How to use social media marketing for your business

Like many of you, we put a lot of time and effort into our business and branding. And one key element to all business marketing efforts is to look at the results in order to effectively plan out future marketing and business operation changes.

We previously set about doing our year-end review on our content marketing and social media efforts and wanted to share some of the insights we discovered in hopes you will get inspired to analyze your own efforts while planning for the year ahead.

Where and what to analyze

One quick and easy way to go about your year-end review is to look at your online engagement from the past year. Whether it’s checking your social media stats or looking at your website traffic, lots can be gleaned from these types of analytics.

There are a few places to look for the stats you need: You can utilize Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, Google Analytics, or your blog stats.

Log into each of these and take a look at how your posts and articles performed. They can provide a lot of valuable information on how your business and marketing resonates with users.

So what did our analytics tell us what our followers liked? Here are three valuable insights learned from three of our top posts in 2017:

1. Communicating to maintain effective client relationships

Not surprisingly, this article from one of our guest authors, PR specialist Susan Elford, offers similar advice to this one: Listen!

Communication is key to a successful business and when clients and followers communicate with you through social media, whether it’s by a direct comment, a share, or something else, you need to listen.

Client relationships are a big deal for us and we like to build long-term ones by treating our clients with respect and listening to what they say.

We don’t just hear it, we listen. We then adjust and improve to reflect the client’s expectations.

So apply the advice from the article like this: Use language and mannerisms your clients can relate to—use mirroring to deliver messages in a way that makes them feel comfortable.

And apply the same recognition and response to your social media. If you’ve noticed some articles focus on something specific and your clients/audience are receptive to it by way of engagement, then in 2018 you should know what to do.

Give them what they want and build your client-base by accepting what your followers like and expect from you. Communication is a very broad term and doesn’t always mean simply direct vocalization or emails.

Kindness is a trade secret in business. You’ll be surprised that it does go a long way. (Photo by DepositPhotos)

2. 10 ways to attracting clients through kindness

This article has our approach laid bare. We watch, listen, learn, and follow the golden rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Open yourself to receiving both good and bad feedback and accept each as constructive. Assess the full picture of what is happening and understand where the feedback is coming from.

We employ kindness and generosity all the time. It’s a big deal when put into practice and by following that and our other nine steps from the article, we’ve seen our business and client-base grow consistently.

3. Why Twitter ads boost business & how to create them

If your business isn’t on social media yet, then check out the links given at the start of this article.

Social media is a BIG factor in most businesses and has effectively replaced a lot of other support channels as users go-to for getting a response.

So once you’re online, it’s time to make the most of it. None of the businesses whose names we know are worth what they are today without requiring some paid component. Twitter is no exception.

While Facebook offers advertising and Instagram as well (among all others) our article on Twitter’s paid promotion resonated with our audience. About 110 shares through our website alone is a great indicator of the effectiveness of this content with our follower-base and potential clients.

Diving into social media can have drawbacks, so if you’re looking to get serious, it’s good to hire online marketers who know how to use social media for business.

We don’t have any information on how effective our reader’s Twitter campaigns have been, but our clients have seen stellar results. From this, we learned that within our content we have users who are anxious to expand their presence online and try new ways to reach new potential clients.

Is this limited to Twitter? Probably not and the real message here is that when we give back to our clients and readers with free tips via content marketing strategies, we will see reciprocation by way of new leads and new clients.

So what did you learn in the past year from your content and social media marketing efforts? Take a look at your metrics (and if you don’t know how just let us know for a possible future article) and see what they tell you.

Then take that information into the boardroom and help make 2018 even better.

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DISCLAIMER: This article expresses my own ideas and opinions. Any information I have shared are from sources that I believe to be reliable and accurate. I did not receive any financial compensation for writing this post, nor do I own any shares in any company I’ve mentioned. I encourage any reader to do their own diligent research first before making any investment decisions.