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Social Media Marketing: How It Can Help Your Business

Online Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing is becoming more and more important for the health and longevity of your business. If you haven’t begun building an online presence, or you’ve started but don’t know what else to do, hopefully, this article can help clear up some questions and suggest some action steps to build and improve your online presence.

Internet Usage Statistics

If you want to simply be overwhelmed by the number of people online throughout the world and the amount of content being published every second, feel free to check out internet live stats. However, if you’re looking for practical information, here it is.

Internet Usage in the United States

According to the 2010 United States Census, there are 308,745,538 people living in the United States. This number has increased in the past 10 years to roughly 330 million. Of that, roughly 293 million are internet users. That’s over 88% of the U.S. population. Approximately 90% of those internet users have at least one social media account.

Social Media for Small Business

When it comes to putting your business online, there is almost an SEO benefit to Facebook and these other social networking platforms. There are dozens of social media platforms and new ones being created every other day. As a small business owner, this can be hard to keep track of. I have a proposal to help alleviate this struggle. Focus on one platform. Don’t be frozen by analysis paralysis, let me help you simplify your decision.

Social Media displayed on smart phone

Social Media Platform Usage by Age

Depending on who your demographic is, social media presence can vary. This is important to understand so you know where to focus your social media marketing efforts. Here are the stats according to Statista:

Age Range Facebook Instagram SnapChat Twitter
18-2982%76%73%52%
30-4489%54%40%44%
45-5488%42%26%41%
55-6484%29%12%29%
65+77%16%5%20%

As you can see, no matter the age bracket, Facebook seems to be the clear winner. It’s the most used amongst all age brackets, as well as being the platform that has the most built-out advertising platform.

E-commerce visualized

Getting Started with Social Media Marketing

Now that you have seen the number of users on each platform you can see how the growth potential can be astronomically large. Whether you sell products or are a local service, you can now access more people than ever online, all you have to do is get started!

Getting Online

So let’s say you’ve decided to start building your online presence. Based on the above information, it seems self-evident that Facebook is where you should start.

The first thing you need is a personal account. Without a personal account, nothing else can be done on Facebook. Now you can make this account totally private (which I don’t recommend, but to each their own), but it’s still a necessity for creating a Facebook Page and a Facebook Ads account.

Facebook Account with Social Media spelled out with Scrabble pieces

Facebook Page / Facebook Fan Page

Depending on what you build your page for, you may hear it referenced as a Facebook Business Page, Facebook Fan Page, or simply a Facebook Page. Don’t get confused, these are all the same.

With a Facebook Page, you will now be able to build out your brand (I will go into more detail in another article about exactly how to do this). Once your page is built out, now we can move on to the powerful tool known as Facebook Ads.

Facebook for Business

Having a Facebook Business Manager and Facebook Ads Manager are essential for growing online. This is primarily due to the reduction in organic traffic. When Facebook first introduced Fan Pages, there were very few our there. This allowed you to post infrequently and still be seen by a large percentage of your fans.

Now, due to Facebook’s latest algorithm, you are lucky to reach 2% to 5% of your audience. There are ways to beat this, but it takes time, testing, and patience. In a future article, I will go in-depth on how to test content for virility and help create content with a larger organic reach.

As you learn the ins-and-outs of Facebook Ads, you will be able to build a following of loyal fans who you can now access when promoting events, sales, and more.

Moving Forward

Now that you’ve learned of the opportunities and importance of digital marketing, you’ve set up a Facebook Page for your business, and set up an Ads Account with Facebook for Business, what’s next?

Well, that’s for you to decide! Are you:

  • Looking to grow your business’s brand?
  • Trying to increase your leads?
  • Working to increase your sales?
  • Trying to help influence your local community?

Whatever it is, the internet and Social Media can help you do it faster!

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