Social media is one of the most powerful mediums to promote and advertise your business. It is a great way to reach out and to consumers, get noticed online and grow your business. If used correctly, it can be very effective for the long term success of your business.

However, in spite of the opportunities, success on social media can be a huge challenge. Many small businesses fail in social media and are not able to harness its full potential.

1. Strong Commitment

A study of 4,000 small businesses in the U.S and Canada found lack of commitment to be the main reason businesses failed in social media.

Success on social media marketing requires time and effort. It will not happen overnight. Unlike other direct marketing methods, ROI in social media will come only after months, and in many cases up to a year’s effort. Businesses need to understand this be strongly committed in order to succeed.

2. Assign Sufficient Resources

As results are not immediate and take time to achieve, small businesses often find it difficult to justify allocating sufficient resources to build presence on social media. This is an even bigger concern when it comes to hiring someone.

3. Produce Quality Content Constantly

Social media and content marketing go hand in hand. You need a constant supply of quality content for success on social media. The ability to produce quality content consistently over long periods of time including blog posts, infographics, videos and reports is the key to long term success on social media.

4. Share Content From Several Sources

Many users make the mistake of sharing their content only. A good Social media strategy requires providing users with valuable content from across the internet, not just your website or blog.

Sharing quality posts, content from several sources is essential to succeed on social media.

5. Have Clear Goals

You are unlikely to succeed with any online activity without well defined objectives or goals. This is true whether you are starting a website, blog or building a presence on social media.

Simply trying to increase your following without a clear strategy is unlikely to bring any noticeable benefits for your business. Think of what you want to achieve.

Examples include:

• Create brand awareness
• Establish expertise within your niche
• Share industry specific news
• Increase sales and leads
• Offer customer service or support

 6. Create a Plan

Once you have identified your objectives and goals, create a plan and stick with it. The type of content you share, posting frequency, etc should all be included as part of your plan.

7.  Integrate Social Sharing on Your Website

Targeting your website visitors is the easiest way to increase your following on social media. There are several social plugins for website that you can use for free.

8. Set Realistic Expectations

It is important to have realistic expectations for your social media marketing efforts. You can break your goals into benchmarks and milestones if requires but be realistic. Unrealistic expectations can be demoralising and bad for morale and can have a negative effect on decision making.

9. Post Frequently

There is nothing worse than a social media profile that is seldom updated. This can be damaging for your brand and detrimental to your success. It is important to post daily or at least 5 times a week.

10. Be Consistent

Consistency is equally important to succeed on social media. Posting at similar times helps to meet the expectations of your followers. Simailarly, it is important to have a consistent message and branding across all social networks your business uses.

11. Schedule Your Posts For Best Results

Studies show that posting at certain times of the day as well days of the week produces better results than others. This is different for different social networks and may also differ from business to business. Hence its is best to analyse your results to find what works best for your business.

Take a look at the results of a study on Facebook below.

This is different for Twitter. See image below.

12. Engage With Users

Engagement is the key to success on social media. There are several ways to engage with users e.g. make your posts engaging, take steps to get more comments, post open-ended questions, ask for opinions, reply to comments, and write about trending topics.

13. Focus on Long Term Success

Social media marketing works over time. The process of converting visitors or followers into customers works over time on social media. Focusing on short term results such as obtaining links to your website, buying or trying to increase followers without a clear purpose, driving traffic to your site through inaccurate or misleading posts is an ineffective strategy that is not likely to bring real benefits to your business.

14. Consistent Branding

It is common for businesses to use multiple social networks to improve reach and connect with a wider audience. It is important to display consistent branding across all social networks. The logo, profile images, cover photo, user name should reflect your brand, and should be consistent and match what is on your website as far as possible.

15. Take Steps to Go Viral

Your reach and influence can grow manifold if your content goes viral on social media. Take advantage of techniques to get more ReTweet, obtain more likes on Facebook, and to increase overall sharing.

16. Limit Promotional Messages

Every business wants to promote their products and services. However this should be done with care, particularly on social media. Social media is all about providing value for your followers and not about selling. Try to limit promotional messages to fewer than 10% of your total posts.

17. Research Your Competition

Make sure to analyse and research your competitors to find out what they are doing and learn from them. It is an easy and very effective way to learn new techniques and can help devise your own strategy. You can tale advantage of free tools like social mention.

18. Use Multiple Social Channels

It is common for businesses to use multiple social networks. It allows you to reach out to a wider audience and connect with diverse user-base.

19. Connect With Experts

Social media is not just about reaching out to customers. It is equally important to connect with other experts from your niche. This helps build connections and relationships with other influential users and can contribute to your success.

Use the wrong social media platform for the wrong purpose.

20. Share Different Types of Content

Certain content types such as links, videos, images and lists are very popular on social media and are shared more by users. Taking advantage of these posting tips/ drive better engagement and can improve your chances of success.

21. Increase Efficiency and Productivity With Tools Use The Right Tools

There are several tools that you can use to improve your performance on social media.  There are tools to post to multiple social networks,  monitoring tools to track activitiy and trending topics, and more.

22. Build Trust and Influence

Trust is critical to the success of your business on social media. There are several ways to build trust. Being transparent, getting the business owner or other senior members of the team to participate, connecting with influencers, and providing accurate information, are some ways to achieve this.

23. Respond Promptly

Users expect a quick response on social media. According to a study by The Internet Advertising Bureau UK, 25% of respondents who complain via Facebook or Twitter expect a reply within 60 minutes and 6% within 10 minutes.

As a business, you need to meet this expectation if you want to succeed.

24. Take Advantage of Statitistical Data & Studies

Take advantage of existing social media studies and statistics to post what is most effective and gets the highest engagement.

25. Run Creative Campaigns

In addition to daily postings and sharing of valuable content, running innovative social campaigns from time to time can boost your reach and enhance your brand presence manifold.

The perfect example of this is the town hall meetings on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn run by Barrack Obama as part of his presidential campaign.

Another example of a successful social media campaign is the NokiaN8 campaign in Argentina that increased Twitter followers by over 300,000 were reached by the campaign, expanded Facebook fanbase by over 180% and incresed sales by 270%. Take a look at the video for this campaign below.

26. Persevere

Most businesses start off well on social media however they fail to maintain momentum after a while. In my experience, perseverance is vital for success on social media and lack of it is why most businesses fail. If you continue with your social media efforts and don’t give up, you are bound to succeed eventually.

27. Track and Measure Your Performance

Tracking and measuring your performance on an ongoing basis can help you to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and identify what is working and what is not. Make sure to refine and adjust your strategy accordingly. There are several tools to measure your influence that can help with this.

28. Use Social Media to Drive Leads

Several aspects constitute success on social media. For a business, sales and leads generated from social media is an important consideration. Use of good call to action in your posts, integrating lead capture on your social channels are some ways to achieve this.

29. Explore Social Commerce to Increase Sales

If you sell products, another way to success on social media is via social commerce. Sites like Facebook now allow businesses to integrated fully functional shopping carts onto their Facebook page. Other sites are expected to follow soon. There are many free and paid apps that you can use to see products directly from your Facebook Page.

30. Social Media Advertising

All major social media site including Facebook, LinkedIn, You Tube and Twitter offer a range of advertising options for businesses. Social ads offer businesses with one of the most cost effective ways to advertise on the Internet. Social ads typically benefit from lower cost per click and higher ROI than pay per click ads on search engines.

Conclusion:

There is no right or standard way to use social media for your business. How you market your business on social media depends on the goals and objectives you have set for your business on social media.

There are many more social media tips to help your business succeed on social media. What methods do you use to promote your company on social media? If you have one that you would like to share with us, please leave a comment below or tweet us @web_design_uk.