How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Business

MARKETING

SOCIAL MEDIA: HOW TO BUILD A LOYAL FOLLOWING

You’ve got your business’ social media accounts, but now you want to see some growth from them? Ask not what social media can do for you, but what you can do for social media. It comes down to this: if you have valuable content or you’re likeable, people are going to follow you for more. Then, they’re going to share your content with their followers.

But you’re not here for just the simple part, right? You want all the insider tips, tricks, and secrets to spark growth. Buckle in and let’s go platform by platform. Let’s start off with some of our facebook marketing tips.

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FACEBOOK

Take a look at our Facebook Cheat Sheet to make sure that you’ve completed all of the necessary set-up steps.

Facebook Marketing Tips

Let’s get started with some Facebook Marketing tips. First off, you’re going to want to link your landing page inside your page’s call to action. From there, pin your most informative, eye catching, or best performing post with a link to your website. You can also change your cover photo to promote an exclusive offer you’re currently running, like 15% off when you book your first appointment.

Post short videos or photos to your page’s stories (or crosspost them from Instagram – see Instagram section below). Create photo albums that showcase your services, as well as your employees out in the field, engaging with your community, and any customer success stories. You should even consider adding offers to your page’s Facebook Messenger. Or create posts with links to your website, photos, or other content you’ve created that include your website link.

Be sure to caption your videos. If you’re sharing a video on Facebook, videos play automatically but without their audio, so it’s a good habit to caption your videos and make them interesting enough that users want to turn on the sound instead of simply scrolling past.

Set up a call to action button on your account. The following are all popular options for service businesses: Book now, send messages, contact us, send email, and learn more.

You should also set up appointments in your Facebook account. Make sure your page is fully filled out (under Edit Page Info). In Settings, set up your messenger’s greeting – you can even use the plugin so people can contact you instantly. Be sure to turn on tabs so you can add new information to page like job listings, offers, or events. Go into local Facebook groups and interact. And lastly, invite people to like your page – whether it’s people who follow you or like your posts – if people add you on your personal account when you’re talking about stuff in groups, you can send out invites to like your page in mass numbers.

Improving Facebook Post Exposure

Facebook typically grants more exposure to posts that 1) have visual media like images and videos over text posts and 2) have a lot of engagement. So, try to get conversations flowing on your posts. If someone comments on a post from a public page, Facebook places that post in the newsfeed of all their friends, and Facebook will show their friends that someone they know commented on this post. That means that not only will your post be displayed to the commentator’s friends’ feeds, but the post itself will get a boost towards the top of your own followers’ news feeds.

You can also pay to display your post on specific people’s newsfeed (your own followers or ones you specifically target) by “boosting” posts. Because Facebook values engagement and relevancy, the best posts to boost are ones that are already performing well organically – especially ones that have conversations going between users. That way, instead of paying $5 to reach 661 people, you can spend $3 and reach 361 through paid ads and then reach the other 300 people organically as more people interact on your post when it gets.

Here are a few helpful tools for optimizing your business’ Facebook page.

INSTAGRAM

Instagram Marketing Tips

Want to gain more exposure on Instagram outside of simply creating posts? Try these helpful tips: If you haven’t already made sure that your Instagram is a business account, go ahead and get that set up. Add your affiliate link to your profile – if you need to include more than one link in your profile, you can use a tool like lnk.bio or Linktree. Post in your stories (see our graphics) and save your stories as highlights pinned to your profile. If you have over 10,000 followers, you can include a link in your Instagram stories.

We’d recommend creating a video that tells a story, like highlighting how FieldPulse helped you overcome a problem or could have helped you overcome a problem. You should also create a walkthrough or guide highlighting the benefits of utilizing your service. Share lists of your favorite products that help keep your business going strong, like FieldPulse. Tag relevant users who might be interested or whose audiences you feel may be audience – you’ll even show up in their tagged photos. To help make this process easier, take a look at our list of relevant Instagram tags attached to use on your posts. Post videos as often as you can to IGTV.

In order to compete with the ever-growing giant TikTok, Instagram has begun to put more weight on video content. Meaning that the more video content you share, the more likely Instagram will be to help organically boost your content. However, you must make sure that there are no watermarks on your video, as Instagram will either 1) not let you keep the video on your reels and IGTV or 2) hide the video from reaching its fullest exposure potential.

Improving Instagram Post Exposure

Instagram is beginning to grant more exposure to carousel posts. When you upload a post, you have the option to share up to 10 posts/videos at a time that users can swipe through. Sometimes, Instagram will pick the photo it believes the person is most likely to engage with. Other times, it may show them the post twice – showing them a different photo the next time the user logs in. Be sure to utilize hashtags, as they tell the algorithm about your identity and the niche you’re in. Using fewer hashtags (8-15) will give you a more focused identity, and at least three of your hashtags should be the same on every post you put out. For a more in-depth tutorial on how you can best utilize hashtags, take a look at this resource.

TWITTER

Twitter is best used as a PR tool for local businesses. For examples on how to do this, take a look at our guide to PR. Be sure to keep hashtags to a minimum (2-3) so twitter doesn’t think you’re a bot and hide your tweets. Always quote retweets with hashtags, and take the time to comment on posts. It’s a good idea to post during big events and piggyback on popular news. For example, if #texassnowpocalypse is trending, hop on twitter and start making posts talking about how it’s affecting your business, or how your business is helping others during this time, utilizing that hashtag.

A helpful tool we’d recommend using for creating streams for topics you want to interact with, like when people mention your city name, is Tweetdeck.

YOUTUBE

Odds are, YouTube isn’t going to be your biggest traffic source out of all the other social media platforms. However, youtube videos themselves can be extremely valuable resources, and are also more engaging than a blog post. When it comes to YouTube marketing, there’s only a couple ways to up your game. Similar to Facebook, we’d recommend changing your YouTube banner to highlight your current offers. Be sure to include links under all your videos, with a brief description of your service offerings. Pin a post in the comments section of your videos with special offers/deals, and add a link card to your video linking to your home page.

And that’s it! We’ve now covered a few ways to boost your social media pages’ growth, and make the process of finding your information and hooking new customers even easier. For more information on social media, check out our guide on Social Media Strategy, as well as some of the helpful cheat sheets and templates we’ve created.

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