ONLINE BUSINESS: TEN STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP YOUR BUSINESS ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2023

Social media is a great tool to develop your business, in fact almost all the social media
platforms have business tools which you can make good use of in developing your business.
Having a physical store is good but having both physical and online stores is great. On social
media the world as a whole is your audience, anything you put online represents your business
or brand worldwide. Over four billion people are social media users, that is more than half of the
total people in the globe.
Many business owners and brands have gained a lot of profit and customers on social media.
Take for instance Fashion Nova, fashion has more than twenty million followers on Instagram,
this brand was mainly built online although it has physical stores. Fashion nova is known to use
social media marketing particularly on Instagram, and it is now known as one of the top online
fashion stores for women.

Without wasting time let’s go into the ten  strategies to develop your business online.

1. Web designing:

investing in web design is one of the best strategies to develop an
online business, although most people don’t see it as an online business strategy. One
important thing to note is that your website is the center of all your digital marketing strategies
and efforts. Your page must be easy to read and eye-catching, it must be well organized too, if
not all your efforts and strategies will be a waste because it affects the amount of attention your
page gets and also the amount of time a user spends on your page.
Learning how to design a website is great but not compulsory. You can always hire a website
designer to do it for you. But the thing about business is that the more you learn the less money
you spend.

2. Use search engine optimization (SEO):

this is using search engines to get more traffic from audiences who search for the kind products or services that you offer online, by
making your website more visible.
It will help your business appear higher on the list of search engine results. Having a strong
search engine optimization(SEO) strategy will really help your online business and this comes
from the technical structure of your website and your contents as well.

3. Use affiliate program:

here, you can grow your business on commission based
platforms, for example people who do affiliate marketing can share your company or business
link on their page. As this will help your business get more traffic online. Although it is not for
every business, it works for most businesses.

4. Ask for assistant:

if you are not good at online marketing you can always ask for help,
the more you learn, the more you earn. There are lots of social media/ online marketing
consultants or coaches available to help. They will give you ideas and strategies to help develop
your business online, they will also tell you things to adjust for the success of your business. If
you’re just growing your brand online, an online business coach might be helpful.

5. Try other means to publicize your business:

you can work with a public relations professionals or a social media influencer, if possible a celebrity as it will help your business get into news articles on things that are related to the goods you sell or services you offer. Influencers and celebrities have lots of followers on social media, when they post your products or services it gets lots of views and you can also get traffic from there because their
followers will trust them enough to try the products or services they recommend.

6. Do promo and give away:

who doesn’t like “buy two get one free?” Or who doesn’t like getting discounts? Everyone likes promo, discount or giveaway, this is another cool strategy to develop your business online . This will get you more customers than you imagine and make
you more engaged with your customers helping you build a good customer’s service. The goal
is getting more customers and retaining the old ones. You can even give gift or discount to your
old customers whenever they refer another customer

7. Be consistent and patient :

this is the number one strategy to develop your online
business. You need to stay consistent and patient, don’t post your products or services a day
and wait for the next three or four days to post again, you’d kill your business that way. You
need to be steady and post every day. For example, fashion nova posts on Instagram every
thirty minutes. That way your audience has more posts to view and more options to pick from.

8. Don’t put a higher price on your products :

this a great strategy you can use to develop your business online, you need to focus on gaining ground and having more
audience before you focus on getting more profits. Most people do make mistakes of putting
high price on their products or services online, the trick is reducing your products or services
price by few percentage, although you’d still make profit and at the time you’d gain more
customers. Most people would rather buy a product that is sold for $20 instead of $25 or $30 as
long as it is the same product and the same quality.

9. Make sure your products are authentic

nothing can beat authenticity, ensure that what your customers order is what they get. Don’t sell fake things to your customers as this
will spoil your business reputation online. Tell them the quality rate of what they are getting.
Don’t lie about the quality of a product, nothing breaks a customer’s heart more than that.

10. Have an effective delivery system:

this is also a very important aspect that will help your business develop online. Imagine ordering something today and getting it the next
day, you’d be happy right? Same goes to your customers, delayed or late delivery turns off customers’ interest. You need to have a good delivery system in order to get your products delivered fast and If there will be a delayed delivery you need to inform the customer on time.

TAKEAWAY
Learn to build a good relationship with your customers, answer their questions politely, do
giveaways and promo, give discounts too. Make sure you relate to them well and treat them
with respect as this will make them love and recommend your brand to others.
Always try to post customer reviews and encourage your customers to tag your brand whenever
they talk about your products or services online. Make sure you have great content too