Social media is no longer a social interaction and communication channel. According to a report by Statista, social media was used by approximately 3.6 billion people worldwide, and the number is expected to further increase to 4.4 billion in 2025. This makes social media a massive marketplace for businesses to reach the target audience by creating higher engagement.
The social media campaign helps businesses and brands reach target customers, get better insight, and help businesses reach a wider audience. Unlike traditional marketing, social media is a cost-effective form of marketing with the potential of reaching billions of customers across the globe. It is indeed one of the most effective forms of digital marketing to help you stay afloat despite the competition.
Here are ways to keep the audience engaged and grow the customer base for business through the use of social media in 2022.
1. Increase Growth and Visibility for Business
The first step towards lead conversion and higher sales is increasing customer awareness for the business. With awareness comes the next step, which is the engagement of the target audience. Did you know a significant percentage of website traffic is driven with the help of social media posts and content creation?
The well-curated and optimised social media posts help in driving traffic to the website. As the organic traffic increases, it enhances the visibility and engagement that help with lead conversion and higher sales. Social media is great for lead generation for businesses. The creation of short-form content like Instagram reels with Instagram video editor and Facebook lead ads has helped businesses generate leads and turn them into sales.
2. Increase Reach through Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has become a billion-dollar business. Businesses can reach their target audience through paid collaborations or barter with social media influencers. The influencers have millions of followers, exponentially increasing the reach of the people. As social media influencers have a large following base, they can help draw attention to a larger segment of people. This becomes a much more affordable option of paid advertising as compared to roping in a celebrity or advertising on TV or newspaper.
3. Build Authentic Connect with People
Social media has the power to build and develop authentic and meaningful connections and hence allow the audience to connect with the audience in real-time. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook offer an option called story, which helps in sharing content in real-time to give insight on behind the scenes for the business—using social media to leverage storytelling and bring in testimonials from other users to connect with a large segment of the target audience.
4. Create Content that Aligns to Brand Value
According to an article by Forbes, it is the quality of the content that draws the attention of the audience. Yes, it is important to know the latest algorithm, but there should be no compromise on content quality and type. As a business, take time to know the audience and what kind of content keeps the target audience engaged. The benefit of social media is the array of options it provides in terms of content creation.
- On creating engaging content, it has chances of going viral with reshares, likes, and comments, further increasing its publicity and audience. The content floats from network to work and can turn up to millions of shares, increasing brand popularity.
- Ask the followers what kind of content they want to see and curate accordingly. At times you might be creating amazing content, but despite that, the shares and engagement are low. This is because the audience is not able to connect with the content.
- Short-form content like Instagram reels is even promoted by Instagram according to its latest algorithm. Keep an eye on the latest trends and use them to create content.
5. Direct Sales through social media
If you are a small business, take advantage of social media to sell products to customers. By starting a page on Instagram or Facebook for selling products, it is easy and affordable for small businesses to sell their products using social media channels. For example – many home-based businesses like candle making or jewellery making, or any handmade products are sold through Instagram.
6. Facilitate Better Communication for Businesses
Leverage social media marketing for establishing better communication with the target audience. By interacting with the target audience in a good manner, it helps in damage control and reputation management for the brand. Despite all the efforts, some customers complain of a bad customer service experience. Being polite and professional and resolving the issue helps in better management of reputation using social media channels.
Social media as a platform even gives a chance to communicate with the audience directly. It is two-way communication, where business owners can interact with the audience, live through live video streaming, or answer questions in real-time.
7. Stay up to Date with Analytics
Social media gives real-time insight and analytics on customer engagement. There are various social media tracking as well as analytical tools which helps in understanding engagement level and checking which and what kind of online content has the highest viewers. Social media is a great platform for affordable targeted advertising that helps in promoting the business in front of a chosen audience. This is known to give higher ROI for the investment done for the paid advertisement campaigns. The site analytics help in conducting a detailed analysis on the demographics and tailoring social media marketing strategies for maximising audience reach.
Conclusion
As a marketplace, social media has helped many businesses scale up through increased interaction and customer engagement. The growing competition has made it crucial for businesses to adopt social media to reach a target audience amongst billions of global users of social media. It is quite an affordable strategy to boost business, create brand promotion and awareness through real-time engagement and pay to advertise. Social media helps businesses create engaging content that reflects the brand and results in increased leads and sales.
