How to successfully market your business on social media

People in the UK spend around one and a half hours every day on social media. With this audience waiting for you, successfully social media marketing can be hugely beneficial to your business.

In this article we’ll walk you through the three key elements to marketing your business on social media successfully, including:

• How to pick the right social media platform
• How to sell your business well
• How to get your content seen online

Whether you’re launching a completely new business or are building an online presence for an existing one, Countingup can save you time and stress as you’re running your company. Find out more below.

As you’re looking to advertise your business, you’ll need to be visible in the right places. If you focus on the wrong platform, you might miss out on sales opportunities because your customers are elsewhere.

Picking the right social media platform is about understanding your audience. As you’re looking to join social media, research your customer base and ask:

• Which social media platform do they use most? 
• What sort of content do they engage with the best? 

If you’ve been running a business for a while and you already know your audience but would like to get better at marketing, you can skip ahead to the ‘How to sell your business well’ section. If you’re not sure, or are completely new to social media marketing, we’ve provided a brief overview of the biggest platforms around and what sort of businesses are best suited to each. 

Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform and helps over 90 million small businesses advertise their offers to local and global audiences. It’s a versatile platform that can help you market any and all content. Facebook can be a suitable first step for your marketing; find out more in our article Getting Started with Facebook for Small Businesses.

Instagram places more emphasis on users sharing photo and video content, while helping users engage more with content. If you’re a make-up artist, kitchen fitter, florist or barber, being able to focus solely on sharing powerful and impressive visual aspects with your customers can be a great way to market your business successfully. 

Twitter is a fast-paced environment that can share visual and text-based content, including website links. Businesses can easily search what customers are saying about their product or service in real time for better feedback. Twitter is particularly popular with journalists and technology businesses. If you think your business may benefit from more dynamic marketing, find out more in our article How to use Twitter for Small Business Marketing. 

LinkedIn is primarily aimed at helping people network and find jobs. LinkedIn is popular with consultants, B2B businesses, freelancers and various industry experts seeking to share their thoughts about the business world. LinkedIn also hosts a skills development platform – useful for business owners seeking to further their professional development. If your business deals more in B2B support and services, LinkedIn may be the best social media platform for you.

It’s worth noting that social media is a versatile tool; your business can be successful on any of them and can use all of them. The descriptions above are general outlines of how various industries use each platform. However, this can evolve so you should still research the questions above. Similarly, this list is not exhaustive – other popular social media platforms include Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok.

Marketing your business online is about creating well-produced content that your followers find interesting. This should primarily involve good storytelling, but also requires you to creatively and engagingly use your platform’s features.

Storytelling can be done no matter what your business offers. For example, your marketing can feature your client’s results, highlighting the improvement or creation process you offer. This can be done by sharing ‘before and after’ images or sharing the value and expertise you provide. Similarly, if your business offers a product, communicate how your product is better, more reliable or more effective at solving the problem it aims to solve. Here, your marketing can include demonstrations or competitor comparisons to help your customers trust your offers. 

Your content can be improved further by using a social media platform’s unique features. These can include Q&A sessions, customer polls, product tags and story tools. These features are constantly evolving, allowing you to increase customer interest and appear more professional online. Experimenting and learning how to stay current in your marketing can help your business be more sustainable in the long term.

Marketing takes time. If you’d like to make sure your business gets the interest you want it to, paid promotion and advertising can be great ways to help your small business attract new customers. 

These tools can be cheap and effective ways to help your business share posts with more relevant customers and generate sales from wider audiences. Find out more in our article How to Use Social Media for Business.

Successful marketing takes time and consideration, but the investment can be worth it.

If you’re looking to save time and focus on ways to build your business, Countingup can help. 

Countingup is the business current account and accounting software in one app. It automates the time-consuming aspects of financial admin, so that you can focus on growing your business. 

Gain complete confidence in your books while trading by using automated invoicing tools, expense reminders and real-time profit data. Find out more here and sign up for free today.