool for them.

Snapchat

Snapchat is an Instagram-like, visual social media platform for smartphones, that feeds you nothing. Video and Photo send between users, or post to the public Stories that will disappear after 24 hours. Chat, Messages, Photo Storage, Events, Media content and more has been added to the app.: Snapchat content is now easily saveable and shared outside of Snapchat.

Because the post is a one time, there’s not as much pressure to produce super-curated content. You’ll also see the number of people and users who have seen your story. For business Snapchat: A small company is probably going to take advantage of Snapchat Stories. But remember that your Stories posts can be viewed only by those who added you. Once you have a following, you can easily make narrative and interactive content using Stories.

YouTube

Google-owned YouTube: It’s a video sharing site where people watch, upload, rate, share and comment on videos. It’s a mega-news/media site.

You should use YouTube for business if your company has creative, visual or educational aspect. The site is very creative, so you need a video editor working for you. But you don’t have to own a channel in order to sell on the platform; YouTube has its own subculture of YouTube stars who post regularly and tend to have large followings.

Companies will usually align themselves with YouTubers for product placement because these people already have loyal fans. YouTube influencers is also an efficient and quick way to advertise your business on YouTube because you don’t need to invest in time and resources creating content and having a following which may take years.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is used by more than 1 billion users and it is the best network for professionals. In terms of LinkedIn business, it’s a great site to attract talented people, be a leader in your field and advertise your company.

LinkedIn is supposed to be professional; it’s not like any other social media, it’s for businesses and professionals. Users build profiles much like a resume and companies build pages to advertise their business. LinkedIn is a professional platform, so post your job listings and company culture there.

Questions & Answer Groups: LinkedIn Groups for industry types can get you brand awareness and bring traffic to your page and site. Same as X — keep both your own and other people’s content on your page. So, be sure to do some professional content related to your company.

TikTok

TikTok — where people record and post short videos — is taking off — there are more than 1.5 billion active users in 2024, Stastia said. The best business tool in existence is it if deployed right. Because TikTok is owned by the notoriously picky generation Z, it’s hard to find the right tone on the platform to build a business with.

You want to use TikTok for your business and you want to be savvy about your brand and how it is reflected on TikTok. Look at other businesses taking on TikTok before jumping in.