Social Media for Beginners: How to start?

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Social Media for Beginners: How to start?

Do you still remember the days when a lot of money was spent to gain attraction or popularity through billboards, newspapers and TV advertisements? Today, social media has shaken up the world of traditional media.

Our day to day lives are more and more happening online. It’s no surprise because we answer our emails, check our bank accounts, order food or even watch TV shows or movies. All of that happens online. The time we spend on the internet, 28% of it is on social media and there is no doubt that the percentage will only increase.

But before diving into your research, you need to know the two types of sources from where you can get marketing research information.

Why should I use social media for marketing?

Recent studies show, that social media advertising has significantly increased due to more and more people joining and using it in their daily lives, while other types of media have dropped. Business owners have less need to invest their hard-earned money into traditional media.

This means that by investing time and money into social media advertising can prove to be highly beneficial for not only building up a business name and brand but also attract new potential customers.

There is also a possibility that a business owner can take advantage of showing certain advertisements to a target audience via social media’s targeting features. This means that advertisements will be shown to a certain audience based on numerous variables, such as age, sex, location, recent searches, and interests.

By creating a buyers persona, researching what is most popular amongst the desired clientele and catering to exactly that type of consumer it is considerably easier to grow a business’ brand.

This way business owners can ensure that the majority of their advertisements are seen by the preferred audience as compared to billboards or TV where there is no control.

Step 1: Choose Your Social Media

This is where a decision has to be made: what type of target audience are you looking for? If your target audience is teenagers, 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.

In contrast to Facebook, where the distribution of the audience in the same global view. This app is significantly more popular amongst men than women and has a wider age range than Instagram.

By doing profound research on different platforms, the majority of their users and taking into account all of these different numbers and statistics, you can purposefully attract more potential clients.

Step 2: Managing Your Accounts

Firstly, you have to manage your own personal account and then move on to your business. Some general rules for a personal account are:

– Use a photo with your face in it. It is crucial that you do not use pictures of animals, landscapes or any digital art that does not associate with you in any way. You have to have a reliable profile, for people to trust you and the brand you stand for.

– Write a short description about yourself, some indication about your background and what type of information you will share.

– And do not forget to include a link to your website. This way people that come across your account can have easy reach to your business.

For a business social media profile – you have to use a photo of your logo in your profile pic, that way it is easier to distinguish Short description of the company included with a link is also preferred.

Step 3: Content

After creating your accounts, the next thing to do is build up your followers. You can not build up your following without posting. The content should be interesting and relevant to your company. So, what is interesting content?

– Articles or stories. Do not 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 have 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 enjoys jokes and your followers will most likely crack a smile which can lead to shares of the post and more visitors can come to your website. (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. A lot of applications use hashtags to help narrow the search for particular information.

– Post frequently. It is important that you do not over-do it. You have to do research on the social media that you plan to use when and how many times to post to have the most exposure. There are a few apps that you can use, to help you with that (Instagram).

Step 4: Be Patient

You can not build a hundred thousand following overnight. Consistency and quality content is the main goal and followers that resonate with that type of content will come. Some social media systems have rules, that if you break them, your account can get suspended. This can happen for number of reasons: following too many people per day, posting too frequently, etc.

Buying followers or likes will get you nowhere because your content interaction will still be low and no matter how many you buy – posts will not reach real people, that are interested in what you have to share.

Conclusions

To keep your social media accounts active and followers engaged in posts, you have to monitor what types of posts best resonate with your audience. This way you will have loyal customers that will spread the word about your accounts. Social media is free and easy to access it has so many opportunities that it can be a little overwhelming. But if you put in the time to get to know your audience and being patient, there is very little chance that you will not succeed.