Social Media for Beginners: How to start?
Jr. Marketing Specialist
Emilija is a motivated junior marketing specialist. She focuses mainly on social media management, content writing, and research.
Remember the days when a lot of money was spent to gain attention or popularity through billboards, newspaper ads, and TV? Today, social media has shaken up the world of traditional media.
Our daily lives are taking place more and more online. This is no surprise as we answer our emails, check our bank accounts, order food, or even watch TV shows or movies. All of this is happening online.
Social media accounts for 28% of the time we spend on the internet and there is no doubt that this percentage will only increase.
But before you dive into your research, you need to know the two types of sources you can get marketing research information from.
Why should I use social media for marketing?
Recent studies show that social media advertising has increased significantly as more people join and use it in their daily lives, while other types of media usage have declined.
Therefore, business owners have less need to invest their hard-earned money in traditional media.
This means that investing time and money in social media advertising can prove to be very beneficial not only in building a business’s reputation and brand name but also in attracting new potential customers.
There is also the possibility that businesses can take advantage of showing certain advertisements to a target audience through social media’s targeting features. This means that ads are displayed to a specific audience based on numerous variables such as age, gender, location, recent searches, and interests.
By creating a buyer profile, researching what is most popular with the desired clientele, and targeting just that type of consumer, the company can growth its sales and build a community around the brand very easily.
In this way, businesses can ensure that the majority of their advertising is seen by their preferred audience, compared to billboards or TV, where there is no control.
Step 1: Choose Your Social Media
At this point, a decision needs to be made on what type of audience are you looking for.
For example, if your target audience is teens, according to Sproutsocial: YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular apps amongst this age group in the United States.
And as you can see in the chart, the distribution of Instagram users worldwide as of January of 2021 is most popular amongst young millennials and Gen Z.
Unlike Facebook, where the distribution of the audience is in the same global view. This app is significantly more popular among men than women and has a wider age range than Instagram.
By doing your research on the different platforms, analyzing the main users, and taking into account all the relevant numbers and statistics, you can target potential customers more effectively.
Step 2: Managing Your Accounts
First, you need to manage your personal account and then move on to your business account. Some general rules for a personal account are:
✔ Use a photo that has your face.
It is crucial that you do not use pictures of animals, landscapes, or other digital artwork that is not associated with you in any way. You need to have a reliable profile so people trust you and also can relate to the brand you stand for.
✔ Write a short description of yourself.
Mention some details about your background and what kind of information you want to share with the audience.
✔ Don’t forget to include a link to your website.
This way people who come across your account can easily check your website and reach out to you.
✔ For your business social media profile, you must use a photo of your logo as the picture.
Also, add a short description of the business with a link to the website.
Step 3: Content
After creating your accounts, the next step is to build your follower’s base. You can’t build your community without posting. The content should be interesting and relevant to your business.
So, what is the interesting content?
✔ Articles or stories.
Don’t be afraid to share articles related to your field, not only from your own website but also from other influencers in your field or other websites.
✔ Statistics or interesting studies.
They need to be related to your field if you are posting from a business account, and not so much – if you are posting from a personal account.
✔ Jokes.
Everyone likes jokes and your followers will most likely laugh seeing a good joke which can then be shared, and, thereby, increasing traffic to your site.
For example, RyanAir posted on TikTok a funny video on Feb 2nd that related to a trend at that time that was popular on the app, it got more followers and even more views for the account.
✔ Hashtags.
Many apps use hashtags to narrow down searches for specific information.
✔ Post frequently.
It’s important that you don’t overdo it. You need to research the social media you want to use when to post, and how often to post for maximum impact. There are some apps you can use to help you with this (Instagram).
For more content tips, check out our article.
If you need any help yourselves, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Step 4: Be Patient
You can’t build a community of hundreds of thousands of followers overnight.
Consistency and quality content is the main goal and followers who resonate with this type of content will come.
Some social media systems have rules and if you break them, you can get your account banned. This can be for a variety of reasons: following too many people per day, posting too frequently, etc.
Buying followers or likes won’t get you anywhere as interaction with your content will still be low and no matter how many you buy, your posts won’t reach real people who are interested in what you have to share.
Conclusion
Social media is free and easy to access, it offers so many options that it can be a little overwhelming.
To keep your social media accounts active and increase your followers’ engagement with your posts, you need to observe what types of content resonate best with your audience.
This way, you will have loyal customers who will recommend your accounts to others. If you take the time to get to know your audience and be consistent as well as patient, there’s a big chance you will succeed.
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