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The people have argued that social media has become quite impersonal, making it increasingly hard to establish and nurture lasting relationships with your clients.
But this is not quite the reality. Indeed, many marketers have figured out how to use social media to create meaningful connections via social networking sites.
While different businesses and websites will have to use different tactics to connect and engage with their audiences on social media, there are certain principles that you can use to guide you through this process.
Whether you are a marketer or a business owner, the following are a number of ways that you can use to build lasting and meaningful connections on each social media platform where your your brand has a presence.
Identify Your Target Audience
You cannot target an audience that you have not identified. Therefore, take your time to define the age group you intend to reach, the average income of your target audience as well as certain common values you expect your audience to have.
Taking into account these factors will help you see clearly what your ideal customer looks like.
If you are a marketer, consider creating questionnaires that can help your client identify their target audience.
By so doing, you can identify the marketing tactic to use to grow your audience; do you buy followers, spend money on ads, or use traditional marketing methods, etc.?
Referral Traffic Through Friend Invite
It is quite common to use friend invites as a way of boosting social media referrals. You can also use this tactic to find new consumers for your products.
For instance, people who have already visited your website and perhaps engaged with your content are likely to be interested in similar content on social media.
What’s more, they are likely to lead to high-quality conversions. Therefore, finding this kind of people who are very likely to become customers makes friend invites an effective method of finding new customers for your business.
Engage in LinkedIn Group Discussions
Through LinkedIn, companies can engage and network with professionals in their fields.
Via LinkedIn groups, you have access to unending opportunities to listen and engage with a variety of potential customers.
What’s more, conducting a typical search on LinkedIn for certain types of customers will bring up a list of relevant groups that would further help you find some new customers for your brand.
All the same, ensure that you take a sneak peek into a group and the type of content its members publish to ensure that you only join the groups that are most relevant to your brand.
As soon as you join, start engaging with the members and creating interesting discussions around brand-relevant topics. As more group members engage in discussions, you gain credibility.
These platforms are also perfect for helping you understand what those potential customers want from your products or services further preparing you to create better products and services for the future.
Determine Your Audience Size
Understanding the size of your audience is extremely important. You can get these insights using Facebook ads.
For instance if you are targeting women and men from New York city who have an interest in social media marketing, Facebook ads will tell you that there are 240,000 people that fit your description.
The rule of thumb is to reduce this number to a more manageable size by targeting a narrower niche. So, instead of social media marketing, you can use narrower niches like “search engine marketing” or “content curation”.
Doing this will save you the money that you would have wasted advertising to people unlikely to engage with your brand, products, or services.
Find Them in Facebook Groups
For marketers who use Facebook personal profile instead of pages, consider using the Facebook search bar to look for groups matching the interests of your ideal customer.
If you are a marketer who wants to provide social media marketing solutions to several clients, it is important to figure out how you can segment your audiences to avoid unnecessary confusion when choosing the Facebook groups to join.
Create a Well-Balanced Content Plan
Creating a well-balanced content plan will ensure that you get the results you’re looking for on every social networking site that you have created a presence.
A well-balanced content plan incorporates informational posts and promotional posts in a way that is not off-putting to your customers.
The rule of thumb is the 80/20 rule: 80% of the content you post should be informational while 20% should be promotional. This approach works for most brands.
Marquis Matson is a writer, social media manager and SEO content marketer. She currently lives on the coast of Ecuador, working remotely as a freelancer. Her primary focus is on building online visibility of new, up and coming brands, particularly brands that promote health and wellness. She lives a nomadic lifestyle, though is originally from California.