How to Use Social Media for Business: 20+ Pro Tips

Whether you run a small business or are part of a large corporation, strategic social media efforts can deliver outstanding results. You’ll need a bulletproof social media strategy and a marketing plan to achieve your goals.

In the following sections, we show you how to use social media for business and offer marketing tips that you can implement for your strategy.

Understanding the Role of Social Media in Business

First, let’s take a moment to cover the basics.

Why are social media strategies important for businesses in the first place? What makes social channels so valuable?

Effective social media marketing provides diverse opportunities for companies to generate leads, engage with potential customers, win new customers, and drive traffic to their websites. 

Today, social media has become a core component of digital marketing.90% of social media marketers confirm that creating an active online community across these channels is crucial for successful digital marketing. 

Through various social media platforms, businesses can grow their market, create loyal customers, receive valuable feedback on products and services, perform market research, and more.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Businesses

When it comes to using social media for business, multiple factors must be considered and addressed. Considering the attractiveness of social media today and the business presence across these channels, it’s safe to say that competition is aggressive.

However, by carefully planning and organising your marketing efforts, you can get the most out of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.

Defining Your Social Media Goals

You’ll need to create a social media account on your selected platform at the very start. Later in this article, we offer tips on making the right choice. Make sure that you create business accounts to access valuable insights and analytics that will help you track your performance. 

Next, it’s fundamental to set your social media goals. Your goals will depend on the type of business you run, the products or services you offer, your current growth stage, your marketing budget, and other factors.

For example, if your goal is to generate leads and conversions, you can direct social media users to your website, where they can make secure online payments for your products or services.

Some of the popular social media goals that brands set include:

• Growing brand awareness;
• Generating new leads;
• Landing more sales;
• Creating a bigger audience;
• Offering customer care;
• Driving traffic to a website.

Depending on the type of goal you’ve set, you’ll need to track specific KPIs, like reach, impressions, video views, hashtag performance, conversions, and others. No matter the type of goal you set, make sure it’s realistic.

Identifying Your Target Audience

Defining your target audience is another crucial factor for using social media effectively as a business. Identifying your ideal customers will allow you to select the right social media platforms to market your brand and offerings.

When establishing your target audience, consider all the different groups of customers who could potentially purchase from you.

Note down the following:

• Audience demographics;
• Interests;
• Hobbies;
• Purchasing power;
• Marriage status;
• Education level;
• Work status and any other information that can be of use.

This will help you clearly understand who you’re targeting, giving you the opportunity to communicate effectively and through the right channels.

Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms

Once you know your target audience, you can move on to the most exciting part: choosing the right social media platform.

Today, major social platforms include Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X. 

Although they share common traits, social media platforms fundamentally differ in the type of content they provide, the users they attract, their advertising options, and more. Most social media platforms enable businesses to use paid advertising, guaranteeing quick reach and visibility.

Let’s dive deeper into the popular social media platforms in 2024.

The Best Social Media Platforms

As a business, you can be active on multiple platforms. Keep in mind that each one requires a strategic approach, consistency, and a lot of hard work.

Below, we share some of the best social media platforms to use as a business today. 

Facebook

Without a doubt, Facebook is the dominant social media platform today, with more than 3.05 billion active Facebook users monthly.

This platform remains popular with users of various ages, from younger users to older consumers. Facebook is used by people who want to connect with friends and family, join groups or forums, and discover businesses.

For companies, Facebook is a strong platform for building closer relationships with existing clients, sharing updates like events or business hours, and hosting live streams.

However, in recent years, organic reach on Facebook has significantly decreased. You’ll need to invest in paid advertising to gain visibility as a new brand.

Instagram

On the other hand, Instagram currently has around 2 billion active users every month, with nearly 30% being between the ages of 25 and 34. This visual platform enables brands to be as creative as they wish and share content in different forms, including Instagram Live, Instagram Stories, and more.

Instagram predominantly concentrates on photo and video content. It is perfect for any business, especially in the fashion, travel, food, and photography industries.

LinkedIn

If you want to let your followers get to know your company culture better, source talent, and build a professional network, LinkedIn is the place to be. 

With more than 1 billion members, this channel is perfect to both network and spread the message about your products and services. It’s also often used for sharing industry news and trends, announcing milestones, and attracting skilled experts.

TikTok

One of the fastest-growing social media channels today is TikTok, with an excess of 2 billion users in 2024. In fact, TikTok now ranks as the top-used app around the world. 

While it initially started as the place to be for dancing, challenges, and other entertainment videos, today it offers plenty of categories to choose from. Companies are gradually starting to utilise this channel to promote products and services, engage with users, and more.

X (Previously branded as Twitter) 

Just like Twitter users had an affinity for politics and political discussions, X users continue the trend. 

In 2024, there were around 619 million X monthly active users, making this platform one of the least developed ones. However, this is partially due to its specific nature, where content has to be limited to a few sentences, and the topics are mostly centred around politics, real-time news and updates, and others. 

At the same time, many X users also use the channel to discover new brands and get answers to questions.

Creating a Consistent Brand Voice

After selecting your social media platforms, you should consider creating a consistent brand voice and identity. 

Companies with well-established brands online are easily remembered and spotted from kilometres away. Just think about the number of times you’ve seen a post and instantly linked it to a brand you’re familiar with.

To build a consistent brand voice, you’ll have to think about the following:

• Fonts;
• Colours;
• Symbols;
• Use of words;
• Messaging;
• Call to action.

These are just some of the factors that help create a brand voice. Research this topic to build a memorable brand across social media channels. This will help you increase brand awareness, allowing you to be easily noticeable and discoverable.

Developing a Content Strategy

To engage followers and attract potential customers, you’ll need to create appealing and engaging content. When developing content, it’s important to recognize the differences between video, photo, and written formats – all of which play vital roles.

Using a content calendar is highly recommended to consistently produce high-quality content. Most companies plan their calendars a month in advance, scheduling each social media post.

In your content calendar, you should include competitive analysis and industry benchmarks. Consider organising the calendar into broad themes and gradually covering them with subtopics.

Compelling content themes could include tips, industry trends, network updates, best practices, research findings, product highlights, company news, and engaging stories.

Always ensure your content is relevant to your audience. regardless of format.

Utilising Visual Content Effectively

Whether using a visual platform like TikTok and Instagram or another channel, creating high-quality visual content is a must. 

It allows you to quickly capture attention, convey messages, and ultimately drive higher engagement than text content. 

When creating visual content, make sure that you prioritise quality. Make sure the content is high-resolution, well-composed, and with attention to detail. Use branded visuals like logos, fonts, and colours to create consistency where possible. 

Focusing on video content as one of the top-performing content forms in 2024 is highly recommended. This not only gives you more time to explain your messaging but also allows you to be creative in new and exciting ways. 

Remember to structure your visual content around the themes and topics from your content calendar. Posting random content that is not part of your strategy can hurt your follower base and engagement rates.

Using Hashtags and Trends

Each social media platform uses hashtags and social media trends. As a business, your core mission is to identify these trends and participate in them to increase brand awareness successfully.

When it comes to hashtags, you can think of them as keywords for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). They help increase the visibility of your posts based on how relevant they are to specific users. 

To use hashtags effectively, research what others in your space are doing. Make a list of the top-used hashtags and incorporate them into your posts.

You can do this using software solutions that automatically recommend hashtags or achieve it through manual effort. Use popular and niche hashtags to increase the chances of your post being seen. As you grow an audience and community, you can create branded hashtags.

Engaging with Your Audience

One of the most important things you can do on social media as a business is to engage with your audience regularly. These platforms offer an excellent opportunity to better get to know your potential customers or existing buyers. Learn their pain points, how they feel about your brand, what topics interest them the most, and more.

You can do so by posting content encouraging users to comment with opinions, creating polls, making challenges, and more. Also, ensure you share with your followers that you are there for them via direct messaging.

Implementing Social Media Advertising

Earlier, we noted that in some cases, you’ll need to use social media advertising. Whether you’re just getting started on social media or you have an established account, paid social media campaigns can have a real impact on your performance. 

Although it can be expensive, social media advertising enables companies to target specific audiences based on interests, demographics, behaviours, and more. It also allows businesses with new accounts to quickly reach the right users and grow their visibility on different platforms.

Instead of spending months (or even years) trying to grow your social media presence organically, you can rely on paid ads to achieve quick results. Of course, make sure that your marketing budget allows for this approach. 

Collaborating With Influencers

Partnering with influencers is another reliable strategy for growing your business’s reach on social media and building brand awareness. Influencers are other social media users who have already built a community around a specific topic and actively share valuable content with their followers. They can share experiences with a product or service, recommendations, trends, and more. 

Today, it’s a popular practice for influencers to work with brands to help them sell more. However, this can also be a costly journey. The good news is that you don’t have to work with influencers with millions of followers to see results. Often, those with a follower base of around 10,000 or 20,000 can be as productive as smaller communities, who are usually much more loyal and dedicated. 

When partnering with influencers, make sure to discuss all of the details of your partnership, including posting frequency, content formats, topics, payments, and more. 

Using Analytics to Track Performance

Social media marketing is all about data. Rather than relying on your intuition, using different platforms’ valuable insights to measure success is key. Compare how your results weigh against your social media marketing goals and make adjustments where necessary.

Some of the critical analytical metrics to track and monitor include:

• Engagement – Likes, comments, shares, retweets, and saves.
• Reach – How many unique users have seen your content.
• Impressions – The total number of times your content is displayed.
• CTR – Click-through- rate of the percentage of users who clicked on a link in your post.
• Conversion rate – The percentage of users who take a desired action (sign-up, purchase).
• Follower growth – The number of new followers you’re gaining over time.

This data is available across all social media channels, such as Instagram Insights, Facebook Insights, LinkedIn Analytics, and others. 

Adapting to Social Media Algorithms

One of the most important things to realise about social media marketing is that social media algorithms change all the time. This is a result of the platforms’ attempts to improve and upgrade, unlocking new ways to provide value to users.

For a business, this means constantly being up-to-date with the latest news and announcements regarding algorithms. Failing to acknowledge these changes could result in lost engagement, decreased visibility, or, worse, bans on your accounts. 

Encouraging User-Generated Content

Another powerful social media technique is to encourage your followers to create user-generated content. This could be Instagram stories, Facebook reviews in the form of comments under a post, videos of customers using your products or services, and more. 

Overall, inspire your followers to share their experiences with your brand genuinely. Ask them to tag you in the post or use a branded hashtag if you have one. This is an outstanding way to get your brand in front of new users. It’s also the quickest method to build trust and grow a community around your offering. 

Remember that user-generated content acts as social proof and is, therefore, a priceless part of your growth journey. 

Running Contests and Giveaways

You could also consider setting up contests and giveaways to expand your reach and attract new followers to your social media accounts.

For example, a proven method of growing your audience is to publish a giveaway where you give away free products (digital products or physical ones) or services. To participate, users must like the post, share it with their followers, and tag at least three people in a comment under the post.

You can take a similar approach for contests. Make sure to specify all of the details associated with these games, such as the timeframe, the rules and policies, the delivery methods you’ll use to reward the winners, and others.

Scheduling Posts for Optimal Times

As you start to see the results from your posting, you’ll probably notice that engagement varies depending on the day and time you posted.

When creating your social media marketing strategy, it’s fundamental to think about the way you schedule posts. Posting content should be a process that has been researched from start to finish. This includes understanding the best times to post.

Many studies aim to uncover the best times for posting content. The truth is that this varies based on the platform you use, the type of audience you have, and the industry you’re in. Although it’s helpful to observe what research says, we strongly recommend that you test and experiment to find out what works best for your business.

Staying Updated With Social Media Trends

Last but not least, don’t underestimate the power of industry trends and updates on social media.

Ensure you have an expert on your team responsible for following all that’s new on social media and who can point you in the right direction for next month’s social media calendar.

Advanced Strategies

So far, we’ve covered the primary social media strategies you can explore as a business.

However, there are also a few advanced techniques that can help you achieve even more rewarding results. Learn more about this in the below lines.

Utilising Social Media Tools and Software

Being active on social media as a business is a highly demanding task. Depending on your business size and posting frequency, you may need to employ a whole social media department to handle this process for you.

The good news is that you can achieve some level of automation. For example, you don’t have to post social media posts manually. Instead, you can rely on social media marketing tools to do this for you.

There are plenty of proven and accessible social media management tools that can provide access to valuable solutions like analytics tools, business tools, and others. Software and instruments can help you reduce the time you spend manually on social media, gain more insights into your performance, identify gaps, and improve your results.

Integrating Social Media with Other Marketing Channels

Let’s not forget that the modern consumer expects an omnichannel experience. This means leveraging social media’s power and merging it with other marketing channels, such as email, SEO, paid ads, content marketing, and even offline marketing.

As a result, you can build a cohesive marketing strategy, boost your reach, and enhance engagement across all channels. This is also the path to achieving consistency in your brand voice and messaging. 

Some of the ways to achieve this are to:

• Promote social channels in your emails.
• Regarget email subscribers on social media.
• Share email campaigns on social media.
• Share recent blog articles on your social media profiles.
• Repurpose content.
• Optimise social profiles for SEO.

Doing this can reinforce your brand across digital and traditional platforms, creating a truly omnichannel experience. 

Implementing Social Listening

The best way to improve your brand, products, and services is through social listening.

Social listening is the process of monitoring what users have to say about your company on social media. You could gather this information from video posts, image posts, comments, group dialogues, and more. 

Using this data, you can adjust your products or services to meet expectations or craft creative messaging that tackles these concerns. 

Managing Crisis on Social Media

Let’s face it – crises are inevitable, and as a business – you must be prepared to face and address them, especially on social media. Although there are no written rules for approaching crisis management on social media, there are some best practices you could implement. 

For starters, if you don’t have a specific message you’d like to share, don’t say anything. However, it’s important to note that staying silent in difficult situations is often considered a sign of weakness or uninterest on social media. 

Perhaps the best thing to do is create a plan for how you intend to react to a crisis, should it occur. Gather your team and practice creating potential responses. This will help you prepare and give you more ideas for when the time comes. 

Personalising Customer Interactions

Personalisation on social media is precisely what differentiates a good brand from a great one. 

It’s the most proven way to build deeper relationships, boost customer satisfaction, and increase brand loyalty. In an era where users are constantly bombarded with information, showing that you care about each one of your followers is the best way to win trust and loyalty. 

Where possible, address customers by name when interacting on social media. Always respond on time, and don’t make your followers feel neglected or unseen. 

You can use customer data from purchase history, preferences, or interactions to further personalise responses. As an even more advanced practice, you could create customised offers and product recommendations.

Conclusion: Maximising Social Media Impact

Being active on social media as a business isn’t just about regularly posting. Running a successful social media site requires an in-depth understanding of how these platforms work, what trends are arising, what your target audience is interested in, and more.

By implementing the tips and tricks we shared above on using social media for business, you can unlock the full potential of these platforms and enhance your brand’s visibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of using social media marketing for businesses?

Through social media, businesses can increase brand awareness, grow direct customer engagement, boost customer service, achieve better lead generation, and drive website traffic. It’s also a powerful data source that can shape other marketing strategies.

What role do community managers play in a social media strategy?

Community managers are essential in nurturing relationships between the business and its audience. They monitor social media platforms, respond to comments or complaints, engage with followers, and manage online communities.

How do I handle negative feedback or complaints on social media?

Always respond on time and professionally to negative feedback. Apologise for the inconvenience, provide solutions, and move the conversation to direct messages if necessary to resolve the issue privately.

Sources

2024 State of marketing report

Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 4th quarter 2023

Distribution of Instagram users in the United States as of July 2024, by age group

LinkedIn statistics

Number of TikTok users worldwide from 2018 to 2029

Most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2024, by number of monthly active users