How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Work

Highlights

In this blog post we’ll discuss the following:

• Why having a social media strategy is key 
• Ways you can use social media to promote your work 
• How having a social media presence will help grow your business

Eat, sleep, tweet, repeat! 

If there is anything that you need to be on top of as a business owner in 2022 and beyond, it’s understanding social media best practices for promoting your work. 

Believe it or not, there are now 4.2 billion active social media users—that’s almost twice as many as there were just five years ago. With those statistics, you can’t afford not to have a slice of the pie. 

Without a doubt, having a solid social media strategy is important for your business, and there is no better time than the present to kick your plan into full swing. 

In this article, we’ll map out how you can use social media to promote your work, plus tips to creatively and effectively engage your audience. 

Set up your social media accounts

First and foremost, you need to set up your social media accounts. Start by researching which social media networks traditionally perform best or are most suited to your business or industry. 

I suggest creating an account on at least 3 of these platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, allowing you to reach a wider, diversified audience. If you decide to branch out further, check out this list of the 10 best social media sites for small business owners. 

Choose a distinctive, branded account handle when setting up your account. It should be succinct and easy to remember. If you are a local business, include your city in the handle to make it easier for potential customers to find you and recognize you. 

Optimize your profile and bio

Before you begin promoting, make your profile on each account stand out with a great profile picture, a tagline, and a winning bio description. Don’t forget a link in bio to direct traffic to your website. You can create one here with a today page.

Once you’ve set up your profiles, then it’s time to promote, promote, promote! Be sure to put social media icons in your website header or footer, link to your social media accounts in your email signature, and display them on all marketing materials such as business cards, menus, or signage. The more people see your social media profiles, the more likely they will be to visit and interact with your business. 

It’s also a good idea to cross-promote your social media accounts across different channels. For example, you can use Instagram to promote your Facebook Business page. 

When you start gaining momentum and a large following on one platform, you can use that platform to market your other channels—allowing you to reach a broader and different audience that frequent those channels. Win-win! 

Create a content calendar

The key to a successful social media strategy is having a plan in place. This means creating a content calendar so that your posts are well-thought-out. It’s important to stay organized so that you can plan your posts ahead of time—depending on your schedule, you may want to plan your content calendar anywhere from one week to a month in advance. 

First, determine how many times per week you would like to post on your social channels. I suggest a minimum of once a day, at least four to five days a week. The key is to build momentum and to keep your audience coming back for more. 

Consistency is key

If you post every Tuesday with a #TuesdayTrivia hashtag and theme, then your followers will expect to see that. You may even consider offering a promotion, a prize, or a discount for the first person who posts the correct answer to the question. 

Of course, this theme may not work for all businesses, but it’s an example of a way to foster engagement with your audience and get them excited about your content—hence driving them back to your social channel(s) to learn more about your products or services. 

Share a behind-the-scenes look

This is your opportunity to show your followers what a “day in the life” is like for you with your work or business. This is especially enticing if you are a creative professional such as an artist, designer, or musician, for example. 

Your audience will be excited to see what it’s like for you behind-the-scenes. Perhaps they’ve never been inside a recording studio or art gallery. What a great way to share your passion and expertise while providing your followers with a sneak peek into how the magic is made. 

This is also a fantastic way to increase engagement. You can add enticing photos and videos, and by making it personal—your followers will feel as if they are a part of the journey. Share a little bit about your creative process, and what inspires you to do what you do. 

Whether you’re promoting your work, your business, or selling a product or service—this is key to winning over your followers or potential customers. After all, giving a personal touch goes a very long way!  

Include a call-to-action

It may seem obvious, but when you include a CTA or call-to-action within your social posts, you are engaging and involving your audience even further. Just like it sounds, a CTA is a prompt to call you to take an action. The CTA may prompt followers to engage with likes or comments, or click a link or button.

If you simply drop a link into a post, without clearly driving to it, it may not get the same traction. That’s why it’s important to use action phrases such as “click here” or “leave a comment.”

Some of the most popular types of CTAs include:

• Opportunities to sign up for email updates or newsletters
• Share buttons for social media
• Social media links to your profiles
• Contact-buttons

Incorporating CTAs into your social media posts is a great way to grow your business. For example, you can create posts that drive to your website or landing page to generate sales, promote events, alert readers about promotions and sales, and more.  

Work with influencers

Influencer marketing has been growing by leaps and bounds and is a hugely successful social media marketing strategy. Don’t worry, you don’t need to have an A-list celebrity as an influencer to gain traction. Even if you are running a small business, there are definite advantages to working with influencers. 

Studies have actually shown that influencers produce 11 times more ROI than any other marketing approach. Therefore, partnering with social media creators is one of the best ways that your brand can build an authentic relationship with your customers. 

Influencers have dedicated followers who trust their recommendations for new products and services. Many times these social media creators produce studio-quality content that your brand can repurpose across all of your social media platforms. 

Of course, you’ll have the most success with influencer marketing when you find and work with a creator who aligns with your mission and values. Do they use your products? Do they love your brand? If they believe in what you're doing, then they will easily be able to offer you honest endorsements. 

Not sure how to find an influencer? 

There are actually several tools available such as Fohr, a recruitment service that acts as a database where you can search for ideal influencers, reach out to them, and get data on specific influencers. 

The bottom line

We discussed several ways in which you can use social media to promote your work, but we have only scratched the surface. With the speed at which the world of social media is growing, you absolutely need to have a pulse on the best ways to promote or advertise your work or business. Now more than ever, you need a solid social media plan. 

By following the tips in this blog, you’ll be on your way to increasing your followers, your engagement, and ultimately growing your business. It may take some time and effort to figure out what will work best for your brand, but investing in social media will help you stand out from the competition. 

A large social media presence is important because it’s one of the last ways to conduct cost-effective marketing. Everything else involves buying eyeballs and ears. Social media enables a small business to earn eyeballs and ears.
– Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist, Canva

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Header image by bruce mars on Unsplash