How to Promote Business on Social Media for Free – This article is all about Promotion of Your Business on Social Media Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, LinkedIn etc.
Promoting your Business on Social Media Sites is the best way to grow Business in less time. I will tell about promotion of your business in these social media sites without any cost or investment. Social Media Marketing is best marketing technique for small business. I also included tools needed to promote your busineess with your favourite social media. But first:
Table of Contents
How To Promote Business On Social Media For Free Using Outlined Steps
Fill Out Your Profile
This seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at what you might be missing out on. Unless you’re going for an ultra-minimalistic look, your brand’s Facebook Page should be filled out. Add a monthly check-in to your social media checklist to explore new features.
In the About tab, you have space to add links, including other social networks’ profiles. The Story section allows you to give more information about your company in a storytelling format.
Article uses the About section to let customers know where else to find them. Not all the links are active, but the icons do indicate the networks.
Instagram recently added the ability to link other accounts and hashtags to your bio. Originally, people had to make do with memorizing the hashtags or creatively using an emoji. Now, you can use the space to promote other location-specific accounts and add hashtags.
These hashtags can be your standard branded ones or special hashtags, like for a contest.
Dave’s Coffee makes use of their bio space with both location account tags and their branded hashtag. Followers are easily directed to their account and to explore their other pages.
Tracking Instagram Hashtag Performance with Sprout
Simply put, Instagram hashtags add value you’ll want to make sure you’re maximizing.
That’s where Sprout’s Instagram Outbound Hashtag Performance report comes in.
Discover your most used hashtags and those generating the most engagement by requesting a demo or starting your free trial today.
Know your audience
One reason using social media for business is so effective is that you can micro-target your audience. But first, you need to understand who your audience is.
Start by compiling data on your current customers. Then, dig deeper with social media analytics. You’ll soon start to understand who’s buying from and interacting with you online.
Hootsuite Insights Powered by Brandwatch can help you uncover detailed information like the top hashtags, referral sites, and even specific social authors for terms relevant to your business.
Create Targeted Ads
There are many ways to target someone with ads on Facebook. To begin with, you can add the Facebook Pixel to your website. Once you’ve done so, you can set up ads to target website visitors automatically.
Take advantage of Facebook’s audience data to target interest groups. If you’ve recently shopped online for shoes, you may notice that you’re receiving more shoe ads than before. That’s because Facebook noted your shopping habits and added you to that interest category.
Despite never having heard of the company, Nectar’s ad showed up because we clicked on another mattress ad.
Once your ads are set up, use a tool like Sprout Social to manage the comments you’ll inevitably receive. Never miss another potential customer’s question again.
Tag Products to Your Posts
A feature available on Instagram and Facebook, shoppable tags are a must for retail brands. They identify your products to your customers and customers can easily purchase from your website through the tag.
Letterfolk uses Instagram’s shoppable tag in this post. Clicking on the tagged product leads you to the product page and a short description of it.
Decide which platforms are right for you
Don’t make assumptions about where your audience spends their time online.
Your instinct might tell you that if you’re targeting Gen Z, you should skip Facebook and focus on Instagram and TikTok. But the data shows that nearly a quarter of Facebook users are aged 18 to 24.
Build relationships
The unique benefit of social media marketing for small business is that it allows you to talk directly to customers and followers. You can build relationships over time, rather than asking for a sale upfront.
That said, you certainly can use social to get a sale upfront, as we explain in Tip 7.
More than 44% of internet users use social networks to research brands. Part of that discovery is getting to know who you are as a brand and what you stand for.
When people engage with your organic content or ads, it’s a great idea to engage back. This helps to build trust and form a loyal following. As fans share and like your content, you rise in the social algorithms and gain new, free, exposure.
For most Facebook users, there are more than 1,000 potential Newsfeed posts at any one time. Engagement is one of the signals Facebook uses to help predict which of those posts users are likely to see. When you establish relationships with your followers, they are more likely to see your posts.
How To Promote Business On Social Media For Free Using Business Promotion Tools
Adobe Post
Adobe Post was created to give you a powerful tool to differentiate among the competitors and engage your followers with eye-catching posts. Create stunning social graphics in seconds with it. Get started quickly with handcrafted remixable design templates made for social sharing. Resize your text – beautiful typography will be automatically applied on-the-fly. Transform your text and photo into professional-looking graphics with a single tap.
PromoRepublic
The tool allows you to manage all your social media activities in one place and save time while keeping posting consistent. You can connect multiple profiles in five networks to your profile and organize content for all of them in a content calendar. If you preset posting time, it is scheduled and posted automatically. Also, the tool offers a library of Post Ideas with 6000+ editable visual templates, a built-in Graphics Editor and integrated photostocks. You can create amazing content in literally five minutes. Additionally. PromoRepublic has a White Label solution for enhancing brands with their own social media management tool.
Buffer
Prices: Forever free plan, $15, $99, $199, and $399 per month (with a 14-day free trial)
Description: Buffer is an intuitive, streamlined social media management platform trusted by brands, businesses, agencies, and individuals to help drive meaningful engagement and results on social media.
We have a suite of products for publishing, engagement, analytics, and team collaboration. Our products are carefully considered and highly refined in order to help social media marketers and teams work more efficiently and effectively.
Unique value: What we’ve heard from our customers is that they love how clean and intuitive our tools are, how friendly and timely our customer support is, and how helpful our content is.
Want an independent Buffer review? Check out this post.
Once you’ve researched all your options and if you think Buffer might suit your needs, we would love for you to give it a try and see the difference it can make for your social media management.
Hootsuite
One of the big names in social media management, HootSuite is a tried and true champion. Schedule posts across various social networks, set up feed streams to see what’s happening on different networks, and analyze the results.
Prices: Free plan, $29, $129, $599 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Hootsuite, probably the biggest social media management tool, is used by over 15 million people and more than 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies.
There’s a good reason for their success: it’s an all-in-one platform that allows you to curate and schedule content, measure your social ROI, run social media ads, and more.
Unique value: Being such a comprehensive platform, there are several things that people love about Hootsuite: being able to monitor multiple accounts and keywords, connect with over 35 social networks, and bulk-schedule social media posts.
Sprout Social
Real people. Real brands. Real connection.
Prices: $99, $149, and $249 per user per month (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social combines several social media tools into one platform — from social media scheduling to monitoring, to reporting.
Sprout Social is one of the few social media management tools that provides customer relationship management (CRM) features. Having a complete profile of your customers help you serve them better and build stronger relationships with them.
Unique value: The most common praise I’ve heard about Sprout Social is its amazing reports. Many social media managers found the reports so great and beautiful that they would download and send them to their managers or clients without editing them.
Agora Pulse
Social media management simplified
Prices: Free,$79 per month, $159 per month, plus enterprise options
Description: Like the social media management platforms mentioned above, Agora Pulse is also an all-in-one social media platform with scheduling, responding, and reporting features.
Unique value: Unlike the rest, Agora Pulse has several unique features such as competitor analysis and Facebook contest apps at a very affordable price point.
Sendible
Prices: $29, $99, $199, $299 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Sendible is a social media management tool built specifically for agencies with several clients. On top of most features that social media management tools provide, Sendible allows you to customize your dashboard according to your branding to attract new clients.
Unique value: Sendible has some impressive integrations such as the Canva graphics editor, royalty-free image search, and YouTube search. It also provides some automation for those who want to save time on repetitive tasks.
eClincher
Prices: $49, $99, $199 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 14-day free trial)
Description: Like most social media management tools, eClincher allows you to schedule and publish posts, respond to social messages, and analyze your social media performance.
Unique value: What makes eClincher different from other tools is that it enables you to auto-post with smart queues and RSS feeds, has a media library for your images, and lets you search for social media influencers.
Infogr.am
A sweet tool to help you make snazzy looking infographics in a matter of minutes.
While you won’t be able to have ultimate customization, with plenty of graphics to choose from and some great drag-and-drop vector art, it’s a fine place for those who want a simple, high-quality looking infographic.
The free version lets you share your infographic and embed it on your website. To download your infographic, you’ll need the paid version.
Other similar tools include: Piktochart and Easel.ly. Give them a shot too!
Bit.ly
In essence, bit.ly is a URL shortener, transforming ugly eyesore URL strings into cute little clickables. However, it can be a heck of lot more if you let it. Sign up for a free account, and Bit.ly will save your “bitlinks,” let you organize your bitlinks into “bundles,” and even track click analytics.
Mention
Mention is a handy tool that lets you monitor keywords across various sites. You can ask Mention to track references to your brand name or other specific keywords, and it will populate a feed with mentions from the web.
Hook up your own social media account info, and Mention makes it easy to take action and respond to your brand/keyword mentions. Mention offers a 14 day free trial, and starts at $30/month.
For a cheaper, less comprehensive alternative, consider Google Alerts, which will aggregate keyword and brand mentions across the web.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is pretty darn cool – it lets you discover the “most shared content and key influencers” on the web. Search a keyword and see which related articles performed the best, complete with social media shares.
There’s a perfectly useful free option, plus paid options, which add the ability to set up alerts, export data, and access content analysis and domain reports.
Rebel Mouse
Rebel Mouse is a digital publishing platform that functions as a social content aggregator, displaying your posted and shared content in a customizable layout. Rebel Mouse is similar to Paper.li, but with more customization.
My issue with Rebel Mouse is that I didn’t find its functionality instantly apparent. You’re abandoned to figure things on your own and, at least for me, it all felt quite complicated and overwhelming. Even after spending half an hour exploring it, I still wasn’t exactly sure what it was supposed to be used for.
The real value with Rebel Mouse seems to be in creating very stylish looking, high-quality pages composed of various content pieces (video, images, articles, etc.). These pages can be used as part of a blog, in a webpage as part of a campaign, or as a newsletter.
If that sounds up your alley, I suggest reading up on the various ways you can use and make the most of Rebel Mouse. I can definitely see the opportunity to do some really cool stuff with Rebel Mouse, so long as you’re willing to put in the time to figure out how it all works. I could see Rebel Mouse being great for specific campaigns. [Free and Paid Versions]
Conclusion
Social media is a great tool to build a strong online presence for your business. There are several different platforms that you should be using to promote your business and increase the visibility of your brand. You will want to be active on these different platforms, but one thing that a lot of people struggle with is how to spread their attention among the different platforms.