In Nigeria, Social media has become a very powerful tool for the spread of information on the Internet.

Social media platforms are a great tool that every business owner (big or small) is expected to take advantage of if they want to attract the right customers and boost sales.

Although there are thousands or probably millions of active users, popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn offer the ideal tool for business owners to promote their brands, products, and services and connect with potential customers.

A lot of business owners have taken advantage of the power of social media (especially Instagram) to share what’s great about their business, their products, and their services. Most of these individuals have over the years, successfully grown their online presence and generated more leads among today’s millennials considerably.

According to Napoleoncat there were :

1. Over 33.7 Million Daily Active Usercs on Facebook in October 2021 and
2. Over 9.2 Million Daily Active Users on Instagram in October 2021.

In Nigeria, Social Media Platforms like Instagram and Facebook are fast-growing and more Nigerians find them to be valuable resources where businesses and individuals can share photos and short clip videos. There are more than 9 million active users on Instagram every month, and every day, over 5.5 billion photos (business and entertainment) are liked. A lot of Nigerians use social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to grow their businesses in the right way and this has proven to be one of the best ways to have instant viral marketing success.

There are a lot of creative ways Nigerian business owners can harness the power of photo and content sharing on Instagram and Facebook to drive more business growth. In this post, we highlighted some actionable tips to help you generate more leads and business growth on relevant social media platforms.

While the increasing recession in Nigeria and other parts of the world is becoming less bearable for the majority of small business owners, the few who are struggling to scale through have understood and leveraged the power of social media to grow their businesses without spending so much on the fast-fading traditional marketing.

Many business owners are yet to leverage the many opportunities social media offers; though many others do, and this would greatly determine how much faster a business grows over its major competitors.

The following are ways I believe social media will help your business grow:

Tip 1. Expose Your Business To A Greater Audience:

Even with little budget, Social media gives Nigerian business owners the opportunity to introduce and promote their brand, products, and services to potential buyers by allowing them to create and share creative content (videos, pictures, and texts) in the form of highly valuable posts. This boosts user engagement and helps their audience better understand what they do, with very little to no marketing budget.

With a focus on the target audience, skits and campaigns on social media platforms would have an even greater impact. Due to its narrowed target, it could lead to viral trends, create loyal followers, and ultimately promote your brand and boost sales.

Social media is a budget-friendly digital marketing tool used to promote business and product visibility. Implementing a good social media strategy will definitely boost your brand awareness because you will be reaching out to a wide audience of prospective consumers.

Now, these are simple steps I personally recommend:

1. Create social media profiles for your business
2. Update your profile with the necessary information.
3. Put up some of your products and tips – make the page engaging
4. Get employees, business partners, and sponsors to “like” and “share” your page.

A simple process of getting social media users to interact with your posts will increase brand awareness and also go a long way in building your online reputation as a business.

When a post is liked and shared, your business will be introduced to a new set of individuals on the internet. This in turn encourages your readers to become potential and returning customers. This advantage increases when more people see your posts.

Tip 2. It Helps Build A Community of Loyal Audience:

Social media makes your active followers and general audience feel they are a part of a society that engages and cares about them. Trust them to connect more personally to your business and unconsciously dedicate their time to its growth.

I would also suggest you keep your audience engaged through fun quizzes, games, skits, and other social activities. This would make them trust you better, and ensure that they (and everyone they tell about your business or brand) always have you on their mind.

Tip 3. It Improves Your Customer Service:

A closer relationship between a typical Nigerian business and its customers helps initiate quick responses to their questions or suggestions (as the case may be).

Social media makes customer service more personal. It helps people believe you give them more priority, and as a result, motivates them to tell others about how great the service they experienced was.

If properly managed, be sure to get great recommendations from every customer you successfully satisfy on social media.

Tip 4. It boosts Your Website Traffic And SEO:

Increased engagement encourages customers to write positive appraisals and reviews about your products and services on social media platforms.

When more people talk about your brand, products, and services, your search rankings would increase, and as a result, you get increased traffic to your website and more sales.

Read more on Why You Should Get a Website For Your Business

The essence of Internet Marketing for businesses especially on social media platforms is to increase website traffic (apart from your regular customers). Internet users who are aware of your brand are very likely to search for similar keywords you already rank for. The advantage is of including social media as a vital part of your Digital Marketing strategy is to make it easier for you to reach out to potential customers and outside your loyal customer circle.

When you include social media presence as part of your Internet Marketing strategy, every engaging content you post takes you many steps closer to getting a new customer or qualified lead. Social media consists different categories of people of different demography and behavior. It also includes diverse people of varying needs ways of thinking.

The major advantage of marketing your business on the various social media platforms available is that is makes it a lot easier for you to effectively expose your business to a wider range of varying consumers all over your target locations.

Tip 5. It Attracts More Customers And Increases Sales:

When a business constantly keeps people interested in their services and products on social media, more customers are gained quicker than others who don’t.

While you run your brick-and-mortar marketing campaign, a very good social media marketing strategy followed with awesome and insightful engagement would grow your customer base faster and this helps you outsell your major competitors.

Tip 6. It Reduces Cost on Marketing:

Social media marketing is one of the most budget-friendly tool in Digital Marketing strategy. Registering and creating a business profile is completely free for almost all social networking platforms, and their paid promotions are relatively affordable compared to some other marketing tools. Being budget-friendly is a great opportunity because you can see huge returns on investment and at the same time, reserve a greater budget for other marketing expenses.

If you choose to leverage paid advertising on social media platforms, I suggest you start small to know what you should always expect. With time, you get used to the system and comfortably opt for promotions and campaigns with an increased budget.

Brands with very effective campaigns on social media platforms achieve more with a far lesser marketing budget. The cost of getting lots of new loyal customers on the various social media platforms is not based on product or cash incentives but on social incentives.

As your tweets, posts, videos, and a lot more get liked and shared more quickly daily, your customer base and sales would experience a massive increase, while your business expenditure on marketing would drop, largely because you’re selling more for less.

Tip 7. It Helps You Rank High on Search Engines:

Regular posting on social media platforms like (Instagram and Facebook) gets your business some site traffic across Search Engines (like Google). Therefore, more effort is required if you want to see significant success.

Search engine optimization is very important for achieving higher page rankings and obtaining traffic to your business website. Although, having an active page on social media does not directly boost rankings on search engines, Digital Marketers who actively use social media continuously for about a few weeks or more see significant improvement in search engine rankings. When you rank in the top positions on search engines for keywords that relate to your business, you transform your traffic and continuously generate positive results for your business.

Truth is, all internet users use Google to find relevant information, and I don’t think a reasonable percentage of these users ever navigate past page 1 as long as their answers are usually found on the first page of search results. If your business website can’t be found or ranked on the top of search engine results, I strongly suggest you adjust your search engine optimization strategy or contact a result-oriented agency to help you get it done.

To find out how to contact the right digital marketing agency to help you achieve this goal, read my post on How to find the best digital marketing agency.

Also, consider the following to help push you closer to ranking better through social media:

1. Create and update your page with high-quality and engaging content. Ensure you integrate your targeted keywords.
2. Content such as blogs, infographics, case studies, business information, and employee photos including inspiring quotes will help make your business’s social media profile interesting and reliable.
3. When you start posting quality engaging content, you start building a social media community where your followers will “like” and “share” your content.
4. Social Media exposes you to more opportunities to put you in front of industry influencers who will write positive reviews about your business and provide quality backlinks. As a result of this, search engine rankings will be directly increased.

Tip 8. It Improves Relationship between You and Your Customers:

Creating a voice for your business on social media is important in humanizing your brand. Your audience will appreciate their ability to communicate efficiently knowing that when they post comments on your pages, they will expect a personalized response instead of an automated message. In addition, they also appreciate real-time responses to questions and suggestions. Your customers will also like to know that you acknowledge each comment. This makes them believe you are attentive to your visitors’ needs and aim to provide them with the best experience.

When you interact with your customers directly on social media, you leverage the chance to publicly demonstrate your love for your customers.

Conclusion

Now we know that social media marketing opens up many advantages as it has to do with business growth, so if you haven’t created a presence for your business on social media, I suggest you do! Update your business’ information and regularly post engaging content to generate and increase loyal followers. Also, remember to encourage your audience to “like” and “share” your page and posts to help build a community of loyal followers. With regular updating, the right social media marketing strategy will lead to increased traffic, better SEO, higher conversion rates, improved brand loyalty, and much more.

I also recommend you visit the following links on how best you could leverage the power of the internet to generate more revenue and grow your business.