Growing Your Business Using Social Media
The importance of social media in business strategy cannot be overstated.
If you’re hoping to start or to grow a business in 2025, social media must be at the heart of your plan.
Whether it’s targeting influencers, utilizing viral marketing campaigns, or listening to the concerns and demands of your demographic, if your business doesn’t have a strong social media presence you’ll struggle to find a foothold in an increasingly competitive market.
Here are 10 ways you can grow your business using social media.
Growing Business: Develop a Unique Strategy
How do you develop a new business strategy? A successful strategy must resonate with your customers by being relatable and unique.
This involves using User-Generated Content (UGC) to harness the creative power of your audience.
UGC not only boosts engagement by involving customers directly in your brand’s narrative but also enhances authenticity, which is crucial for building trust.
For a truly effective strategy, push the boundaries on social media platforms where your audience is most active.
Tailor your content and campaigns to reflect the core values of your brand while sparking creativity.
This could mean launching interactive campaigns or contests that encourage users to submit their own content related to your products or services.
Moreover, ensure your social media efforts align with the overall objectives of your business.
Whether you’re a new e-commerce venture in a specific locale or looking to expand an existing enterprise, choose strategies that leverage local insights and customer demographics to maximize impact.
Remember, developing a new business strategy isn’t about following the pack.
It’s about forging a path that is distinctly yours, using innovative approaches like UGC to create a strategy that not only reaches but also resonates with your customers.
Understand your demographic
To optimize your social media strategy, it’s crucial to understand not just who you’re targeting, but also the specific needs and behaviors of your audience.
Conducting thorough market research is essential to uncover the struggles and pain points of your potential customers.
This insight allows you to craft highly targeted campaigns that speak directly to the interests and challenges of your audience.
For instance, consider Facebook, where the predominant age group is between 25 and 34. If this demographic aligns with your target market, it’s wise to concentrate your efforts on Facebook.
Tailor your content and ads to match the preferences and browsing habits of this group to increase engagement.
Similarly, if you’re targeting a younger audience, mostly under the age of 35, Instagram is a key platform.
Develop a strong Instagram presence with visuals and messages that resonate with this group’s unique tastes and media consumption habits.
Additionally, it’s important to understand the nuances between different generational cohorts, such as Millennials and Gen Z.
These groups have distinct values, media consumption patterns, and social media behaviors.
Recognizing these differences can help you fine-tune your strategy to be more effective across multiple platforms.
By integrating comprehensive market research into your strategy, you can ensure your social media campaigns are not only well-targeted but also deeply resonant with the specific needs and preferences of your audience. This approach not only enhances engagement but also significantly boosts the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Improve your SEO
Improving your SEO is a beneficial loop. By strengthening the SEO of your content, you’ll attract more readers and increase the social media share rate of your page.
As the social media share rate increases, so does your domain authority.
If you consistently optimize your content for SEO, you’re only improving your business’s online presence.
Lots of consumers will probably check out your social media before they buy from you, too, so it’s good to make sure your brand is consistent.
Learn how to use Instagram for business.
Research your competition
If you don’t know who you’re up against, you’re going to struggle to tailor your campaigns and brand messaging to compete.
Researching your competition is definitely a skill you need to acquire; it’s not necessarily easy to do, and you might feel like the task ahead is too large for you.
Still, if you want to stay competitive, you’ll need to make sure you know who you’re up against.
Check out the techniques and social media strategies they’re using and ask how they could work for you.
Don’t steal methods and ideas, but do adapt and work around them to create a superior approach.
Create authentic content
Today’s social media users are highly discerning and can easily distinguish between authentic content and purely commercial posts.
Authenticity on social media isn’t just about avoiding the hard sell; it’s about aligning every piece of content with the core values, goals, and messages of your business.
This alignment helps unpack the personality behind your brand, making it more relatable and trustworthy.
Consider an influencer who attempts to seamlessly promote a product in their social feed but comes off as forced or insincere. This disconnect can alienate viewers and may even tarnish the influencer’s credibility. To prevent this in your own strategy, ensure that the content you create is genuine and reflective of your brand’s identity.
Such content demonstrates that you’re not just a place to eat but a venue that enriches relationships and revives dining traditions.
When your content resonates with the values that your audience cares about, it enhances your brand’s image and can lead to increased business.
People appreciate transparency and are likelier to engage with a brand that presents itself truthfully and passionately.
Remember, maintaining a good image isn’t just about avoiding negative outcomes—it’s about proactively crafting a brand that people want to connect with and support.
This approach ensures that when customers interact with your brand, they engage with a business that feels personal and aligned with their values.
Build a strong brand
Your brand needs to be consistent, on-point, and memorable. Everything from your graphic design to your content informs how people think of your brand.
If you’re on social media and you’re not reinforcing your brand, you’re not going to increase business.
While creating engaging and relevant content is crucial to growing your business via social media, you still need to communicate your brand identity. Otherwise, you just become a place to go for good content.
Your posts and social media presence should always remind people what your business is all about.
Emphasize the call to action
Part of reinforcing your brand identity is creating consistent and galvanizing calls to action (CTA). With a good CTA, you’ll encourage your social media platform visitors to convert and buy your products.
Make sure it’s not too overt; nobody wants to be halfway through a passage of relevant content only to hit the brick wall of “buy my product now.”
Slip your CTA organically and naturally into your content, and you’ll subtly guide your visitors to your products without ever coming across as needy or desperate. It’s all about hitting that sweet spot.
Hold regular giveaways
Your audience likes to feel involved and engaged with your brand. There’s no better way to ensure they feel that way than holding regular giveaways.
These will increase your engagement rate since people like to feel as if they’re participating.
Free stuff is always appreciated, and by handing out your products you’re increasing brand awareness and putting your products in more homes.
The giveaway doesn’t necessarily need to be related to the product itself; you could give something else away that your audience would appreciate in return for a product or social media engagement, for example.
Build relationships with influencers
Marketing nowadays is all about influencers. These social media presences generate engaging, organic content regularly, and their followers love them for it. If you contact influencers and build relationships with them, you’ll be increasing your engagement massively.
Influencer marketing isn’t dissimilar to old-school celebrity advertising, but there’s a more grassroots sense to it, thanks to influencers’ home-grown authentic appeal.
Your social media presence will grow hugely if you can contact successful influencers and persuade them to endorse your product in some of their content.
Here are the top three YouTube Influencers who own the Internet.
Keep your social media presence felt for Growing Business
Every single piece of content you create should always link back to your social media in some way. Are you creating a YouTube video?
Ensure you include your social media links so people know where to find you—building an Instagram story?
Use your bio link to cross-pollinate and take people to your site.
You must integrate social media into your wider business strategy, not treat it as a separate entity.
Check the leading digital marketing influencers transforming entrepreneurship this year for more unique ideas.
You also need to ensure that your social media presence is constantly felt. Include icons on your website, show people where they can find you when you promote yourself outside the internet, etc.