Social media is right at your fingertips all day, everyday. While your original reason for joining these platforms might have been to keep in touch with old friends and family members, or to voice your opinion for others to see, as a small business owner, you can now use it to grow your business and increase your sales and profits.

Using social media for personal reasons is very different from using it for business. Here are the top ways for you to leverage social media for business growth.

1. Know your audience: it’s vital that you develop an avatar for your business so you know your target market and can better tailor a plan to reach them.
2. Develop a strategy: after you’ve determined who you want to reach, you have to figure out how you will reach them. You are currently at Point A, and you’re trying to get to Point B, how will you do it?
3. Quality over quantity: in your strategy, focus on posts that will provide value to your followers. This means multiple things: don’t post all promotional content, add motivational and informational content about a related topic, don’t crowd the timeline with useless posts, post content that people want to see or will find interesting.
4. Follow high-profile accounts: this will allow you to see what famous, sought after people do on their profiles. You might also consider syncing your profile to theirs in order to help you gain traffic from their follower base.
5. Engage with other profiles: similar to an eye for an eye, growth on social media is essentially like for a like, follow for a follow back. If you genuinely engage on profiles that are similar to yours, they will likely engage with you, and you’ll begin to develop relationships that can greatly benefit you.
6. Network: while it may cost you a little bit up front, you can make back your money and then some by sending complimentary products to your industry’s influencers.
7. Make it easy for people to buy: add a link on your social media profiles for easy access to your website. You should also make sure your purchasing process is as simple as possible.

These seven tips will help you leverage social media and grow your business in ways you wouldn’t believe. Don’t expect things to explode overnight, but if you do these seven things, you are sure to see more success than you currently have.