How to Grow Your Brand (and Sales) on Social Media

Social media is a powerful marketing tool, when used properly

Being present and relevant on social media is one of the best ways to engage with customers and grow your brand. It provides a powerful means for you to express your brand’s narrative and personality, alongside its thought processes, ways of working and problem-solving.

When used creatively, conceptually and, above all, correctly, social media can become provide a huge sales opportunity for your business, especially when used in conjunction with email marketing, content marketing, SEO and PPC. This can be realized via tailored content that speaks directly to your audience in a tone that is as authoritative as it is authentic.

It is, after all, through social media that you can find your own voice and then consider building up customer advocacy and, in turn, growing a devoted online community. This will result in increased trust in your brand, which should equate to the holy grail that is quite simply more sales.

Here, Neil Sheth Founder of Your Brand Found, shares guaranteed advice that will help you to grow your brand on social media by using astute content and taking a bold approach to how you engage with your audience, all of whom are your potential customers.

Find your audience

It is important to select the right tools for the job when it comes to platform selection, making sure that you are visible to your target demographic while standing out from your competitors.

A B2B business that is hoping to build meaningful relationships in order to drive sales is more likely to benefit from hosting accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, which all enjoy a massive user base. Meanwhile, a B2C enterprise that has a product to attractively display will undoubtedly prosper from an active and engaging presence on Instagram and Pinterest.

Taking the time to hone your chosen social media platforms will increase your chances of delivering your key messages to their intended audience. This will consequently improve your chances of making a sale.

Authenticate your content

Once the most relevant means of social media communication have been ascertained, it is vital to get your mindset right. This means that you need to regard your chosen platforms as communication channels that furnish your business with an air of authenticity.

In order to create a social channel that is authentic to your brand, try making a list of everything you do in your business on a daily basis. Take the time to scrutinize the resulting list and ask yourself which of these activities would spark interest among your audience.

This thorough selection process should provide you with a cohesive range of content ideas to share on social media. It is also a great deal easier than brainstorming random ideas that are both expensive and time-consuming to implement.

The benefits of taking this approach are that you avoid wasting resources on creating new activities for social media only. You subsequently create a personalized social media content strategy that aligns closely to your brand and its day-to-day activities. This means that you will ultimately enjoy social media content creation as it will feel like a cohesive extension of your existing business, as opposed to a new and alien marketing strategy.

Share user-generated content

There’s nothing more powerful than sharing a photo or video content of users either enjoying your product or an email thanking you for your service and they, in turn, broadcasting it on their own channels. However, you should be careful about how you position it. Positive user experience should not look like a one-off event so try to incorporate words such as ‘another’ and ‘again’ into your captions. This will provide authenticity for your brand while allowing you to use the resulting content as a gateway for sharing further information that positions you as the go-to expert in your field.

This honest approach to social media will help to encourage new customers who might not be familiar with your brand or have reservations about investing in a product or service they know little about. It is also an easy way to inspire loyalty in your existing client base and to add credibility to your brand when potential customers land on your social media channels.

You should go one step further and create incentives for your customers to share their photos and videos with you that display their knowledge of your product or service. Competitions, polls and interactive games are popular across all social media channels and will provide you with a wealth of fresh content to repost, an opportunity to capture data and the chance to discover which of your channels resonate best with particular demographics. These approaches will also add an element of spontaneity to your brand, providing it with a fresh and transparent personality.

Forge partnerships with social media influencers

Depending on your business budget, you could partner up with social media influencers, meaning that you will be able to get your own product or service in front of their often-devout audiences. However, be sure to use this strategy wisely as it is very easy to spend quickly on product placement and affiliate links while observing slow ROI as a consequence. This is because it takes time to build up trust and authenticity among an influencer’s loyal community following.

To that end, be sure to wisely select the influencers that you wish to align with. There is little point in working with an influencer who has zero interest in your particular sector just because they have a huge following for example. Anything they might share about your business would feel inauthentic and fail to resonate with their audience.

Instead, keep a lookout for influencers with good engagement rates and a highly focused niche, as well as individuals who consistently share good quality content. It is preferable to

work with a handful of strong influencers who can ultimately become your brand ambassadors than with tens of influencers who bring nothing to the table.

People tend to trust influencers as much as they would a friend so request that your chosen social media partner shares compelling photos and videos that feature your brand and that tell a unique and engaging story. Encourage them to give honest reviews about your business, share how-to guides and promote unique discount codes in order to boost sales.

Support your strategy with social media advertising

Social media platforms have millions of users, and among them lies your target audience and, equally, your competitors. However, your marketing efforts may well go unnoticed if none of them has heard of you before, which is why it is essential to stand head and shoulders above the crowd.

Budget depending, social media ads can efficiently do the trick when it comes to immediately placing business content in front of the relevant people and ensuring higher visibility. This heightened and ultra-targeted presence will drastically improve your chances of driving sales.

The common mistake when it comes to ad creation is to not properly consider and prioritize the core messages you want to convey. Be confident about your brand’s offering and use your imagination to create something that commands the attention of your chosen audience. Enhance this by customizing your ads to display products that a user might have recently viewed on your website, which should help to entice them to make that all-important purchase. Above all, remember that paid advertising is only able to enhance the performance of a product or service that is already genuinely good.