By David Webb

It’s safe to say that no business these days – no matter how large or small ­­– cannot succeed without a well-established social media presence. Through social media platforms, companies of all sizes are able to grow and develop further, while building their visibility and awareness, as well as extending their reach on the ever-growing market. Here are a few ways to use social media to grow your small business.

Improve the relationship with your audience

Many companies actively engage with their audience on social media to improve the relationships with customers and prospects. The main reason is that establishing good relations with your target audience helps drive customer engagement and loyalty. It also helps you find more qualified leads among other things. It’s important to engage in conversations with your audience and provide them with value. The best way to achieve that is to share relevant and meaningful content that will educate, inform and entertain your followers.

Having a meaningful and more personal relationship with your audience has more than one benefit. You can boost awareness about your product or services, encourage followers to buy from you, drive loyalty to create brand advocates that will promote your company further and so on. The key is to engage followers regularly and share content with them, as well as help your audience find answers to relevant questions or help them solve a specific problem.

[amazon_link asins=’B06XJ9MZVQ’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’succeedingi0d-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’f4ac3175-e295-11e8-8051-1fe83ab18c0d’]Boost your online visibility

As mentioned before, sharing relevant and high-quality content with your audience helps establish a long-lasting relationship with them. However, the content you publish on social media can benefit your business in more ways than one. Content that favors many views, shares and likes helps build your online visibility and presence. As your content goes viral, more leads will flock towards your business and your social following will steadily grow.

That’s why it’s important to enrich your content with visuals, which is generally more favored on social networks. Visual content, such as images, videos, infographics, etc. tends to get more likes than plain text articles. Moreover, although SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and social media aren’t exactly correlated, companies with viral content and good social media presence tend to be rank higher on search engines.

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Many businesses strive toward building a good reputation on social networks, as well as strive towards maintaining that reputation. Companies with good reputation oftentimes generate more interest from consumers. Ensuring that your reputation remains intact on social media and that your relations with consumers are good can oftentimes be a daunting task. One unhappy customer or an intentionally bad review later and you’re facing a PR nightmare. However, by leveraging reliable social mention monitoring tools, businesses can easily avoid such inconveniences.

Social mention monitoring helps companies track conversations where their brand is being mentioned. That way, your company can listen in to what consumers have to say about your brand and improve your efforts if there are any complaints by consumers. In addition, you can also zoom into the conversation and defend your reputation if someone wants to slander it. Moreover, you can quickly address negative feedback and fix any issues to show customers that you have their best interest in mind.

Drive traffic to your website

It’s no secret that businesses can easily find some of the best-qualified leads for their website on social media. The key is getting your followers interested in the first place. Consumers on social media platforms prefer to interact and socialize with their favorite brands. That means that it’s up to you to turn engagement into interest and willingness to make purchases. One of the best ways to achieve this is through specialized promotions and contests.

The main difference between promotions and contests is that promotions reward every follower who refers a friend, while contests allow your consumers to compete in some sort of an activity in order to win a prize. Rewarding contest winners and audience members generates engagement and loyalty, as well as drives more organic traffic back to your website. However, it’s important to design contents that will be interesting and appealing to your audience, as well as encourage them to participate.

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Many businesses develop a brand in order to stand out from the competition on the market. One of the best ways to start promoting your brand and build awareness for it is social media. Your audience on social media is the first step towards establishing a strong brand presence. You can learn a lot about your audience’s preferences and needs from engaging in regular conversations with them.

This effort will help you learn important information and allow you to use it to develop a brand your customers will easily relate to. Developing and promoting your brand on social media will strengthen the relationship your company has with its audience and help drive loyalty that will create a community of trusted brand followers.

Social media presents a unique opportunity for small businesses to gain not just recognition, but also a favorable reputation. Leveraging social media to your advantage will help your small business establish a strong and engaged consumers base, as well as help your business gain the visibility and presence it needs, which will allow it to grow and develop further.

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David Webb is a Sydney-based business consultant, marketing analyst and a writer. With a decade of experience in a business sphere and a degree in business management, he continuously informs the public about the latest trends in the industry. He is an Editor in Chief at BizzmarkBlog. You can reach him on Twitter or Facebook.