Social media isn’t just for personal use anymore. Businesses small and large have been using platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for years – to the benefit of their bottom lines. And, if your business is struggling to make an impact, it’s time to make a change.
With 70 percent of the US population claiming at least one social media account, lagging behind on social media is no longer an option if you want to grow as a business. However, constantly changing algorithms and increasingly savvy competitors admittedly make it hard to find your audience, particularly without a little advice.
Here are some stats to help you understand the importance of social media marketing for small business and why you need to take it seriously.
1. According to a survey conducted by eMarketer, 88% of businesses use social media.
2. 96% of the people who talk about your brand online aren’t following you on social media.
3. Customers spend 20% to 40% more on products/services by companies who engage with them on social media.
Being a small business owner, you should see social media as a robust tool that can help build strong awareness, increase the number of sales and build a real customer base. When you truly understand the potential of social media marketing for small business, you will see that the results that you achieve are far better.
That’s why getting a few tips from experts can do wonders for your next campaign. Take a look at what we found to be the most helpful social media tips out there today and reach your audience.
Get Started
If your business doesn’t have a social media presence by now, you’re possibly feeling apprehensive about jumping in this late in the game. With more 60 million business pages on alone, making an account now might seem like a pretty daunting task. However, in 2018, it’s more about “now” than it is about “perfect.”
“Don’t be afraid to just get started — walks you through the steps and provides additional help resources so you don’t have to have every little detail set up perfectly. Just get going and learn as you go,” said Sandi Krakowski, serial entrepreneur and active social media user, to Business.
Social Media platforms like are designed to be updated as you go. There’s no reason to be worried about creating a “public relations disaster” because you poorly punctuated your “About” section. Get your company on now, and figure it out along the way. You’ll get the hang of it.
Commit to a Plan
When it comes to social media marketing for small business, having a strong and clear strategy is the first step towards finding success. There are many reasons why a business may fail to get results with social media marketing, but sometimes it is only because they did not know what they were doing.
“It all starts with planning,” wrote Brian Peters of Buffer. “Create a social media strategy and write it down in order to hold your business accounts. Your strategy should include a basic company mission statement, content plan and goals. And most importantly, a powerful statement on ‘why’ people would follow you on social media, what kind of content you plan on creating and posting, and what you hope to achieve.”
For instance, if you are marketing on Facebook, you should not only focus on getting more likes to your posts and your page but also try to boost the number of leads and sales you’re getting. Try to align your social media goals to your business goals.
Audit Your Social Media Online Presence
If you’re looking to improve an existing social media presence, it’s essential to first take stock of what you’re working. And that means, it’s time for an audit. By inspecting your current audience, content, and overall social media strategy, you can learn a lot about what customers want from your business.
So how do you conduct a social media audit? Taking simple steps, Gather Data, Ask some key questions, Look at your audience, Determine top performing post, Do brand check, compare to competitors, reviewing your content, and Compare to revenue, leads & conversion target, will make a huge difference when it comes to your future social media success.
Create a Social Media Calendar
Creating quality social media content is not enough. You also need to make sure that it reaches your followers on a consistent basis. An effective way to share the right kind of content is to use a social media calendar. Without complicating things, a social media calendar is nothing but a detailed schedule of the type of content you will be posting to each of your social media accounts. It gives you the much-needed clarity to post social media updates that matter.
There are multiple ways to create your social media calendar. You can either choose to go the simple way by using a spreadsheet or calendar in your Google Drive or use a more robust approach by using a paid tool.
It doesn’t matter what tool you use to create your calendar, what actually matters is how detailed it is and how you will be executing it. Because ultimately your precise execution plays a major role in making your efforts successful.
Having a clear social media calendar allows you to stay accountable, be consistent, save a ton of time, get more productive, and achieve peace of mind – all of which contributes to building a result oriented social media marketing approach.
Get Inspired by Other Brands
When you are doing social media marketing for small business, it is easy to get confused and misunderstand what your audience is looking for. This can lead you to create content that does not go well with your overall business goals. Which is why you need to spend time looking and analyzing the type of content other businesses are posting to their social media accounts.
These companies can be your direct competitors or may even compliment your business. The idea is to get a clear understanding of the type of content that is working for them. Look for patterns and see what’s fetching them the most social response.
You can also leverage social listening to find insights about your prospects and what they want to see from you. This not only ensures that you create appropriate content on a regular basis, but it also helps you stand out from the crowd.
When seeking inspiration, it is not necessary that you only stick to analyzing other small businesses using social media marketing. You can also go beyond and actually learn from industry leaders and bigger brands such as Starbucks, Oreo, Netflix, Apple, etc. It allows you to grab some real social media social lessons firsthand.
Don’t Forget Video
As technology has improved, the video has become incredibly popular on social media. From live feeds to GIFs, the medium has become the go-to method for marketers to get the attention of potential customers. And, suffice it to say, it’s working.
“The domination of video has been a long time coming,” wrote Brent Barnhart of Sprout Social. “Eye-catching, entertaining and capable of stopping scrolling users in their tracks, video represents the ideal way to encourage fans to spend more time engaging with your brand.”
The stats back this up, too:
If you haven’t been convinced that video needs to be part of your social media strategy to date, it’s time to rethink your approach.
Choose the Right Platform
One of the things that can impact your social media marketing for small business results is the choice of your platform. In order to get the most out of social media marketing for small business and make your brand stand out from the rest, it is crucial that you choose a platform that is suitable to your business goals. If not, you may end up spending your time and money on a social network that will most likely not give you a favorable return on investment.
Do not make the mistake of selecting a social media platform based on a wild estimate or on what others are doing. It is important that you take into consideration your target audience, their preferences, and other demographics before starting to work with a platform.
Develop Separate Personas
Once you have the minute details that you find common between the best customers, it’s time to organize them into different personas, which helps you target with more precision when using social media marketing for small business.
You can easily do this by creating a list of customers within your audience that share the same kind of goals and face similar challenges. Create separate groups out of these customers and categorize them. Each category you add is nothing but a unique persona that you will be leveraging later on.
For instance, if you are a yoga teacher, some of your students may want to do yoga to perfect their posture while others may aim to do it for building muscle strength. While both of these customers want to do yoga, but for different reasons or goals. Which is why it makes sense to create two different personas for them.
Conclusion
The reality is that, even with all the social media tips in the world, it still takes a lot of time, energy, and resources to get right. Even then, there is no guarantee you’ll be able to foster success through social media, particularly without help from an Expert. That’s where a We can do wonders.
You won’t need social media tips, because these services are set up by experts who can do the hard work for you. We improve your social strategy with the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision, so you can reach new customers while keeping your current customers happier than ever.
