Social Media for Small Business: 10 Essential Tips

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How to Use Social Media for Small Business: 10 essential tips

1. Start with a Masterplan:

Every great business strategy starts with a great plan. Digital Marketing for a small business on social media is no different. Fortunately, it’s easy to get started with a few simple posts. Dive in and just get started right away. But without a clear plan, you have no idea what you’re trying to achieve with your posts on social media. Hence, taking time and research to create a social media plan upfront will ensure that your social efforts help a specific business plan.

Here is an outline that guides us in creating a social media marketing plan:

• Social media goals: create goals and objectives that are specific, measurable, relevant, attainable, and timely. Plans must have a tangible impact on your business, like raising your brand, conversation, and acquiring customers rather than racking up likes.
• Analyzing the competition: what is your competition, and who is your competitor on social media? Some social listening strategies and competitive analysis can give you knowledge of working and what is not working for a business like yours—learning from what others have done before you are a great way to increase your knowledge.
• Perform a social media audit: if you’re already using social media, it is time to step back and evaluate what you are doing. Apart from your audit, measure your activities and feedback.
• Look for inspiration: take inspiration from other successful businesses in all industries. Look at what your competitors are doing with social media and online tools.
• Create a calendar for social media: posting the right content to the proper social media channels at the right time. It must include your plans for content and promotions. You should use 80-20 rules: 80 percent of your content must inform, educate, and entertain the audience, and the remaining 20 percent on promoting your brand.

2. Decide the right platform for social media:

Please don’t make assumptions about where your audience spends their time online. If you target Millennials, you may think you should skip Facebook and focus on Snapchat or Instagram. But research shows that Facebook is the leading social media, and 82 percent of Millennials are still using Facebook. Look for demographic information about major social media networks and their users. It will help you determine where your audience spends their time online.

You can choose different social channels to reach a diverse audience or meet other business goals. You must know how and where to find your specific audiences.

3. Know your audience:

Managing social media for small businesses allows you to micro-target your audience. But First, you need to find out who your audience is. By digging deeper into social media, you can develop a clear image of your customers and interact with them online.

For example, Jimmy Beans Wool’s company first started in The United States and Canada. They had limited access to these influential social groups. They had an email subscription list with not a large audience to grow the company. When Jimmy Beans launched its first subscription services for supply kits, it used Facebook to reach people. Their ads brought 1,000 subscribers in 36 hours. It was a massive response. Clearly, the company understood its audience and offered to speak to their needs and wants directly.

4. Build Relationships:

The advantage of social media marketing compared to other channels is that it allows you to talk directly to customers. You can listen to customers’ needs and their feedback. You can build relationships by communicating over time rather than asking for the sale right away.

When people engage with your organic content, you can offer multiple products to build trust and offer options. It helps you create customer relationships from the early stages.

Creating groups on social media such as Facebook and what’s up is another excellent way to build community and establish relationships and brand loyalty.

5. Expand your audience:

Once you have dominated your original local market, you can expand your business using social media to reach new audiences nationally and internationally. For example, Uber’s rideshare company started as a small business in San Francisco. Its original audience was people who needed a safe ride. To grow the business, Uber expanded with that key message.

6. Share compelling Visuals:

Social media images drive real-world actions. The expectation of a visual component on social media is high among people. For example, Twitter shows people are three times more likely to engage with tweets with visual elements such as video, photo, and Infographics. More than half of millennials have decided on travel plans, visiting a restaurant, or attending sports events based on photos, videos, friends, or other people’s share on social media.

Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook Live, and google maps are the most famous visual social media platforms right now, with millions of followers worldwide and millions of posts each day across different activities around the globe.

7. Focus on quality over quantity:

Focus on the number of social media marketing ads and options for small businesses is overwhelming. You don’t need to do it all at the beginning. But content marketing should be at the top of your list. Creating quality content on key social channels to connect with your audience is much more essential than your presence on every social media network. Make sure your social posts offer value. For example, use the right words that entice the viewer. Be human, honest, and creative. After all, unique content matters! Because social marketing is all about motivation and building relationships.

8. Listen to customers first and then promote:

As a business owner, you know that reviews matter. Hence, social media should also be considered to understand customers’ needs, wants, and experiences. Social media programs are built around communication, and listening to customers is paramount. Most businesses see social media as a source of inspiration for content—many companies create social media surveys to get feedback and correct the issues before they worsen. Also, you can listen to the competitor’s customers as well. Tools like Twitter, Facebook, Google planner, and YouTube are great places to find out what is wrong in your industry and how to fix or prevent them in your business.

9. Success follows passion:

Success in social media for small businesses is a long process. Getting a desirable result can take a minimum of six to ten months of hard work. Social media for business is all about success which comes from the passion that helps generate great and memorable content. It would be best if you were committed and passionate about managing your brand as a business owner.

10. Create an account on “The Big 6” social channels:

Social media marketing is necessary for small businesses. The top six network channels are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google My Business (Not Google Plus), LinkedIn, and Instagram. These six social media networks cover all social media users. But the future landscape of social media platforms will undoubtedly continue to change as society adapts and requests such social interactions. Hence, it’s always best to be on the lookout for which social media platforms are trending to continue leveraging your online presence.