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Grow Your Business Through Social Media
This post is Part 10 of my 12 Days of Consistent Content Content Challenge for 2019. Click here to check out Part 9: 8 Ways To Take Advantage Of Your Lunch Hour & Grow Your Business At Your Day Job
Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay.
You need to use social media to grow your business, and there are some essential social media platforms that you need to be on, in some way, to grow your business.
That does not mean you need to be on all platforms, at all times. That would take forever and is not necessary. But you do need to have your feet in the doors of a couple.
Especially when you are just starting out, remember that you should focus on being the most active on two platforms, and automate a third.
How do you choose? You decide by picking the platforms your audience is most active on. If that means they’re not the ones on this list, that’s okay. Just remember to be where your audience is.
Essential Social Media Platforms: Pinterest
No matter where your audience is online, Pinterest is one of those platforms that can only benefit you if you’re active on. it.
And it’s also one of the easiest platforms to automate.
What a lot of people don’t understand about Pinterest is that it’s not just a place to go for recipes and pretty pictures of clothes and cars and dream vacation destinations.
It is all of those things, but what Pinterest also is, is a search engine.
A search engine with pretty pictures.
Pinterest is one of the few corners left on the Internet where you can get free traffic to your website, to your content, and at a speed much faster than waiting for the organic growth of regular search engine SEO.
When you actively post your content to Pinterest, your audience—especially those who don’t know you—can find you, explore your website, and most importantly, sign up for your email list.
For more on how to grow faster with Pinterest, check out this post.
While posting to Pinterest consistently can seem very time consuming, that’s what Pinterest schedulers are for. Don’t forget to check out Part 3 of the 12 Days of Consistent Content for 2019: Top-3 Reasons Tailwind Is An Online Business Must-Have.
You can get a free month of scheduled pins through Tailwind through my referral link. Click here to get your free pins.
Essential Social Media Platforms: Facebook
Love it or hate it, Facebook is still the largest social media platform online, with the most monthly active users. The margin is not by millions, or tens of millions, but by billions.
Even if you can’t stand using Facebook, Facebook can still work for you and your business.
Now, Facebook followings are not easy to grow, certainly not organically, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have massive benefits to online business owners.
The benefit Facebook gives you, is data.
Because Facebook has one of the largest databases of consumer data online, which allows you to directly target your ideal client. And you can do it much quicker with Facebook ads, rather than going at it organically.
For more on how your business can benefit from Facebook ads, check out this post.
Additionally, online business owners can greatly benefit from Facebook communities. From both participating in Facebook groups filled with your ideal client, to running one and filling it yourself, allows you to directly get in touch with your ideal client.
Even if your audience is small and you don’t have a lot of engagement yet, you can still participate in Facebook communities, do market research, and outreach to find out exactly what your audience wants, and create it for them.
Essential Social Media Platforms: Instagram
Owned by Facebook, Instagram is another way to grow your business, but yes, it is more of a pay-for-play landscape like Facebook is.
With Instagram, you’re going to be able to expand your reach, and interact with your audience on a visual level.
And as much as people will read your content—don’t let stories of short attention spans stop you from creating valuable, long-form content—they also want to see the pictures.
Not only that, but Instagram is a great place for your audience to get to know YOU. Not just you, the business owner, but you a real, human person who—at one point in the not too distant past—was just like your ideal client.
Show your audience who you are through Instagram. Let them know what you love, what you’re passionate about, what lights you up, every single day.
One of the benefits of Instagram is that it offers you a number of different ways to interact. You have the posts in your feed, which are a great way to story-tell, but there are also Instagram stories, going live, and even IGTV. Even if you don’t use all four avenues to interact, you have so many great options, to find what works for you and your audience.
Essential Social Media Platforms: YouTube
Really into video? Then YouTube is for you.
YouTube is an extremely expansive platform, and is a great way to provide massive, face-to-face value to your audience.
On YouTube, you’re providing all your best content through video, which means your audience can have your content playing in the background whenever they want. They can always have it running, and you’re getting your message across while they’re also doing what they need to do in their own lives.
And even if YouTube isn’t your primary platform, you can still use it as a catch-all for video content that you promote on your other platforms.
Why?
Because YouTube is a platform where it is easy to binge a person’s content, and to do it in order.
These days, on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, nothing is in chronological order anymore. Not only that, but most videos on those platforms only have the half-life of a few hours, or at most a day or two. There’s not a lot of longevity there.
But on YouTube, you can scroll all the way down to a creator’s earliest posts, and see every single thing they’ve ever posted.
Essential Social Media Platforms: LinkedIn
LinkedIn may seem like, “Your dad’s social media platform.” But the platform is growing exponentially in popularity for online businesses and entrepreneurs.
First of all, when you update your LinkedIn profile with the information about your business, it means that you’re serious about it. It’s not just something you’re doing for fun. It’s something that you take pride in and intend to grow as a professional, in front of a professional audience.
Secondly, sharing your best content to LinkedIn allows you to reach a whole new level of audience, and not only that, but you reach a more dedicated and serious audience than what you may find on other platforms.
When you engage on a platform like LinkedIn, you’re engaging on a whole new level with your audience, expanding your reach, and showcasing that you are the expert you claim to be.
What are your favorite social media platforms that you use to grow your business? Join my free Facebook community, Consistent Content Creators, and share your answer!
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