Social media used to be purely about brand awareness. Now, it’s one of the most powerful ways to generate leads and achieve sustainable business growth.
No matter your industry, location or budget, social media lets you reach the right people at the right time. The problem is that not every business approaches social media with this mindset. They treat social media as an afterthought, posting whenever they have time and hoping something sticks. The businesses seeing the best results take a much more strategic approach.
Why Is Social Media Important for Business Growth?
With millions of people using social media every day, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube are where people go to learn more about businesses.
Utilising social media allows businesses to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Build trust with their audience
- Drive traffic to their website
- Generate enquiries
- Make sales
- Stay connected with existing customers
- Establish themselves as experts
Social media is different from traditional advertising. Instead of talking at your audience, you're interacting with them while consistently reinforcing your brand.
Set Clear Goals Before You Start
If you post on social media with no goals in mind, you’ll struggle to measure success. Before jumping into social media, take some time to consider what you want to achieve.
Your goals might include:
- Generating more website enquiries
- Increasing online sales
- Building local brand awareness
- Growing an engaged community
- Driving more traffic to your website
- Recruiting new staff
Knowing your goals beforehand will guide your content decisions moving forward.
Choose the Right Platforms
You don't need to be active everywhere.
Instead, focus on the platforms your customers spend time on, for example:
- Facebook is ideal for local businesses, community pages and advertising.
- Instagram works brilliantly if you have strong visual content. Think hospitality, retail, fitness, beauty and property.
- LinkedIn is suited to B2B businesses, professional services and recruiters.
- TikTok allows you to reach larger audiences with entertaining, short-form video content.
- YouTube is great for longer-form content such as tutorials, demonstrations and educational information. YouTube can also help you rank in Google search.
Trying to manage every platform often leads to inconsistent posting, so it's much better to focus on two strong platforms, than give half effort to five.
Create Content That Provides Value
The most successful social media accounts provide value with every post. This could be in the form of entertaining content, educating your followers or offering actionable tips.
Content Ideas:
- Behind-the-scenes videos
- Customer success stories
- Industry tips
- Frequently asked questions
- Product demonstrations
- Company updates
- Educational videos
- Updates
- Before-and-after transformations
When people find your content genuinely useful, they're much more likely to remember your business when they're ready to buy.
Be Consistent
Consistency is one of your largest factors for long term success. Posting once every couple weeks won't leave algorithms or your followers much to interact with.
Set up an easy content calendar that allows you to post frequently. While quality will always beat out quantity any day of the week, consistency breeds familiarity and trustworthiness.
Three well thought out posts a week will perform better than simple daily posts.
Engage With Your Audience
Social media is a two-way conversation, so make sure you're:
- Replying to comments
- Answering questions
- Thanking customers for their business
- Contacting recent customers to ask what you could have done better
- Solve problems that your customers are facing
People don’t just follow accounts with great content. They follow accounts that interact with them too.
Use Video Wherever Possible
Short-form video continues to dominate social media.
Posting video on social media doesn’t need a big production team or budget, just use your smartphone to create:
- Product demos
- Customer testimonials
- Behind the-scenes action
- Tutorials
- Time-lapses
Facebook and Instagram videos receive much higher engagement than images alone.
Don’t Ignore Paid Advertising
While having a strong organic presence is important, paid social media allows you to reach new people who have never heard of your business.
Paid social platforms allow you to hyper-target users based on:
- Location
- Demographics
- Interests
- Job role
- Behaviour
- Websites they’ve visited
This makes paid social one of the most cost-effective ways to generate leads when campaigns are properly managed.
Track What Works
If your social media doesn’t help your business grow, you’re wasting your time.
Regularly monitor your analytics to understand what content your audience enjoy and use that data to inform your decisions moving forward.
Too many business look at ‘likes’ as a success metric, but likes are meaningless unless they contribute to your overall business goals.
Instead, focus on metrics that actually contribute to business growth, such as:
- Website traffic
- Lead enquiries
- Phone calls
- Sales
- Click-through rate
- Engagement rate
- Video watch time
Make sure to review your analytics regularly to understand what content performs best, then focus on that.
Make Sure Social Media Fits Into Your Wider Marketing Strategy
It’s no secret that the most successful digital marketing strategies use multiple channels.
Social media works best when utilised alongside:
Running campaigns over multiple channels allows you to reach your audience at different stages of their journey.
Need Help Growing Your Business Through Social Media?
Social media marketing shouldn't just be about gaining likes. At Hagerty Digital we design and implement social media campaigns which help you gain more exposure, drive enquiries and contribute to your businesses growth.
If you’re after continuous social media management, paid social campaigns or a comprehensive digital marketing plan, our experts are here to help you leverage your online presence for new business.
