How To Use Social Media For Good In Your Business

Social media is everywhere and whether you like it or not, it's here to stay. You may have an opinion on it. You may be a fan and you may not be, but know that social media can be a huge tool in your personal life and in your business. Smart business owners are able to use social media to connect, grow their business, build their brand, and really use social media for good. First of all, I want to give you some numbers. There are 31.8 million social media users in Canada. I know I shouldn't be surprised by that number, but I kind of am. I don't know about you, but I feel like social media is one of those things that even if you're someone who is not a huge fan of social media, I think they secretly use it when people aren't looking. Now I want to share where people are spending most of their time and on what platforms.

76% are on Facebook. This one surprised me. I have heard from many people recently that they're saying Facebook is dead or it's slowing down or you're old if you use Facebook. All right, that one might have come from my children, but I've heard from many people that Facebook is no longer the be all and end all that it used to be. I'm a little surprised that it is still at 76%.

58% are on Instagram. Okay, that one I kind of get. I've just recently kind of fallen back in love with Instagram and I'm on it all the time, just sharing and posting, making reels, having fun with it and just enjoying.

36% are on Twitter I can see that. One of the things I love about Twitter is how easily it is to take someone else's info and share it and spread the word. In that sense it is very useful.

34% are on Pinterest I have a secret love affair with Pinterest. I've got many, many boards of things that I eventually want to get done in life or if I have the time to do. I also really love the Pinterest reality and the fails because that's how it works sometimes. You to make something Pinterest beautiful and sometimes it just falls short.

32% are Tik Tok. I thought that was going to be much more. I feel like TikTok came in at a perfect time. We were all sitting at home on our phones, on our devices and we were able to just swipe, watch and enjoy. I think I've mentioned it before, but February I made a challenge for myself to make a TikTok every single day. It was kind of fun to just get out there and put some content together. Whether I liked it or not, I took the time and took the effort and shared some TikTok content.

31% are on LinkedIn. I feel this one is a number that's probably going to start rising depending on what your business is or what you're looking for. I think that's a resource that I personally haven't tapped into enough yet, but I'm definitely going to start looking into it.

Now I want to share how you can use social media for good in your business and personal life. I believe that the business and the personnel really are intertwined. I think that even if you have a specific page that's made for your business, if all you're doing is throwing up a sale or sharing the business, people are going to get bored. They're not there just for the business, they're there for you. I do believe that even if you're on social media for business, you better be prepared to share some of you and some of your personality. That being said, one of the questions I always get is when people first start a new business, they ask if they have to make a separate account for their business? If they already have a personal account with tons of followers, I say yes. And why I say yes is because you want to be able to invite people to join you. You don't want to all of a sudden, start posting tons of stuff of this business that they may or may not be interested in, you might get a lot of friends to stop following you. I would say definitely create something that is just designed for your business, but be prepared to share personal things on that at least once in a while

Another note, do not build your whole business on social media, on any platform. The reality is you do not own that platform. If I were to build my whole business on a Facebook page and then all of a sudden, the algorithms get changed or the guidelines or the rules change, I no longer have control of my business. I know many friends who have been put into Facebook jail. Yes, social media is amazing to connect, to build your brand, to engage, to really grow your business, but know that you should always be sending those people back to your website. Your website doesn't need to be fancy. It doesn't need to be crazy, doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. It just needs to have a place where people can sign in their email, keep updated, and just a place that's not social media that you can send them back to. All right, so let's get started on some of these tips on how to use social media for good in your business.

#1 Give Value in Your Posts

Give, give, and the give a little bit more. What I mean by this is you do not want to constantly share a sale, or share a new product, here's, that new product here's, it's just t