Being an entrepreneur isn’t what it used to be. In the past, it was all about travelling around in your car and going to meetings in various offices across town. But today, it’s all about reaching out online and creating a brand for yourself. Social media has fostered the production of the conspicuous business leader. No longer are heads of companies just people who head up meetings in private board rooms. Instead, they’re becoming celebrities in their own right, each with a following of their own.
In this post, we take a look at some of the reasons why entrepreneurs are so vigorously embracing social media. Here are some of the benefits that it offers them.
Monitor Competitors
Imagine if you were able to keep tabs on your competitors all the time without having to pay a mole. Thirty years ago, it would have been almost impossible. But, today, thanks to social media, everything is public. You can see exactly what rival companies are doing, as they do it.
Take something simple like marketing, for instance. Instead of spending ages in a backroom somewhere wondering how your competitors are managing to win so much business, you can measure what they are doing directly. And it’s easy. You just use the same metrics and performance tools as you use to evaluate your own performance.
You can also look at the ways that they interact with customers and see how they respond. This way, you can either follow their lead or avoid their mistakes.
Tell Stories
Smart entrepreneurs know that if they want to get people to buy their products, they need to tell compelling brand stories. Doing that via traditional channels was always a challenge because you had to condense your message into just a few sentences or pictures. But with social media, how you represent your brand is open-ended. You can pretty much do whatever you like.
Learning how to post multiple photos on Instagram is a good place to start. This way, you can start building a compelling storyboard to draw people in. You can then move onto more in-depth articles on Facebook explaining what you do and why it should interest your customers.
Tell People You Exist
Getting the message out that you exist is one of the hardest challenges for entrepreneurs, especially at the start. Thousands of businesses launch every day, so letting the world know that you exist is extremely difficult indeed.
Social media is a tool that you can use to start informing people about what you do and why your brand is valuable. Remember, a lot of people use social media as their sole access to the internet – they don’t use search. So reaching out to them on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram is often the only way to grab their attention.
Start by sharing information about your products and your personal story. If you’ve developed something interesting, you may capture the attention of journalists keen for a fresh scoop.
Continue joining conversations and add organizations and individuals related to your business to your friends list. Also, join groups of other entrepreneurs for the latest advice on how to proceed effectively in your industry.
Free Feedback
When people criticize your business on Facebook, they’re actually providing a form of valuable feedback – something that you can use to improve your enterprise. Using social media allows you to identify problems rapidly and correct them before they start causing damage to your underlying company.
You can also ask customers to provide you with feedback directly. Simply putting out a poll can be a great way to learn more about what they think about your pricing or what products they’d like to see next.
You can also use it to collect feedback via customer service. Simple chat conversations often give you a wealth of knowledge you can use to improve your processes.
Learn From Mentors
Entrepreneurs also rely on mentors to help them achieve wild success. These are people who have already achieved similar things in business and are now in a position to share their wisdom with the up and coming generation.
Traditionally, entrepreneurs would look for mentors in their personal lives. But, thanks to social media, that’s no longer necessary. Business leaders can reach out to others via these platforms and find the perfect match for them.
LinkedIn, for instance, is a great place to find mentors. That’s because it lists people’s professional experience, showcasing the roles that they’ve had and the things that they’ve done.
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