Social Media Marketing for Smsocial media marketing for small business
Every small business needs customers. Without qualified customers, it would be hard for any type of business (big or small) to survive in the long run. What’s the best way to acquire customers? Social media marketing for small business.
While there are many reasons as to why you should use social media marketing for small business to enhance and grow your company, the most obvious being, it will help you win more customers. And help your company gain more prominence.
With the growing popularity of social networking, there is little doubt that your potential customers are using major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And the best part is, many of these social media users (your prospects) visit these platforms everyday.
social media marketing for small business
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.
According to a survey conducted by eMarketer, 88% of businesses use social media.
96% of the people who talk about your brand online aren’t following you on social media.
Customers spend 20% to 40% more on products/services by companies who engage with them on social media.
When you use social media marketing for small business you can easily reach out to your target audience and build a long-lasting relationship with them. This is a highly effective way to build a brand that people trust while getting more bang for your buck.
Also, when compared to traditional marketing techniques, with social media marketing for small business you have a higher chance of getting a positive return on investment. This is due to the fact that marketing via social media is much cheaper for a small business, especially one with a limited budget.
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 more better.
Social Media Marketing for Small Business: 4 Tips that Work
Let’s look into four relevant social media marketing for small business tips that will can help your company gain an edge over the competition.
#1: Have a Clear Plan in Place
When it comes to social media marketing for small business, having a strong and a 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.
Every action you take towards building your social media presence and marketing your brand should be carefully planned. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run or who your target audience is, as long as you have a plan laid out, you will find it easier to overcome any challenges that you come across.
Here’s how you can create a solid social media marketing plan for small business plan.
A) Set The Right Social Media Goals
What do you want to achieve with social media? When using social media marketing for small business, it is important that you set goals and objectives that actually help you grow.
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.
social media marketing for small business
When leveraging social media marketing for small business, it is easy to get stuck on vanity metrics rather than improving the bottom line of your business. But do understand that social media will only be beneficial to your small business if you’re ultimately getting more customers using it. Or else it’s simply a waste of your time, money, and energy.
B) Conduct a Proper Social Media Audit
In order to get the most out of social media marketing for small business, it is crucial that you know which of your customers and prospects are already connected to you on the major social media platforms, and how they perceive your brand. It gives you a better idea of your position in the social media arena.
By conducting a proper social media audit, you basically understand your current social media following and also learn which platform is mostly used by your customers so that you can tap into it.
A social media audit also gives you knowledge of the areas that you need to improve on. And a better perspective on how your competitors are building their social media presence. Remember, the more you know about your customers and your competition, the easier it will be for you to win the social media game. Which in turn helps your business survive and grow.
social media marketing for small business
C) Build Up Your Social Media Presence
If you don’t already have social media accounts for your company, it is time you create them. However, it is extremely important that you only work with social media networks that will directly help your type of business to grow. In other words, the social media network that you dedicate your time to should suit the goals of your small business.
Although it doesn’t mean that you should only create one or two accounts to promote your brand. Gone are the days when Facebook and Twitter are the only social media platforms available for a business. Today, we have YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest that also have their own user base.
So, it’s best to create and try posting on these platforms to see which has the most engagement. Then you can focus on those social media networks that have the most engaged followers. After all, you should be where your audience is.
Once you are through this step, you will need to build your social media presence on the network of your choice. This does not mean that you post any random type of content on your social pages. Every single step that you take to enhance your presence should match your big and small business goals.
social media users
Your social media activities should also be in line with the likes and dislikes of your target audience. Regardless of what you want you achieve with your social media marketing activities, make sure that each of your accounts reflects your objectives and your core brand values.
D) 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 the 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 soci lessons firsthand.
social media marketing for small business
Remember, these big companies have huge budgets that they allocate for social media and a lot of what they do is backed by real research and understanding. When you grasp their way of doing things and see how they are implementing their social media tactics, it gives a real inspiration to formulate your own strategy.
E) 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.
social calendar
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 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 results oriented social media marketing approach.
#2: 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 y
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