5 Ways to Grow Your Business with a Strong Social Media Strategy
Keeping your social media strategy effective and up-to-date can help you build your business and stay one step ahead of the competition. In this post, we’ll examine social media trends and statistics for 2020 as well as offer practical tips for growing your social media strategy.
The power of social
Over 18 million Australians are active on social media with roughly 72% of the population devoting 1.5 to 1.75 hours to social media each day.
The number of active social media users and mobile social media users increased by +5.9% +6.7%, respectively, between 2018 and 2019 even though the number of internet users in Australia remained unchanged during this time period.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook lead the social media pack, with over 16 million users followed by Instagram with a growth of 2.1% in monthly active users. But the biggest winner was LinkedIn, which saw an impressive 10% quarter-on-quarter growth in advertising reach.
That brings us to a grand total of 3.484 billion social media users worldwide – a 9% increase from last year and far greater than the previous estimate of 2.82 billion. This means that as a business, you now have potential access to more readers, subscribers, and customers than ever before.
Statistics also show that Australians are spending more online with the total value of the e-commerce market for consumer goods seeing 22%year-on-year growth in January 2019. So if you’ve ever wanted to increase your revenue, this is the time to do it.
What’s more, 53% of consumers say they are more likely to make a purchase if they can contact a business directly through apps like Facebook Messenger.
Now that you have compelling reasons to grow your social media strategy, here are some tips to steer you in the right direction.
Setting the foundation for a successful social media strategy
Growing your social media strategy helps you increase brand awareness, increase traffic, generate more leads, and ultimately, make more sales.
But how do you get there? Before you can even start, you need to:
- Set goals – Studies show that goal-setting is crucial to success. Setting specific and measureable goals, such as reaching 500,000 YouTube subscribers or setting up and optimising a Facebook account in two days’ time for example, can help you gauge your success. It will also help you determine whether your existing strategies are effective.
- Know your audience – You can’t even begin to speak to your audience until you know who they are. Look at their demographics, find their pain points, and discover their interests and hobbies.
Social media gives you an unprecedented amount of user information, from educational background to last TV show watched. Use feedback tools and participate in conversations in online forums where your audience congregate.
5 Ways to grow your social media strategy in 2020
Here are some simple and practical things you can do to strengthen your social media presence:
- Run contests – Everyone has a competitive side. You can swing this to your advantage by announcing giveaways and raffles with tools like Shortstack, Vyper, or Rafflecopter. The secret to running a successful contest is offering something of genuine value to your followers. This can help increase brand’s visibility, following, and engagement.
- Use video – Experts predict that 82% of consumer traffic will come from video by 2021. Using a combination of live and pre-recorded videos into your social strategy will give you the best results.
Pre-recorded video content allows you to tell stories and present ideas in motion. Interestingly, 85% of users watch Facebook videos on silent. That’s why Blogging Wizard recommends adding subtitles to your videos to make sure you get your point across.
Platforms like YouTube offer closed captioning while Facebook lets you use SubRip files to add subtitles to your video upload.
Live video, on the other hand, lets you interact with your audience in a way that’s more personal and authentic. Facebook states that live video gets six times as many interactions as regular video on average.
- Create high-value video content – The Lab and Nature Research found that Australians don’t care for slick production as much as value. They believe that video content that relates to their passions and personal interests is 2.5x more important.
Passion is the key here – they believe that it is more important for video content to be produced by passionate individuals with authentic voices instead of, say, have a network micromanage and approve every aspect of content production.
- Use #hashtags – Take an SEO-driven approach to your social strategy by using popular but relevant hashtags when you publish or upload content. Talk Walker also recommends using a branded hashtag for your business.
Hashtags help users find and categorise content on social media. Moreover, Instagram posts with hashtags get 12% more engagement than those without.
According to Talk Walker, the 10 most popular IG hashtags in Australia are:
#Australia
#travel
#love
#instagood
#photography
#fashion
#nature
#beautiful
#Sydney
#Melbourne
However, using too many can lead to fewer interactions, so choose wisely. IG also penalises spammy hashtags – the platform has banned over 60,000 hashtags, either temporarily or permanently, to date.
- Use a consistent Instagram filter – 60% of the top IG brands use the same filter when uploading photos as a way of establishing brand identity. Using a consistent filter also creates a look of uniformity and cohesiveness in your IG page.
The most widely used filters among top IG brands are Lo-fi (14%), Valencia: (12%), and Rise (12%).
But studies show that the Mayfair filter gets the most interactions with lighter images attracting 24% more likes than darker images.
Additional tips for an effective social media strategy
As any social media marketer knows, there’s more to strategy than hashtags and filters. You can take it to the next level with these additional tips:
- Build a community – Brands can get more meaningful engagement from their audience when they build a community on social media. You can achieve this by encouraging interactions that go beyond the casual like, share, or comment. Be proactive about reaching out to your audience and create content that gets them talking.
G2 Senior Content Marketing Specialist Bridget Poetker also recommends building a social media community away from your business profiles. Get your team to build their individual social media presence to promote your content, extend your reach, and create more trust in your brand.
- Work with micro-influencers – Businesses that know how to use influencer marketing can get up to $18 (USD) in earned media value for each dollar spent. Earned media value is the monetary representation of the publicity that a business gains from promotional efforts outside of paid advertising.
However, traditional or macro-influencers can be expensive for small businesses. Businesses and consumers have also become wary of influencers whom they perceive as entitled or inauthentic.
Micro-influencers, on the other hand, can get more engagement at a lower cost and with a higher level of trust. 82% of consumers say they are highly likely to take recommendations from micro-influencers.
Engage and collaborate with followers or members of your social community who are already micro-influencers. Ask them share posts on your in order to drive conversions with their social media following.
Micro-influencers are content creators with a smaller following of 9,000 to 100,000. They are passionate and knowledgeable on the products they promote.
- Consider new and alternative platforms – While it’s important to grow your presence in popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it’s worth looking into relatively new platforms like TikTok. Founded in 2016, the social network currently has over 800 million monthly active users, 41% of whom are aged between 16 and 24.
Including platforms like TikTok in your social media strategy can help you reach users who are stepping away from traditional or more established platforms.
Work with a top social media marketing agency in Australia
Choose a partner that is just as passionate about social media marketing as you are. Contevo is a certified Facebook Partner with 15 years’ digital marketing experience. Our business philosophy is Continuous Evolution – we stay ahead of the many changes and developments in social media marketing to provide the best service to our clients. Reach out for a consultation – we’d be happy to discuss your social goals for 2020 and beyond.
