In today’s tech-savvy world, your professional services business needs to be open ‘virtually’ sooner than you launch physically. This is where social media for marketing comes in.
If you aren’t doing online business, creating your social media profiles, and engaging on them, you’re already a step behind. It’s near certainty that your competitors are already flourishing on social media, have an established social media presence, and have an active profile.
The fact is that you’re left behind collecting the dust. So, what happened? How did you end up here?
Here’s the thing: many professional service businesses cannot determine the best ways to use social media to their benefit. In addition, they harbor several concerns, such as:
- The perceived risk of ruining their reputation via social media interactions
- Challenges in deciding which department should ‘own’ social media channels
- Confusion around selecting the ideal social media platform and integrating it within existing systems
- No clarity about their social media strategy and its business value
- Traditional beliefs that replacing conventional business models with newer ones may result in a waste of time, effort, and money
Unfortunately, these worries can hinder the progress of professional service firms. To help you combat this fear and boost your social media presence, we’ve created a comprehensive guide to social media marketing:
A Quick Glance
Social media refers to various websites that allow the creation of content and networking among users. Social media marketing includes leveraging social media channels to find and connect with like-minded audiences.
You can garner qualified leads, build your brand, and drive website traffic through effective social media marketing. But to succeed, marketers need to create an authentic brand image and post content tailored to meet their viewer’s unique interests and needs.
In addition, you must track engagement rates among various metrics to continuously improve your profiles. Here are the top social media platforms professional service businesses typically use:
- Facebook- With more than 2.8 billion users, Facebook offers marketers incredible reach
- LinkedIn- Known as ‘the most trusted social network’ in the U.S., LinkedIn allows you to create a robust and valuable network
- Twitter- Used by more than 82% of B2B content marketers, Twitter allows users to post short updates, news, and links to blog posts
- Instagram- With up to 1 billion users per month, Instagram is the perfect place for engaging and familiarizing with your target audience
Top Strategic Uses of Social Media
Social media plays a crucial role in enhancing your brand awareness and exposure and boosting sales. Here we’ve listed the top strategic uses of social media:
Networking
Social media platforms are the perfect tool for creating robust networking systems. Go beyond overselling your products and use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels as an evening party- the ideal way of meeting new people, fostering relationships, and developing business and client relationships.
But remember that social media, like your evening out, is highly reciprocal. Your audience seeks replies and comments on their tweets and questions. In addition, other business pages expect you to share their content.
Search Engine Optimization
Contrary to popular belief, social media is a precious tool for boosting SEO. Picture your social media profile as another way of promoting your content.
There’s no solid evidence that search engines use social media engagement to gauge your page’s authority. However, more shares attract qualified links directly related to page authority. So, by boosting your social media presence, you can help your website and blogs rank higher.
A bonus point of improving your social media presence is that your content becomes searchable and discoverable. It means that someone looking for relevant product/services may find your tweet linking back to your website; thus, boosting website traffic.
Research Analysis
Social media allow marketers to conduct in-depth research. For instance, you can go through the social media profiles of a potential employee, interviewee for a case study, or a prospective client before meeting them in person. This way, you can learn more about their personality, visibility, authority, and reputation.
Social media also provides marketers the perfect opportunity to stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends. You can also engage with your competitors, such as collaborating, keeping updated with their initiatives, and more.
Recruiting
According to insightful research, the average cost per hire exceeds $4000, and bad hires can cost more than $24,000.
Social media is a cost-effective solution for recruiting better employees well-suited for your company’s culture. LinkedIn and Facebook help recruiters spot the perfect worker by posting highly targeted job details that match with specific resume attributes. Plus, LinkedIn is well-known for hiding a goldmine of talented employees.
Leveraging social media also provides you with real-time analytics, such as who viewed your post, how many people replied, and more. Social media is comparatively better than conventional marketing approaches, given its multiple, valuable features.
Content Promotion
According to research, small businesses with blogs receive 126% more lead growth. In addition, 72% of marketers reveal that content marketing improves engagement.
But without the right content marketing strategies, you won’t be able to promote your blogs or improve engagement rates. Social media solves this problem for you by appearing as a cost-effective and time-efficient way of promoting your content. Integrating your content marketing strategy within your social media marketing strategy helps you promote content through multiple channels- all helpful in building brand reputation and visibility.
However, ensure that you don’t overdo self-promotion and end up irritating viewers. Instead, find the perfect balance between self-promotion and sharing valuable content to establish yourself as a thought leader. Leave marketing collateral for your website, on your social media, and focus on educating.
Tips to Remember when Curating Your Social Media
According to research, 73% of all marketers believe that their social media marketing efforts have been ‘very effective’ or ‘somewhat effective.’ To get started, we’ve listed the top tips and tricks to remember when creating your social media marketing strategy:
- Evaluate your current marketing strategy and set realistic S.M.A.R.T goals to ensure tangible business results
- Track meaningful metrics, such as engagement, click-through, and conversion rates
- Choose the ideal social media platform to market your professional service and align it with your goals
- Create a killer strategy to outline your audience, message, vision, and value
- Learn more about your audience, including creating audience personas, gathering data and demographics
- Optimize your images to boost performance and visibility
- Focus on creating re-occurring content that people become restless to see
- Evaluate how competitors leverage social media profiles
- Socialize your brand by connecting and engaging with customers and by telling an authentic story
Why Use Social Media for Marketing and Growing Your Business?
Let’s discuss the top five benefits of using social media for marketing professional services:
Increase Inbound Traffic
Not marketing your business and services limit your inbound traffic within your few loyal customers. Your retained customers are likely searching for keywords you rank well. Without leveraging your social media channels, you’ll find it challenging to expand your current consumer base.
But by creating social media profiles, you unlock a new pathway to drive traffic to your website. Every image you post, link you share, and news you announce is another effective way of acquiring new customers.
Social media is a social jungle with different users with varying buying behaviors and backgrounds. Publishing your content on multiple platforms allows like-minded people to organically connect with your business, i.e., your target audience.
Boost Sales
Your social media profiles are an integral component of your sales funnel. As more people use social media and social sales tools evolve, social networking becomes essential for e-commerce and content sharing.
Aligning your social media marketing efforts with sales goals helps you connect with new customers without spending a fortune.
Create Brand Trust and Recognition
The sudden boom of e-commerce has transformed it into a veritable playground for scammers, cybercrimes, and hackers. Research reveals that 56% of surveyed consumers experienced buying scams, monetary fraud, or identity theft within two years.
With time, buyers have learned to look out for privacy threats and malicious websites. It means that today’s consumers expect businesses to provide indications of trustworthiness before proceeding with any transactions.
As a result, 54% of social browsers go through their desired brand’s social media pages before purchasing. Thus, active and organic brands can effectively improve brand trust, recognition, and awareness.
Enhance Customer Service and Satisfaction
Another pro of using social media platforms is that it allows buyers to interact with businesses in real-time. It will enable companies to foster a brand image and voice.
Professional service brands that leverage the real-time feedback offered by social media users learn to listen to their viewers and react appropriately. Your buyers may praise or critique; how well and quickly you respond impacts your brand’s reputation.
Businesses that don’t use this line of communication appear uncaring and disingenuous, which frustrates consumers and causes them to choose competitors. By identifying your core brand values and creating safe spaces online, you can make an authentic brand that attracts loyal customers.
Increase Website Traffic
Social media posts alongside social ads are two incredible ways of driving traffic to your website. Posting attention-grabbing images with captions that encourage users to read your blog or visit your website is an easy way of driving web traffic.
Participating in social chats, holding fun giveaways or challenges, and replying to comments in a timely fashion is an excellent ways of increasing visibility and gaining attention from viewers. It also helps you establish yourself as a friendly yet professional business, showcase your expertise, and boost brand exposure.
Ensure that you add your website address in your social media bios so that your audience can uncover more about you, your business, and its services/products with a single click.
Use Socialays to Enhance Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
According to research, you can ensure a 63% lower customer attrition rate by successfully engaging your customers. In addition, you’re more likely to experience 50% higher productivity and a 55% greater share of your wallet.
Despite this, another study reveals that 54% of customers believe that companies need to transform their existing engagement strategies. Socialays solves all your customer engagement issues with its revolutionary features and endless benefits.
Socialays is an innovative AI-based social media assistant dedicated to helping users connect with their target audience and convert them into loyal customers. Here’s how Socialays enables you to achieve your social media marketing goals:
- Socialays revolutionary ‘Sentiment Analyzes’ reads viewer’s comments and categorizes them as ‘positive’ ‘negative’ or ‘neutral’ to help you come up with the best replies
- In addition, its ‘Emotional Analyzes’ categorizes comments in one of nine emotions, including worry, happiness, hate, and more. This way, you can quickly understand your customer’s pain points to quickly solve their problems or appreciate them for leaving a positive review
- Socialays notify you whenever your profile or page receives a comment. It enables you to engage and connect with your audience in real-time
- The app also allows you to customize its features to detect specific comments like ad content, questions, confusion, etc. In turn, you can stay on top of your comments and establish yourself as an authority
- Socialays also notify you any time a comment includes hate or profanities. This way, you can take action in a timely fashion to ensure a positive and happy community
The Bottom Line
According to research, up to 54% of all social browsers leverage social media apps to research products. Thus, it’s evident that social media marketing is crucial for marketing professional services.
If you want to thrive in today’s fast-paced, digital world, you need to integrate your social media marketing strategy into your overall marketing strategy. Remember that social media moves fast, trends change, and new networks emerge.
So, keep reviewing and tweaking your social media marketing strategy to meet your growing business needs. More importantly, don’t hesitate to make changes to reflect your current goals, plans, and visions.
