How to Do Social Media Promotion

There’s no doubt that leveraging social media is one of the best ways to rapidly grow your business. You’ve seen companies that have skyrocketed their social media growth within months and understandably want the same.

Whilst momentum can be huge with social media, it’s figuring out that ideal starting point that can be the hard part. Over 80% of businesses are promoting their content on social media, but the majority of them just aren’t doing it effectively.

Far too often, companies will make simple but deadly mistakes that cost significant time and money. Social media promotion doesn’t have to be complicated. Do the basics right and you’re already ahead of most of your competition.

With that in mind, here are 14 tried and tested strategies to grow your business on social media.

14 Tried and Tested Strategies to Grow Your Business on Social Media

Branded hashtags

Branded hashtags are an excellent way to promote your business on social media. Whether it’s for a product launch, promotion, contest or sponsored event, branded hashtags will help increase your organic exposure.

When creating your branded hashtag, it’s important to remain authentic and devise something that will appeal to your target audience. Research this extensively on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter before coming up with a shortlist to choose from.

This hashtag needs to be in line with your business objective. Are you aiming to drive a significant increase in sales or just prom awareness before a key event? Include a relevant call-to-action to maximise the effectiveness of this campaign.

You should also aim to promote your branded hashtag on social media wherever possible. Great places to increase the awareness of your hashtag include:

• Instagram bio
• Facebook group
• Twitter bio
• LinkedIn post
• YouTube video

How can you tell if this campaign is performing effectively? Simply use a social media management tool such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social to identify specific objectives before launch. Consistently check in on how these metrics are performing and modify accordingly.

Engaging Headlines

No matter how great your content is, a large portion of your audience won’t read it if you haven’t enticed them with an engaging headline. From a social media perspective, you want to optimise both your titles and descriptions for audiences on each of the main platforms.

A great way to do this is by split-testing. You can try out different headlines on different social media networks and see which gets the most engagement. Over time, you’ll be able to work out what your audience resonates with the most and post accordingly.

For the headline itself, you want something that intrigues your audience, but doesn’t give everything away. List posts, such as “The top 5 ways to…” are a very popular way to do this.

In terms of a social media thumbnail, an attention-grabbing headline and eye-catching image is a great way to increase click-through rates. When done effectively, more eyes on your content will lead to more sales.

Posting Content Multiple Times

Too many businesses are afraid to post their content multiple times. Recent statistics suggest that you’re simply leaving money on the table if you don’t do this.

This is especially true if you’re an international business. If you only post the content when your Northern Hemisphere audience is awake, you’re missing out on a large share of potential traffic.

Spread out your posts so that you’ll be able to reach your customers all over the world. You can even repurpose this content by adding in new headlines and descriptions.

Especially on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, the engagement you receive on reposts will significantly increase your impressions. Even if you only get half the engagement of your initial post, this is still a ton of potential traffic and eventual customers.

It also acts as an effective form of split-testing. You can gain insights as to which headlines are performing better and which audiences are engaging more with the content, using this information to better your posts in the future.

Cross Promotion

Social media cross-promotion is one of the most effective ways to leverage your existing audience. If someone has already liked your page on Facebook, they’re also likely to follow you on Twitter or Instagram.

A subtler yet still effective approach is to use the space in your bio to promote accounts on other networks. A visual medium like Snapchat is a great place to promote your Instagram platform, whereas Facebook can be leveraged to increase your Twitter following.

This is also a great way to efficiently share your social media content on multiple platforms. Have a Facebook post that got a ton of great engagement? Promote it on your other social networks with a call-to-action to like your Facebook page.

This is a simple yet effective way to increase your following on each of the major platforms. As more people are consistently exposed to your brand on social media, they’ll also be more likely to purchase from you due to brand recall.

Newsletters and Email Signature Promotion

This is another low effort yet very effective way to promote your business on social media. Simply set this up once and you’ll be able to reap the rewards long into the future.

If you’re regularly sending out emails, including your social media in your signature is great at encouraging the recipients to follow you. The majority of email providers will allow for high-quality embeds that really highlight your social media.

Similarly, if you have an email newsletter that goes out regularly, including links to your social media is a great way to increase your following. If these customers are already subscribing to your email list, prompting them to follow you on social media is likely to be very effective.

This has the added benefit of ensuring that they are now exposed to your content more frequently. If you’re then able to provide consistent value to them on a daily basis, this only increases the likelihood of them continuing to purchase from you.

Organic Customer Content

Using content of your own customers using your products on social media is incredibly effective. Specifically on visually focused platforms like Instagram, this sends a very powerful message.

Firstly, it conveys a sense of customer appreciation. It is a fantastic way to show just how much you value your customers and shows your gratitude in front of a large online audience.

Similarly, it also helps connect with your customers on a deeper and more personal level. This can really resonate with individuals and turn them into customers for life.

Millennials prioritise customer service and forming a connection with a brand above all else. In an increasingly competitive online environment, this is a great way to leverage social media to stand out from the crowd.

Perhaps the best part is that this is completely free as well. You receive high quality content from customers that only serves to generate wealth in the future.

Exclusive Social Media Discounts

What better way to promote on social media than to offer exclusive deals and discounts for your followers? In a way, this is very similar to the traditional advertising deals you’d find in the newspaper or coupon book.

With social media, promotions are very simple to implement. Offer a discount code that is available for a finite time period or to a specific number of users.

The progressive analytics on social media will allow you to gauge exactly how the campaign is doing. For example, the Facebook Pixel has everything you need to optimise campaigns for future performances.

Different Approaches to Different Networks

Using the same social media strategy on each of the major platforms is a recipe for failure. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are meant to complement each other, not merely post the exact same content.

To get the best results, you want to focus on the platforms where you can interact with your customers the most. As the most popular social media platform, Facebook is a great example of this.

On platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest, there is a heavy focus on visual content. Promoting visually appealing and engaging content is a great way to attract new followers and enter them into your sales funnel.

Entertain Your Audience

People are increasingly scrolling social media as a form of entertainment. A great way to stand out from the masses is by providing entertaining and engaging content that brightens your audience’s day.

This doesn’t have to be too outlandish either. Running a regular daily or monthly social series is a great way to start with this. Similarly, running a giveaway or social media takeover can really spice things up.

Moreover, conducting an AMA on a site like Reddit can be a useful tool to engage with and educate your followers. These help to build personal connections that make customers more likely to purchase from you over the longer term.

Effectively Utilise Paid Advertising

Whilst organic traffic is still king, paid traffic is one of the best ways out there to rapidly accelerate your growth. This is especially true when you consider that the majority of your Facebook posts are only seen by about 10% of your fans.

Boosting your posts and running social media ads can be a very effective way to get your message in front of a highly relevant audience. This can include customers who have liked your page but don’t get to see your posts regularly, as well as new potential customers with interests related to your page.

Social media advertising also opens up a ton of great split testing opportunities. You can analyse which platform and demographics of your audience seem to engage with your ads the most. Utilise this information to optimise future ad campaigns and maximise your return on ad spend.

Focus on Visual Content

On competitive social media platforms, providing engaging visual content is a terrific way for your brand to stand out. Tweets and Facebook posts with images are proven to receive more engagement than purely text posts.

Newer social media networks such as Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest are exclusively based on images. As social media moves further and further towards these visual mediums, you’re simply leaving money on the table by not tailoring your content accordingly.

The two best forms of visual content for social media promotion are image and video. To get the most effective results, the image should feature your product in action and provide a call-to-action for your target audience.

Similarly, video is an effective way to explain a ton of valuable information in only a few short seconds. Ensure that your video meets all of the different social media guidelines and has optimized dimensions for each platform, improving your engagement in the process.

Create Targeted Ads

The targeting options on social media have rapidly become incredibly detailed. So much so that failing to implement a proper targeting strategy will have you overpaying for ads and falling behind competitors.

Given its large user base and control over Instagram, the Facebook ads platform is the best place to start. It also features the unique Facebook Pixel that you can add to your site to gain an analytical profile of your website visitors.

Within the Facebook Ads Manager, you’re able to target any of its billion users with demographic, behavioural and interest-based segmentation. These laser targeting options allow you to identify the potential customers most likely to purchase from you.

This is immensely valuable in the sense that it increases your average return on ad spend and lifetime customer value. Optimise your landing page to match these customer interests and you will likely increase your conversion rate as well.

Use Shoppable Tags

Millennial shoppers tend to value convenience very highly when making purchasing decisions. Facebook and Instagram have made available the shoppable tags feature, which is great for retail brands looking to increase social media sales.

These effectively identify your products to customers and allow them to directly purchase from your website through the tag. If you can entice customers through engaging visual content, this can lead to great click-through rates and higher sales.

Whilst there is a minor learning curve involved, adding these shoppable tags will likely prove to be a very high-ROI activity. There still exists a great opportunity to be an early adopter in this space, providing a strong competitive advantage in your industry.

Use Social Media Influencers

The rapid growth of social media has brought about high-profile influencers who make their living by promoting products to their audience. Recent statistics suggest that 89% of brand marketers believe that influencer marketing has a positive impact on their brand.

This is especially true on a visual platform like Instagram, where an engaged audience can see your product in action. By finding an influencer within your niche, you’ll be able to form a profitable partnership that builds trust and drives engagement.

Whilst they have become somewhat mainstream, influencer marketing should still remain part of your social media promotion strategy for the foreseeable future. Social media users are increasingly starting to make purchases on these platforms and you don’t want to miss out on your piece of the pie.