Using social media in business

Social media networks have long been an important tool for doing business. First of all, such portals have great marketing power. They can also be used to validate a business idea when setting up a startup. How to use social media to vet your business concept and which portals to choose? Read our article about using social media in business.

Using social media in business – table of contents:

1. Business idea validation
2. Why to use social media in business?
3. How to use social media in business?
4. How to validate your business idea using social media?
5. Which social media platforms to choose?
6. Summary

Business idea validation

The purpose of business idea validation is to test demand for your product before you spend time and money. This will allow you to see if your competitors actually meet all their customers’ expectations and if there is a chance to win them over. In this way, you can reduce the risks and costs of possible unsuccessful business projects.

Why to use social media in business?

If you have doubts about whether social media networks are extremely useful in business, you should reach for the annual report of the WeAreSocial agency. According to this research, there are now 7.9 billion people in the world, 4.6 billion of which are active social media users.

That’s more than 58% of the human population (it is expected to reach 60% by the end of 2022). Throughout 2021, the number of social media users increased by 10% (424 million new users). Among all these people, there can be many potential customers of your startup. It’s worth keeping this in mind.

Nowadays, people tend to spend a lot of time on social media. In 2021, it was an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes per day (an increase of 1.4% when compared to 2020). Also, 1 out of 4 Internet users aged 16-64 use social media for work-related purposes.

All these numbers are impressive, and it’s no wonder that social media ad spending exceeded 150 billion dollars in 2021. That’s one-third of all online advertising spending. Therefore, social media networks seem ideal for validating business ideas.

How to use social media in business?

You can spend thousands of dollars or very little on validating your business idea. It all depends on the chosen methods and the used medium. An effective and economical solution is to choose social media to check the business potential of your concept. Such portals will let you do that in just a few weeks.

However, to make a good use of them, you need to start by determining where you will interact with your potential customers, as well as how you will conduct research. The next step is to start building relationships with followers, which can take several weeks. Then, you should ask them for feedback.

How to validate your business idea using social media?

How you validate a business idea on social media depends on the chosen portal, the concept itself, the budget and other available resources. No matter what solutions are used, it is important to reach the right target group and convince its representatives to share their opinions. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the relevant community and see what problems it faces.

It is also useful to check if someone else has already conducted similar research in the selected community. Asking the same questions can effectively discourage users to respond. It is advisable to ask subtle questions that reveal the business idea slowly, rather than disclosing everything at once. The effectiveness of such a survey also depends on whether we can convince the audience of the value of your business idea.

How to validate your business idea on social media? Let’s take Facebook as an example. First, you need to prepare your page properly (preferably as a public figure since your startup is not yet running). It doesn’t have to be sophisticated as it will be used for experimentation. Create your first posts and surveys. You can also promote your feed using Facebook Ads so as to increase your reach.

Which social media platforms to choose?

Which social media networks should you use when vetting a business idea? It is best to check which portals are the most popular. Let’s reach out to the WeAreSocial report again. According to it, the most popular social media sites are as follows:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Twitter
• Douyin
• Snapchat
• Telegram
• Pinterest

Using social media in business – summary

Social media play a huge role in business. It is worth using their potential not only for marketing, but also for validating startup ideas. It is important to note that using social media for this purpose is cheap and time-saving.

You’ve just read an article about using social media in business. Want more advice? Check out our other articles: The use of social media in the recruitment process.

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