Is Social Media Actually Growing Your Business?

Get Social: Connecting Your Business Channels

Deciding on which social media channels you should be using for your business is an exhausting exercise.

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Periscope, Vine, Snapchat… the list goes on and on. It seems like a brand new, “must-use” social network pops up every week.

By time you get set up and figure out how to use each network, you’re overwhelmed with how you should actually be using these platforms to achieve your business goals.

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In my experience, not enough business owners stop to ask themselves if they should actually be using social media for their business. And if they should, which networks are going to be best for finding new audiences that’ll resonate with their businesses?

If you’re going to invest your precious time and resources into social media marketing, you need to have very clear goals in mind. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself struggling to justify those countless hours building the audience for your Facebook Page.

To help you decide exactly how you can get the most out of social media for your business (and which channels you should be using), we teamed up again with Sue B. Zimmerman for a class on Get Social: Connecting Your Business Channels.

Check out the Q&A right here with members from the CreativeLive community, asking specific questions about leveraging social media to grow their businesses.

Deciding Which Channels Are Best.

For every business owner, Sue recommends taking a deep dive into uncovering where your target clients spend the most time online. To do this, you need to have a solid understanding of who exactly your target customers are. Ask your (best) existing customers to fill out a survey, indicating gender, age range, occupation, interests, and which social networks they use most. If you’re still in the beginning phases of your business, take a well-researched best guess at who you see becoming your customer.

Once you have that ideal customer persona solidified, this incredibly detailed guide of user demographics on every major social media channel, is a great starting point for locating the network that best-aligns with your target audience.

Women in the age range of 35-55? Chances are, you’ll find more potential clients by investing your time on Pinterest. Here’s a guide to getting more followers on Pinterest.

Technologically savvy men under 30? My bet would be on leveraging Twitter to engage and drive new audience.

Setting Your Social Media Goals.

So, you’ve figured out which channels to test out with your business.

Now, before posting regular content and spending a ton of time learning the nuances of your select networks, you want to make sure you’re optimizing for the right goals. You can optimize for increasing your followers, likes, comments, shares, re-tweets, re-pins, clicks, impressions, and more. However, I’m willing to bet that only a very small portion of those metrics are going to drive tangible results for your business.

When getting started with strategic social media marketing, I personally opt for choosing the metrics that translate into the most impact for my business. That tends to be clicks and shares. More people clicking through from social channels and over to my landing pages, blog posts, and sales forms, will translate into subscriber growth and eventually more revenue for my business. Increasing the number of shares on my content will get it in front of more similar audiences, where it has the potential to go viral within a limited niche.

Without goals, you’re just wandering through the dark.

What do you hope to achieve with social media in your business?

Join us for Get Social: Connecting Your Business Channels with Sue B. Zimmerman right here on CreativeLive.

Ryan Robinson FOLLOW >

Content marketing consultant to the world's top experts and growing startups. Online educator at ryrob.com where I share business advice and teach entrepreneurs how to start a blog and other side businesses. Check out my post on the best business ideas, read about how I validated a business idea in just 30 days, get my recommendations for the best business books, and check out my favorite motivational quotes.