Do you appreciate the importance of using social media as part of your overall marketing strategy? No matter what kind of business you operate, in today’s highly competitive marketplace you must have a robust online presence. Having a positive social media presence is just one piece of this puzzle and, in 2023, using social media for business marketing is not optional.

It’s not enough, however, to simply create a profile on a random social platform and leave it at that!

It’s not enough to just “be there”. You need to build a strong social presence on the right platform for your business’s target audience, and you need to be present. This means curating and maintaining a thriving, active account.

As a business owner or manager, you must understand that effective social media marketing requires commitment and attention to see a return on your investment. It requires creativity to curate content that will captivate and engage audiences and compel action in the form of engagement, sharing, and click-throughs.

Does this sound overwhelming? It can be! Between inevitable periods of creative block and reduced engagement, as well as the time investment it takes, it might all seem too difficult…

Dot-to-Dot Digital can help – by managing your social media and other digital marketing so you can focus on running your business.

Why do businesses need to be on social media?

There are several reasons why you can’t ignore social media for your business.

These include (but are not limited to):

1. Growing social awareness among consumers
2. Consumer desire to put faces to the brands and businesses
3. A powerful tool for content promotion and the generation of leads, sales, and traffic to your website
4. Increase brand awareness for your business and establish your brand as an authority in your niche
5. A fantastic and effective way to communicate/engage directly with clients/customers/followers
6. Reputation management and crisis communication
7. Enhanced customer service and support
8. Supports your SEO campaign

Contrary to common belief, you don’t need a huge budget to make your mark on social media – you simply need the right social media strategy.

15 Tips for Building a Business Social Media Presence

1. First and foremost, understand that social media is not about broadcasting at your audience. It is, instead, about conversing with them – engaging in conversations and building real relationships.
2. Know your audience. Who are they? What do they need? How do they use social media? Which social platforms are they most likely to use? How often will they want to see your posts? What kind of content do they prefer?
3. Set tangible, SMART goals – they must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
4. Be human. You can’t be a personality-free, robotic entity on social media. Social media engagement requires transparency and humanised posts.
5. Connect. Seek to create real relationships as opposed to focusing on follower numbers. Ask your audience questions. Reply to queries and comments – and promptly. Start conversations. Be sincere. Always maintain a friendly professionalism that aligns with your brand identity. This is how you foster the B2C relationship and customer loyalty.
6. NEVER BUY FOLLOWERS or LIKES. Doing so is inauthentic and is frowned upon by audiences and search engines.
7. Give credit where it is due – @mention others who you reference on your posts.
8. Social media should focus on helping your audience rather than selling to them! No more than 20% of your posts at most should be sales focused. Instead, make the purpose of the majority of your social content to entertain, inform, motivate, and inspire.
9. Include your focus keywords in your social posts to support your SEO efforts. If appropriate and relevant to the post, hashtag these.
10. Be visual. Even on Twitter, a traditionally text-based social platform, tweets with image links get three times the engagement rate of those without[1]. Photos, videos, and graphics are the best way to capture the audience’s attention.
11. Link back to your website. This provides the all-important click-throughs that you ultimately seek. One example of effectively achieving this is to share your onsite blog via your social channels with a clickable link.
12. Include relevant hashtags appropriately. They are especially useful on Twitter and Instagram and are now more commonplace on Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and TikTok. Ideally, limit to three to five hashtags per post.
13. Pre-schedule posts. This enables you to post consistently, fine-tune posts in advance, maximise engagement, avoid repetitive content, and ultimately save you time (and money).
14. Analyse results. Your social strategy, just like your SEO and other digital marketing efforts, should not be “set-and-forget”. You need to make tracking and analysis an ongoing commitment and tweak your approach where needed.
15. Partner with the right digital marketing strategist. They can deliver a customised social media marketing campaign to suit your business and your audience, enabling you to expand your reach for enhanced online visibility.

When the right audiences see you online at the right time (i.e., when they are actively seeking the solutions you provide), you get results.

Talk With a Digital Strategist

Dot-to-Dot Digital can help you build a better, stronger social media presence to boost your business visibility online and get results!

We are a boutique digital marketing agency and working with clients in various industries all over Australia and New Zealand. Through our experience and expertise, and with a personalised approach, we will help you connect the dots for enhanced business success via a targeted strategy, digital marketing, and creative content – including an effective social media marketing strategy.

Talk with a digital strategist today!  We look forward to meeting you, collaborating to understand your business goals, and creating and conducting the ideal campaign to get you seen online by the right audiences at the right time.

[1] https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/7-tips-creating-engaging-content-every-day.html