10 Tips to Get Your Business Started on Social Media

Starting a business and successfully implementing your business idea during a pandemic is no easy task. However, success in business comes only to proactive entrepreneurs who take risks at all times and do not blame their failures on pandemics, legislation, high taxes, or limited startup capital. As a rule, the key to many business ideas’ successful implementation is innovation, quality service, continuous improvement of the product, and, of course, competent marketing strategy.

The situation in many markets today is changing significantly, many traditional and once profitable businesses are now buried alive… But isn’t this a great opportunity to launch fresh and unconventional business ideas?

2020 has knocked everyone out, including marketers. As people get sick, so does the market. Many predictions didn’t pan out, but only the weak give up! Here’s a comforting spoiler: analysts say that as painful and frustrating as 2020 may be, the digital marketing and sales market will definitely grow up this 2021. So go for it, online entrepreneurs!

How do you create a business online? The answer is increasingly being sought. This article compiles the most relevant business ideas to launching your business on social media in 2021 that might work for just about everyone.

Social Networks and Content Trends in 2021

As in 2020, UGC (User-Generated Content) remains a trend. However, now brands don’t just take content from customers, readers, viewers, but mix it with branded content. That’s what AirBnb (online accommodation service) did once. Marketers of the company collected videos from hosts about their experiences with the pandemic and made a branded commercial for the service. Makes sense to us. 

Second, users increasingly value displays of care from brands, bloggers, and companies. 78% of people want the products and services offered to them to meet the “Four C’s”: Community, Contactless, Cleanliness, and Compassion. A great example of the first and last “C” is the U.S. Bank commercial.

Memes are growing in popularity. Yes, a sense of humor has never gone away and is helping to get through tough times. Statistically, 55% of 18-35 year olds send memes to their mates at least once a week. 

Speaking of nostalgia. Nostalgic content is another trend that marketers predict will boom in 2021. Remind them of something good that came before and is sure to come back soon. And get a good response. 

The number of socially conscious consumers is increasing. To get people’s attention for a product or service, touch on important topics: gender and racial equality, the environment, mental health, justice. No, it’s not a CTA to start “holy wars” – it’s about the fact that people really care about such topics, they are willing to discuss them and buy from those who build their marketing around a higher purpose and mission.

Familiar trends like Instagram Stories, storytelling, personal brand development for bloggers, relevant hashtags (including rare ones), video content will stay. Thus, TikTok has convinced everyone that short videos are especially popular with users. Even Instagram launched their Reels, a service developed to record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos.

Why Businesses Need Social Media Marketing

Increasing recognition is the goal of every entrepreneur and brand. There are a lot of mechanisms for that, and you need to find the most effective one in a particular situation and field of activity. With all the abundance of marketing tools in 2021, we can use social media marketing (SMM) as the most versatile solution that can be effectively used for almost any task.

When starting a business it’s not only important to register your business in the right state, it’s highly important to make a name for yourself in the early stages and start generating revenue as soon as possible. However, there’s often a problem with the lack of large marketing budgets. That’s why it’s worth looking at social media. It’s a great way to talk about your brand, products, services, and, most importantly, it’s affordable. Thus, you can instantly start promoting your business. 

SMM Strategy

A social media presence without a proper strategy and plan can be as damaging to your business as a plan itself actually. We’ve created a checklist to a social media marketing and promotion strategy that should help you with online marketing operations.

“A strategic marketing plan approach to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a well-defined target audience.”

  • Set goals – start big and work your way down. Increase customer loyalty;
  • Know your target audience – don’t just use demographics (physical factors such as age, ethnicity, gender, location, etc.) – expand with psychographics (psychological factors such as motivations, beliefs, priorities, etc.);
  • Choose your style – will it be a blog, video channel, podcasts, etc.;
  • Choose your social media platform – decide on a platform that will help you connect with your target audience better. Focus on a platform that adds value. Just because a network has over a hundred million active users doesn’t mean it will directly contribute to your business goals;
  • Create a strategy – apart from promotion strategy, there’re also SMM concepts, content strategy, and supporting your accounts in social networks on an ongoing basis.
  • Test and analyze – what does success mean to you? You need to constantly analyze and update your social media strategy to see how effective it is. Engage your audience, find out what’s working and what’s not.

Benefits of SMM

For some of you, investing in an SMM service may be defined as the missing link connecting you to your customers. However, for others, who are still contemplating diving into the purpose of social marketing, look no further than the following facts.

  • SMM increases your brand awareness. 78% of small businesses use social media to attract new customers. In addition, 33% of customers identified social media as how they identify new brands, products, and services.
  • SMM helps validate your brand. A company’s social media presence, if done right, tells consumers that their brand is active and focused on successfully connecting with customers. 63% of customers, who search for companies online, are more likely to use services of those with a social media presence.
  • SMM helps increase your customer loyalty. 71% of consumers who received a quick response on social media recommend that brand to others.

Why Your Business Needs Social Media

If you’re creating products for people, there’s a 99% chance you need SMM. Because no one will tell your potential customers about your product/service better than you, while spending a minimal budget if you are verified on Instagram.

Promotion in social networks allows you to be closer to your clients, to know all their preferences, dissatisfactions, show your product/service from the inside, and evoke a desire to buy exactly from you. When people already have a positive impression about you, your experience, values, personal qualities, then it will be much easier for them to apply to you, find a common language, and, eventually, trust you. A business owner’s visibility always increases the loyalty of his/her target audience.

Thanks to regular posts on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc., you can constantly stay in front of your clients. And if they have a desire or need, you’ll be the first one they think of. Then there’s also LinkedIn, which is considered a professional social network for businesses. By using Linkedin Sales Navigator tool you can easily find verified email addresses and reach business owners directly. That’s where it’s mostly about B2B (Business to Business) marketing, not B2C (Business to Consumer).

SMM works great for eCommerce. What could be better than knowing that a customer can order the product/service they want, see regularly in their feed, and get useful information on it, directly from you.  

If you create products or services for people and want to use your marketing budgets effectively, you need to use social media promotion.

Let’s take a look at a few business ideas you can implement using a social media platform.

Top 10 Tips to Run Business On Social Media 

SMM Studio

SMM is an online business, which provides services for effective promotion on various platforms. As soon as companies appeared in social networks, the SMM sphere became widespread, and today, it’s an important part of the advertising campaign for many companies.

These days the service is very much in demand in the market. A competent specialist will be able to build a successful business on it. You can start with a small or zero budget and search for orders independently. Build up your customer base and, having gained experience, open a full-fledged SMM studio, bringing together a number of specialists.

Mobile App Development

The market of mobile applications grows steadily every day. For the last several years, mobile applications have been playing a big role in the life of any smartphone or tablet user. There’s a huge number of apps – some of them are well received in the AppStore or GooglePlay, bringing their developers a decent profit.

If you have the necessary skills, you can implement an online business on mobile app development. To do this, you will need to buy licensed software to work with. Make sure it’s licensed software, though. Otherwise you risk getting fined heavily. 

Website Building and Promotion

Continuing on development, if you have experience in visual editors, you can start making profit on building websites and blogs online, as well as promote them.

Opening such a business is not that difficult compared to succeeding in it. Now the market is flooded with hundreds of offers – you have to try really hard to reach your client. Post ads, send commercial offers to your potential customers, reduce your prices, take small orders, and so on.

Start simple, gain practice, build up a customer base and portfolio – expand your business gradually. After a few months of practice, you can look for a serious order to deal with website building and maintenance.

Internet Project Promotion

Today, almost every entrepreneur has a project on the Web, and, of course, everyone dreams about monetizing it. To do this, you need to promote your project and expand the audience. That’s why there are many promotional services for products online. However, not all of them are of high quality. You can often meet shady individuals who use outdated, primitive ways to promote, irritating people instead of making them interested. When it comes to online business professionals, they are totally worth their weight in gold.

If you are versed in this area, you can offer cooperation to projects that interest you. First, you will have to work hard to build a good reputation for your online business, and over time, customers will begin to contact you. 

Webinars and Online Courses

In recent years, there has been a popularity for online business such as online courses, webinars, and similar events. The personal growth and development subject is always relevant. Thus, having some knowledge and skills, you can set your own workshop session, webinar, or launch an online course.

Such a business can be launched from scratch since all you need is an intellectual, author’s product, developed by you. It’s essential not only to create an attractive product but also represent it competently to your target audience. 

If you are looking for a new niche in this direction, consider gamification. It’s a technology of adapting game-based methods to non-game-based processes and events in order to involve employees/participants more into the process, introduce products/services to them, and enhance customer loyalty. Whereas previously, the business community was sort of skeptical about games, now companies are actively embracing this global trend.

SEO Agency 

If you are an active Internet user, you’ve probably heard words like “SEO”, “promotion,” and “search engine.” IF that sounds familiar, you can try to run your business online and become the head of a SEO-agency. Of course, this requires specific knowledge. Even if you are not planning to do the job yourself, you will have to learn the basics. You will use white label SEO software, communicate with customers and learn to clearly understand specifics of the business . Since without the necessary knowledge, you will not be able to check skills of a SEO specialist that you plan to hire.

The advantage of SEO business is its affordability – no need for start-up capital. Or rather, you can open a business without spending a penny – your start-up capital up is your knowledge and skills. SEO business is quite profitable – website promotion costs for small and medium-sized companies are about $3,000 (excluding additional costs). So, you can earn quite well while maintaining a couple of websites. 

Blogging

Blogging as a real online business has only recently been on the radar. And today, some universities are introducing disciplines that are focused on it. Thanks to active development, in just a few years, it has become a profitable business.

The most popular and promising platforms for blogging today are Instagram and Youtube. Starting a personal online business with Instagram is easier – you will need only a smartphone. Your earnings will consist of advertising income, cooperation with various companies, and so on. When it comes to Youtube, monetization for video views is also possible. However, to get a decent profit, you need an impressive audience. At least 20 thousand subscribers. To gain them, you will have to invest in promotion and content creation. 

The success of the project will be based solely on your personality and generating unique content. There are many people who want to make money from their blogs but not everyone succeeds.

Instagram Account or Facebook Group

The Internet and social media are now an integral part of many people’s lives. Advertising has long moved online, so creating an advertising platform on the basis of social networks is a good idea to make money. The essence of such online business is simple: you create an account or a group on Instagram or Facebook, post content interesting for a certain audience, gain subscribers, and make profit by mixing ads with your content.

Of course, getting positive results needs some time. If you want to save it – you will have to spend some money. Thus, you can buy promoted Instagram accounts or groups. Their cost depends on the number of subscribers. Decide on the subject, target audience, think through the contentб and win the hearts! You can also grow a group to a certain number of followers and then sell it to someone else. 

Copywriting Agency

Every business may need a competent text to create a catalog with product descriptions, publish a story of their LLC on a website, etc. All these online business tasks are better left to copywriters. Such online services cover a wide range of activities including SEO, articles for online magazines, maintaining groups in social networks, etc. You can start an online business independently and expand it over time.

Branding Agency

If you are creative, have some artistic skills, know how to design and use appropriate software tools, you can make money by creating logos.

Today, developing a logo for a small company may cost from $300 to $1300. One order takes about 2-4 weeks. Additionally, you can also design posters, business cards, taglines, imagery, color palettes, merchandise, brochures, and tone of voice, etc. Corporate identity development may cost anywhere from $700 to $1,400+. And the amount of work for an experienced designer increases insignificantly – the increase in cost is due to the complexity of the service. This means, you can make around $1500+ per month with corporate identity design. However, depending on if you need to do everything from scratch or make a few tweaks, the cost of a branding package for small and mid-sized businesses can be significantly higher (up to $30,000).

Bottom Line

The Internet is firmly anchored in our lives, online business has taken on a variety of sometimes intricate forms. Today, you can work remotely from home or anywhere in the world, with comfort – no need to rent an office, pay rent, or stick to certain working hours. A personal online business allows you to earn extra income without having to break away from your day job, providing great opportunities to make a serious profit. 

There’s a great number of options for online business. Thus, anyone, with any skills and knowledge, can find a suitable one. To begin with, you need to identify your strengths, interests, and skills. Depending on these, you can then search for a suitable online business idea. 

Many novice entrepreneurs make a serious mistake when choosing an online business, focusing on the level of expected profitability. As practice shows, in the right hands, even the simplest business idea can bring a decent profit. However, doing business online without fully understanding what you do is unlikely to bring any profit.

All you need to run an online business is an internet connection, a device, and certain skills. That said, as you’ve probably noticed, some online business ideas can be implemented without any investment. 

If you offer products or services for people, you definitely need to be on social media. This is the most effective marketing channel for the money.

With social media, you can increase brand awareness, increase sales, customize advertising to your target audience by location, attract targeted traffic to your website, be closer to your potential customers, and get feedback from them.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.