Gradually, the world is becoming more connected. And with the availability of various platforms, your client could anywhere. So you probably want to know the best way to do social media for your small business, to ensure you reach even the most remote potential.
The use of social media is a key marketing platform for any business growth strategy. This is because it’s widely used globally and, therefore, an essential element for business visibility.
Social media is an open avenue for you to connect with your clients. It also provides you with a mechanism to reach out to those who know less about your brand.
Underrating the power in social media marketing won’t be of help to your small business. It should be incorporated as your marketing tool since it’s no longer optional for business growth.
Having an effective marketing strategy on social media will drive sales and revenue. My guess is as right as yours, how should you position yourself? Worry not below tips will help you gain more clients and drive your revenues up.
Have an Objective
Social media is easy to use, and if you are not keen, you may concentrate on one platform and disadvantage yourself from reaching your actual customer target.
It’s always important to come up with a clear plan with goals to achieve. It helps you measure your results as you develop your social media marketing plan.
In coming up with a plan, the below guidelines will help maximize your reach:
- Competitor Analysis: Have a look at how they use social media. Try to spot what works for them and what does not. By learning from them, you will develop something good that will pull traffic to you.
- Set up your social media objectives: create goals that are measurable, attainable, and relevant to your business. Have objectives that can drive revenues and not popularity.
- Audit your social media: if you already have active accounts, it’s advisable to audit them and measure your current success. This audit will help you identify the impostors of your account.
- Have your calendar: Developing your social media calendar will help you know the right time to target your niche. This will also influence you on how to develop a strategy of educating, informing, and educating your followers as you promote your brand.
Select the Best Platform
Most surveys show that small businesses prefer using Facebook, Instagram, youtube, and twitter to follow closely.
Business to business companies most often use LinkedIn because it is more beneficial to them.
Before rushing to open your account on multiple platforms, it’s significant first to understand your targeted clients.
For example, if your small business is targeting leads from boomers, it’s ill-advised to use Snapchat mainly because the majority of this generation doesn’t use Snapchat. It would target Generation Z, who would not be the targeted audience in this scenario.
After you have identified your audience, then identify the social media that suits them. Facebook is a social media tool that cuts across all generations. With over a billion viewers, Facebook presents an opportunity that you can be safe to say your audience is there. With Facebook, you won’t go wrong. You should also determine other social media platforms that will work best for you and have a good profile for your business.
Set Out Your Market Goals
Before proceeding to post your products, first establish what your market goal is. This will drive your objective and accomplish the intended purpose of your business.
Small business should accomplish below social media strategies:
- Generate leads that transform into revenue: a post can attract traffic if it well captured and content well explained. Users will refer friends if they are impressed with services or value for their money.
- Brand Awareness: your main aim is to reach out to many people as possible. In so doing, you must let them know more about your business in detail.
- Engage your customers: for you to be successful, ensure you respond to all your clients’ inquiries within the shortest time possible.
After you have realized your social media marketing objectives, then coming up with your content and post will be easier.
Actively Post Content Daily
First, ensure that you are active on all your platforms. Social media users find following active pages more entertaining and informative. Users usually stumble into pages, but if they find your account to be inactive, they won’t follow you.
In addition, your followers will not be updated if you don’t often post for them to see your post on their timelines. Most small businesses prefer to post weekly or monthly.
Frequent social media presence provides an opportunity for you to stand out from your competitors. Posting daily will give your followers a good impression over your competitors who only post weekly or monthly and are unavailable to respond to their inquiries.
Posting daily affirms your presence and reminds your consumers of your being there.
In case they need your product, they will quickly relate to you as opposed to your competitors.
Point to note is that posting daily does not refer to posting several times a day and flooding your follower’s timelines. Doing this may annoy them since you are spamming their wall and may make them unfollow you.
If you want to post several times a day, you can do that on your stories on Instagram and Facebook.
You want to respond to all comments and direct messages, either negative or positive, in a polite way accepting or clarifying any issue raised. Take accountability for any mistake.
Expand Your Following
For you to run a successful social media marketing strategy, you need to have followers. That will help you get views that will translate to revenues.
Consumers usually will buy from brands that have a massive following on social media; therefore, you should entice people to follow you.
How will you do that?
- Have promotions: promotions vary but be creative and develop eye-catching rewards for your followers. You can promote flash sales, offer loyalty points, among others.
- Have an entertaining content: this should be done daily to increase your following.
- Customer service
- Offer incentives to your followers
The main point here is to make sure your content is worth following.
Take Advantage of Automation Tools
Social media has its advantage, and one of them being the automation tool. This allows you to schedule your posts in advance, and you can set time and dates for them to broadcast.
Secondly, it allows you to respond to messages immediately and may also help in integration to different software that can help you respond to messages directly from one inbox.
Small business should take advantage of this, especially for those that don’t have time to run their social media platform.
Social Media Influencers
Small businesses can as well use influencers for marketing their brands. Therefore, it is important to find an influencer who drives trust and influence on the brand within your budget.
In conclusion, for your small business to remain relevant in today’s market, you should consider social media marketing. As pointed out, be active and post relevant content that is appealing to your followers and follow the tips provided for the growth of your small business success.
