For small businesses, creating a strong social approach will take much of the guesswork out of your marketing plan. Planning ahead of time is key when it comes to social media success.
Increasing adoption of consumer platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are making it nearly impossible for businesses to ignore social media. There are so many opportunities for you to put yourself in front of potential customers. Did you know, people spend an average of 145 minutes a day on social media! This is a great opportunity to attract the attention of potential customers.
Most likely you won’t have a marketing team ready to tackle every platform, so you need to be strategic when investing your time and budget. Do not worry! Social media for small business owners doesn’t have to be complicated. Take a look at how to create small business social media strategies that will help you achieve your business growth goals.
1. Set SMART Goals
Most small business owners know they should use social media to grow their business, but have you ever wondered why? What final result are you wanting to achieve with your social media? When you have clear goals, it’s much easier to create a plan to achieve them. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. This helps with goal setting because you’ll know exactly what you’re trying to do and how quickly you’ll get there.
2. Quality Over Quantity
It is easy for small businesses to feel anxiety and overwhelmed by the number of social media platforms and which ones to use and when. Don’t try to do everything all at once. Don’t try to do everything, period. Not only will you spread yourself too thin but you will most likely dilute your marketing efforts.
Do a few things and do them well before moving on to others. Start by growing your brand on a few key platforms like Instagram and Facebook as they are a bit more manageable than other platforms.
Good news is that when you are ready you can always repurpose your content on other social media. Keep in mind the format your audience likes to receive information about your brand when going from one platform to another.
3. Know Your Audience
It is best to use social media to get to know and understand your audience and what’s important to them. A great way to increase your influence on social media is to post valuable content that helps your customers in some way. Research and see which accounts they follow, posts they like and share. This will give you a clearer idea of what is important to them.
Too often businesses use social media to only talk about their business. Post about your products, services, and employees, but forget about posting as a service to your potential customers. People follow certain brands because of how a brand makes them feel or helps them solve a problem. When you post useful content, people are more likely to engage with it.
4. Collaborate With Others In Your Industry.
Connecting with people in your area of interest is an excellent way to get in front of a brand new consumer. Sharing content from people you respect in industry and thought-leaders will help you grow and be part of a broader network in your niche. Not to say that you need to share a post from a direct competitor but you can certainly connect with micro-influencers in your industry. Sharing information with your audience on social media can allow you to be part of the broader conversation. For example if your product is about women’s self care you can collaborate with a yoga instructor to create an exercise routine for your audience to follow.
5. Start Conversations
Once you already know what your target market likes, take part in the conversation. Your posts must range among informative, inspirational, and promotional, however in each post, give your audience a call to action. Training your audience to engage with your brand is key. Ask them questions, get their opinion, find that hot button that will get them talking. Every product or service is tied to an emotion or experience your perfect customer wants to have.
Only 10% of messages and comments left on business social media accounts are answered so make sure to include time to respond to comments and direct messages. After all they did take time out to engage so you need to engage right back. Tools like Facebook live stream and Instagram polls are a great way to interact with your customers. This engagement helps to create brand loyalty and can make social media a sales funnel for your business.
6. Schedule Your Posts
As a business owner, you don’t have time to waste. Using tools to help you execute on your social media plan is critical. Posting high-quality content consistently helps keep your brand top of mind for your potential customers. Use technology is a resource to help you schedule your posts in advance so you don’t have to worry about it.
7. How Often You Need To Post
A big question for small business owners is how often you should be posting. Often it depends on the message you want to share and the platform. Although there are no cut and dry answers across platforms, here are things to keep in mind
● Instagram: daily posts, stories and reels/videos will boost engagement and interaction
● Facebook: once or twice a day is normally good as you don’t want your customers to disengage.
● Twitter: schedule multiple Tweets throughout the day, at the times you know your audience is online
It’s trial and error but most important is to find a rhythm that works for both you and your audience.
8. Paid Posts
A guarantee about using social media is that at one time or another algorithms will change and this change may affect your organic reach. If you can afford to include advertising spend for paid posts in your social media plan, do it. It is not a bad idea to pay a little money to reach a warm audience.
9. Experiment and Evolve
There are a number of ways to make social media work for your small business. Experiment, test, pivot and evolve. The only way to know what is working is to start. Be sure to use the analytics tools that are embedded in the social media platforms like engagement and conversion rates. Once you see what type of quality content is working for your audience, create more of that – in a fresh way. Continue to review your plan to ensure you are staying on target and/or make any necessary adjustments based on the data. You will continue to learn as you go and learn as you grow.