Boost Your Business: Broaden Your Audience

guest post marketing website Jan 24, 2018

Currently, there are over 2.46 billion active social media users worldwide and experts argue that this number will increase to 2.77 billion in 2019. With these numbers in mind, it becomes apparent why brand activity on various social media platforms is a crucial part of any well-thought-out marketing strategy. This begs the question, what can you do to reach your target audience more efficiently than your competition?

Although creating and sharing high-quality content is mandatory when it comes to digital advertising, your audience also needs to be engaged and this can prove to be quite a problem for startups and small businesses who are already working with shoestring budgets. Fortunately, they can rely on the following five methods and use them to increase their reach and broaden their audience.

1.    Optimize your social media profiles

It doesn’t matter whether your business already has a social media profile pages or you still have to create them. What does matter is whether those pages are optimized or not. Social media optimization includes choosing a username that’s easy to remember, a recognizable logo or a company-related profile image, a clear and unambiguous, key-word rich description that includes a trackable link leading back to your company website. Besides the profiles themselves, every piece of content you post also needs to be optimized and platform-oriented.

2.    Share visual content

Graphics and visual content and social media are a match made in heaven. Not only is visual content the preferred type of medium shared on social media, but it also provides a benefit when it comes to audience engagement. In fact, research shows that images often result in far greater interaction, peaking around 85% engagement rate on the social media giant Facebook and an increase of retweets by more than 30%. Creating items such as infographics can be quite costly and time-consuming, which is why you can always rely on behind-the-scenes photos, images from industry events and especially stock photography.

3.    Incentivize your audience 

People visiting your website or social media profile often come expecting something worth their while. Giving away free incentives is an excellent marketing technique, created to draw in potential customers by developing trust and piquing their interest. A very good example of this approach comes from Universum’s marketing campaign led by marketing company Isentia. In order to broaden their audience, mainly consisting of academics, an effort was made to establish Universum as an expert for Millennials. For this purpose only, mini e-book series was created, comprised of 6 individual parts, covering different aspects of research performed by Universum. Each of the six books includes a “content pack” which features articles, blogs, infographics and other types of social media content.

4.    Don't be afraid to ask 

One of the simplest ways of engaging your audience and social media following is to ask them questions like what is their opinion on the new line of products or services, what would they like to see changed in the future or simply engage them in end-of-the-week joy by asking them what’s their favorite play to sit back and have a cold one. This is also one the best ways of finding out what aspects of your business you need to upgrade or change completely if necessary.

5.    Take advantage of influencers

Reports state that brands have spent more than $550 million on influencers. Small and developing businesses might find it rather impossible to afford the high-end influencers with millions and millions of followers. One of the newer concepts that have graced the digital era is known as micro-influencers or influencers with a following ranging between 1,000 and 10,000. When it comes to customer engagement, it turns out that micro-influencers actually perform better when compared to their large-scale counterparts, due to their highly targeted audience.

Lastly, it’s important to treat each social media platform as an individual and focus on optimizing your work for that specific platform. Avoid sharing the same exact content across all networks and spamming your following with never-ending barrage of posts. Sharing informative content your followers can relate to a couple of times per day is more than enough to reach out to a broader audience, as long as you stick to the advertising methods and techniques described above.

 

*** This Guest Post was from Jolene Rutheford ***

Jolene Rutheford is a marketing specialist- turned blogger, currently writing for Technivorz.

Interested in media and social media, digital marketing and psychology.

Loves coffee, jazz, dystopian and fantasy movies..