16 Aug Grow your export business with social media
In Sri Lanka with a small domestic market of 23 million, businesses looking at exports seriously, as a higher growth segment, is important. The traditional barriers to entry are demolished through the increased access to the Internet. Access to the Internet has opened up limitless opportunities to grow a business exponentially overseas through social media strategies along with other marketing strategies.
In the next several year’s social media channels will continue to make waves in the global marketplace from building your brand, generating leads, and staying in touch with the target consumer. Therefore, it is important to spend adequate resources to deploy proper social media strategies that give an organization its true Return on Investment.
5 key things to keep in mind when launching a social media strategy –
1/ It is pivotal to have social media presence in Sri Lanka and abroad that sends your company’s message as a forward-thinking business and the image that your business will exist for the next five to ten years.
2/ Social media is considered a powerful tool and it is counterproductive to allocate resources and people to manage social media who will not be able to identify opportunities for business growth. Therefore, never allocate the job of managing your social media to a marketing intern or any other inexperienced business staff member.
3/ The social media efforts should be timely & consistent no matter how much social media activity your company chooses to undertake. The readers of your blogs should be dependent on your monthly articles in a way looking forward to the knowledge and information posted on your company.
4/ Your company should use social media as one of the ways to communicate best practices & good governance of the company.
5/ Social media is a cost effecting strategy that can be carried out easily by an expert who has the business sense.
It is evident in recent years, social media has become an integral part of a company’s marketing strategy from a mere idea to a must-do for international marketers. Social media has taken the lead from all the latest marketing mediums. With traditional marketing methods, messages were sent to potential customers, and the conversation took place one way. However, Social media helps your business to make engaging interactions with the target customers. Usually, this engagement is done through potential customers following a company page, verifying queries, re-posting content, and forging long-lasting bonds. Further, a good social media strategy is a tool to boost a business’s brand in the export market when done right.
To connect & engage with international buyers social media is a powerful channel. Social media helps with providing new leads every day for your business and being active on social media and sharing your brand’s content will engage traffic and eventually resulting in conversions.
Building a social media marketing plan can be challenging initially. However here are 5 tips to help you overcome these challenges & effectively promote your export business on social media.
Top 5 tips to promote your export business on social media
1/ Create a plan
It is important to understand the marketing objectives for your business when deciding on a social media strategy. A compelling website is required for your business which you can share your business content in a few clicks. The social channels in the world keep on growing and evolving each day, therefore it is important for the business to keep up with these changes and optimize the channels. For your business marketing success, it is important to share the right content on the right platform.
Considering your business and customers the selection of channels is done and it is important to keep in mind to do a deep analysis to understand the most used channels your target market segment use. You can create a strategic business account on selected platforms that your potential customer base uses so that they can connect with you.
Based on your business requirements you should examine the social sites that best fits your requirements. For instance, to promote video content, YouTube is considered a good choice. A strategic social media plan should encompass selected channels, timelines & budgets.
2/ Design a content Calendar
Content created in a rushed and at the last moment is usually low-quality content which is a waste. These low-quality content will lead to repeated, unwanted posts which will pause your boosting process in the relevant markets. The benefits of designing a content calendar can help eradicate such mistakes. Also, this calendar will be able to guide you set up goals, strategies, and key performance indicators to track your social media performance.
Steps to design a calendar will start off with a regular calendar format separated for each channel. This calendar will include content on a monthly basis which includes content, images, appropriate
3/ Sharing Videos
Social channels work really well with visual content than any other type of content. Visual content is done best with video content and is regarded as an excellent way of attracting people’s attention. Short videos can help grab the attention of the target customers as well as communicating your business’s existence and personality.
The research done around video content proves that people notice, watch and connect easily with compelling videos. To get the best responses from video content, it is important to use well-designed and thought-provoking videos to portray more content in a real-life manner than normal posts.
4/ Encourage Engagement
Social media is a great tool to create engagement with the target customers by posting content that is interactive. Research done on the target markets can help understand what products they are looking for and creating content that your audience wants to read about. For example, the posts can be related to export products and make potential customers ask questions on your posts.
5/ Stop over-promoting
Your business should focus on creating content that the followers will enjoy and engage. While stating this, businesses should not approach social channels like advertising, and promote their business in every post. Therefore, promoting your business once in a while is accepted and an ideal marketer believes by the one-advert-in-seven-posts rule. This means for every promotional post there will be six informative content posts, posted by the business which includes articles, quizzes, current events, and thought leadership articles.
The social media interactions carried out by your company should be approached from a global perspective and the clear message sent out that you are ready to do business outside of the home market. At all times it is best to avoid domestic and international politics except for government policies related to your industry.
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About the Author –
Nayomi Handunnetti is an award-winning – Entrepreneur, a Marketing Consultant, thought leader in Women Entrepreneurship and Tourism capacity building, Speaker, and writer
Email address – Nayomi@thesiren.lk