By: Vincent Sevilla

Developing a social media presence has become a necessity for every business in today’s fast-paced age amidst the growing popularity of e-commerce. Business-minded individuals from different trades ranging from retailers, furniture suppliers, digital artists, and more are embracing the incredible advantage that a well-implemented social media strategy can aid them in growing their sales.

Below are tips to help you convert your social media followers into customers.

1. Focus on your social media efforts

A product is only as good as its promotional value. If it doesn’t achieve the level of promotion that it deserves, then it’ll never be able to reach its potential customers. Taking another look at how your business plans can help you identify if you’ve been investing enough effort on the promotional side of things.

Social media has become embedded in our day-to-day lives. Brands are putting their focus on accessibility as their strong point when it comes to being the better choice against their competitors. Integrated mobile-driven business models have been taking advantage of the rising tide of the dependency of customers on mobile applications and platforms. One of the more prominent uses of mobile apps includes interactions with social media platforms.

2. Know your audience

One of the many ways to improve the conversion of your followers to customers is understanding who you’re selling your products to. Companies develop buyer personas, which allow them to pinpoint who their target demographic is. Buyer personas are fictional representations of a company’s ideal customer based on market research and data on existing customers. For example, Michelle is a 27-year-old single mom who works in graphic design for a lifestyle website. 

The quality of your research determines how well-made your marketing campaigns will fare. Getting quantitative data such as the age range of your followers and the top posts they engage with can be a good start for your crafting your campaign. But if you want to go the extra mile, invest in curating qualitative interviews and surveys that should give you an edge in developing the ideal buyer persona for your brand.

3. Know the strengths and weakness of your platform

A veteran social media manager knows that each social media platform has its strengths and weaknesses. If you’re looking to increase your presence on any of the chosen platforms listed above, you’ll need to master each medium by being aware of the types of content that you should post. For example, Instagram has become a great space for discovering brands and products, while Twitter is where people get their news.

As well, being aware of the quirks of each platform, such as Twitter’s character limit or Instagram’s image dimensions, can make it easier for you to create guidelines in making content to post. Images that go beyond the suggested dimensions might end up stretched or cropped which could damage your professional image. Copywriters need to know the limits and specifications on the respective word limit of the platforms as Twitter and even Facebook and Instagram’s text formatting can contribute to how long or how short their captions should be.

4. Analyze each social media channel

Apart from getting the hang of how each social media platform works and what their strengths are, you should also take a look at how you’ve been performing in each platform. In-app analytics are readily available for pages, which allow you to assess how effective your social media marketing campaigns are. Knowing how to interpret these numbers and adjusting your marketing campaigns appropriately will allow you to strategize better campaigns for future posts.

5. Build trust by utilizing user-generated content

One of the more effective ways to improve your social media channels is by encouraging your audience to create content for you. This would further improve the conversion rate of your customers from mere followers to customers as it will allow them to actively participate in your branding efforts and engage with their peers.

User-generated content can be as simple as replying to your tweets or commenting on your posts. Content such as this will allow your brand to increase its viability to improve social proof, giving your potential followers credible insights into your services. Customer testimonials provide a valuable source not just for your potential customers but also to you. Testimonials will help you as a brand owner to further develop your services and to address problems and concerns that they might have with your product.

6. Promote your products and services

Promoting your services and products frequently is an integral part of staying ahead in your chosen industry niche. Your newer followers might not be aware of the other products and services that you offer, which makes promoting your brand consistently a necessity for any aspiring content creator.

7. Think beyond your company’s goals

Securing partnerships with other companies can be an effective way to help boost the growth of your own business and theirs. The best companies know how to use advocacy to their business’ mission and vision. Big brands have been known to use popular and trendy issues such as LGBT Pride month and mental health awareness as a means to support the plight while making their products visible. However, we’re not endorsing that you should take advantage of an advocacy just for the sole purpose of increasing your sales. In fact, that’s exactly what you should avoid. Be sure that you genuinely support causes as consumers can spot when brands are being inauthentic.

In early 2018, content creators from YouTube faced backlash left and right in promoting the mental health care service BetterHelp, which was advertised as providing professional help for its subscribers’ mental illnesses. The various YouTube celebrities who promoted the service were unaware of how they were misleading their viewers on what the product actually provided.

Before you think about teaming up with another company or having a partnership with an influencer, you need to make sure that you’ve done the legwork on knowing about their services and the customer responses on their quality of service. Doing a little bit of research goes a long way to avoid any potentially permanent and damaging affiliations with your brand.

8. Value the importance of partnerships

Though you should be wary of who you partner up with, it’s also one of the more invaluable relationships that you can have as a business owner. One rising trend for creators is partnering with their peers to create a product collaboration.

A brand’s life success and lifespan depends on their ability to stay relevant. Collaborations allow brands to stay relevant by tapping into each other’s audiences, while also creating buzz for their brands.

For example, this website created a Bluehost website hosting review because they’re collaborating with them. It is also a very effective strategy to capture their followers who are looking for this kind of content.

9. Provide avenues where your customers can support you

A business can be measured by the amount of support it receives from its followers. Artists, for example, usually offer commissions, which allow their followers to receive personal illustrations for a fee, allowing them to produce more ‘free content’ for all. Patreon has become a popular service for content creators that allow their fans to support them in exchange for perks and bonuses. Bonuses include sneak peeks to their next projects and even patreon-only blogs that reveal the process and work that goes into developing content.

With the growing diversity of content creators from sketch comedians to digital illustrators to programmers, the rising popularity of video streaming services has revealed that there is an audience for different types of quirks and skillsets.

10. Invest in paid ads on social media

Increasing your brand’s reach can be achieved by leveraging social media ads. Boosting your posts allow you to reach people who aren’t following your page. Though it can feel a bit intimidating to be present to those who aren’t subscribed to you – that’s because it is. Before you start boosting your pages, make sure that the content you develop will be enticing to your target audience.

Conclusion

Mastering the learning curve of optimizing your social media platforms might prove to be a bit trickier than what you’d expect. Small to medium enterprises can fumble and fall on their faces if they try to do things on their own. Others look for advice and guidance from professional digital marketing agencies that can help them in creating campaigns for their brand.

Regardless of whether you’d like to learn the steps and figure some new things on your own, it’s important to always keep an eye out on current trends to know how to use it to your advantage. In addition, always have a line of communication open with your customers so that you continue improving your product and services. A well-developed product attracts not just loyal customers, but also potential business partnerships as well.

Author Biography: Vincent Sevilla is a professional web designer and inbound strategist for GRIT. His goal? To innovate ideas, create good music, and travel to all the best places in the Philippines. You can follow him on Twitter @easyvince