5 Ways to Make Your Business Stand Out on Social Media

Every business, no matter how large or small, must have a presence on social media. It’s a simple fact, given that almost 2 billion people use social media! While establishing a profile on today’s top networks is important, it’s even more important that you cut through the noise and let your voice be heard.

Today we’re going to look at five ways you can give your business an edge on social media. These tactics will ensure you’re on the radar for your target audience and basking in the exposure social media can offer for your business.

5 Ways to Earn Exposure on Social Media

Social media offers an incredible suite of options for your business. Not only can you connect with your target audience, but you can also grow your brand and expand your network of influencers.

Let’s take a look at five ways you can get more people visiting your social media pages, and ultimately your website.

1. Always Provide Value

Value is a word with a lot of different meanings to different people. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not always in the form of actual money. In other words, you don’t need to throw coupons or promotions out into the wild to provide value.

Information is a great way to provide value to your audience. A great way to provide people with access to this information is to make your website with a blog attached. This blog can act as the place where you create posts that inform your readers or help them understand aspects of your brand and its products.

Some other ways to provide value include answering common questions on your social media pages, and directly communicating with your customers on today’s platforms. Even if you post something funny or curate content from another business in your industry, you’re still providing that integral service to your audience.

People are far more open to the idea of sharing and spreading something on social media if they found it useful, so always strive to be of use to your audience members.

2. Be “Social” on Social Media

Social media offers you the chance to connect with countless people in your audience, but only if you make the effort. What’s more, is that you’ll need to pay attention to the etiquette that comes with this territory:

●  Create and nurture relationships. Start with public communication and then move on to direct messages.

●  Respond to comments and questions, good or bad.

●  Only remove comments if they are derogatory. Don’t remove them just because they’re negative.

●  Ask questions and respond to the answers you receive so people know you’re listening

●  Don’t ask for likes or shares, let them come naturally

●  Don’t flood user feeds. Post a few times a day and don’t go overboard.

●  80% of your content should be informational or entertaining. The other 20% can be promotional.

Keep these things in mind as you expand your presence on social media. Make connections and form relationships for the best results.

3. Tell Your Story

Storytelling is a powerful tool for building your brand and earning the trust of your audience. On social media, it’s a great way to stand out from the pack and showcase what makes your business unique. Here are some ways to start telling your story:

Use Standard Structure - The best stories follow a path of rising action before reaching a climax and ultimately a resolution. Follow this structure when telling your stories on social media.

●  Use Ads to Tell Stories - Your Facebook ads can tell a story if you sequence them correctly. As an experiment, Refinery29 tested this theory and saw a 56% increase in their conversions!

●  Support Local Events - People take pride in their homes, so why not target them with your stories? Highlight local events or landmarks and tell a story surrounding them while incorporating your brand.

●  Follow The S-C-R Structure - By following this structure, your story will showcase your brand’s value to the customer. Start by sharing the situation, identifying the complication, and finally show the resolution your product provides.

Use these techniques to tell stories that place your customers in the heart of the narrative. This is how they connect with your brand and understand your proposition.

4. Talk Less, Listen More

The key to success on social media lies in reaching the right people at the right time. To do this, you need information. So, how do you get it? The answer is a technique called social listening. This process involves listening to the conversations that are going on around your brand, related keywords, and phrases.

These go beyond notifications and instead look for any situations where your brand or industry is being discussed. There’s a lot of insight to be found here. You may be wondering how this differs from social monitoring. Dan Neely of Networked Insights describes it like so:

“Monitoring sees trees, listening sees the forest”

By closely monitoring mentions and uses of your target keywords, you can identify key influencers, take advantage of customer service opportunities, and even watch for specific hashtags.

All of this information allows you to better understand your audience and how you can communicate with them more efficiently.

5. Leverage Videos (Especially Live Ones)

Content is great, and images are nice, but video is the new king of content on social media. With the release of Facebook Live, people are all leaning towards video on today’s platforms. This also extends to virtual reality. For example, Facebook users have watched over one million hours of video with Samsung VR gear.

While YouTube is a powerhouse, you should be focusing on social media as well. It’s also important to note that you should be uploading your videos natively to Facebook. Between standard video and live content, the Newsfeed algorithm is giving huge boosts to videos in terms of organic reach.

Simply linking your videos from YouTube isn’t going to give you this boost. The reason? YouTube and Facebook are competitors. Video isn’t going anywhere either, according to Facebook’s Vice President of European, MIddle Eastern, and African Operations.

According to him, video is the “best way to tell stories in this world.” He also made the comment that Facebook would be almost entirely video in five years! For maximum exposure, start uploading your videos straight to social media platforms.

Final Thoughts

Social media is an incredible place to earn new and exciting exposure for your business. By following these tactics, you can increase your reach on today’s platforms and make your business stand out.

How do you differentiate your business on social media? Let us know in the comments!

About the author

Matt Banner
Founder, OnBlastBlog.com
As Seen on Forbes, Entrepreneur & The Huffington Post

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