The question is not IF your small business would thrive on social media.
The question is WHY YOUR SMALL BUSINESS ISN’T YET ON THE PLATFORM?
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and now with the massive success of TikTok – are just a few of the social networks that small businesses are using to grow their companies. There are dozens more where they came from and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down! Whenever you have time to spare, you should be spending it building your brand on as many sites as possible.
Social media is here to stay and small businesses need to adapt if they are to succeed.
Choose the right network for your business
Start growing your small business on social media. It’s as simple as that.
Which networks do you put the most time and effort into? That is NOT entirely up to you.
The advice from most experts is to join the most popular, and choosing the right ones comes down to your audience and your goals. You need to analyse and consider things first that tell about your business and current data from your conversions over the weeks, months, or years. And that’s your DEMOGRAPHICS!
- How old are the majority of your customers?
- Where are they from?
- What do they do for a living?
- What problems are they looking to solve?
These will help you determine which platform is best for your business to reach out to the right audience. Here are a few stats you can use to determine how to strategize your social media marketing.
- Facebook: Users between the ages of 18 and 24 made up 18.2 percent of the total user population, closely followed by users between the ages of 35 and 44, who made up 18.1 percent. Teen users make up the lowest portion of Facebook’s user base, with just one in twenty of them being between the ages of 13 and 17.
- Instagram: 25 to 34-year-olds make up the majority of Instagram users. In fact, this age group comprises 48.63% of all Instagram users.
- LinkedIn: 59.1 percent are between the ages of 25 and 34. 20.4 percent of all users on the site are between the ages of 18 and 24, while 17.7 percent are between the ages of 35 and 54.
- Pinterest: 34% of users is 18 to 29. 32% is occupied by ages 30-49. The age group with the biggest percentage of Pinterest users is 50 to 64 years old, with 38% of users falling into this category.
Plan your goals
Before you do anything else, take a look at some of your existing business goals.
Businesses usually come up with social media goals that are too vague to be helpful. For example, a goal like “increase our presence” won’t tell you when you’ve succeeded. You need to measure your goals against specific criteria, such as the number of followers and the number of good comments for each post.
Ask yourself these questions:
- How will social media help you grow your business?
- What about reaching new customers?
- What are your key performance indicators?
- Is it important to collaborate with other professionals in your industry?
- About time and effort:
- How much time each day and week are you able to spend on your social media business?
- Are you open to hiring a social media manager so you can be more productive on your business operations and other stuff you’re most important and best at?
- Have you set up your expectations considering the amount of time and effort you’re willing to put in?
- If so, how many followers do you expect to get and what sales to generate monthly?
- The clearer you are about your goals, the easier it will be to write and decide what should go on social media.
It’s easy to get carried away by using social media, and you forget the one thing that really matters — your clients. No matter what amount of followers or interactions you get — if it doesn’t help you reach your business objectives, it isn’t useful.
Your goals are the reason that you’re doing this so make sure they’re specific and well-defined. Consider using SMART goals as a way to make them more effective – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.
Create a Content Plan
They say CONTENT IS KING, and we throw our hands up high with a massive YESSS to this!
Creating and posting to your social media accounts every day seems like a great idea. But how long will you be able to keep it up? If you are spending 8 hours a day on social media and creating content daily, this is 60 hours of your month!
Only give yourself 2-5 hours a week to plan your content, unless you have a team creating your content for you.
Moreover, let’s talk about how hard it is to keep up posting daily. You might just forget some events you’re posting about on specific days and end up wasting the time you’ve put into curating the content for it.
So how do you keep up?
Use auto-publishing tools. If you’re looking for a free option, Facebook Meta Content Planner is good to go for static posts for Instagram and Facebook. If you’re using Canva for your content creation, Canva Pro and Team also offer its feature linking your social media accounts and posting single-photo posts on both channels plus Pinterest and Linkedin, too!
Reels and TikToks on the other hand can only be auto-scheduled and/or published using paid tools like Later, HootSuite and etc.
Maintain a Brainstorming File
Incorporating brainstorming sessions into your monthly meetings will help refine and develop new ideas for your social marketing strategy with your team. If you’re working alone as a small business owner, then keep a file where you store all your ideas and progress.
Brainstorming is one of the best ways to hatch new ideas, and it can help you do just that on your small business blogs. Once you complete your brainstorming session for the month, take a look at everything you’ve come up with and decide which ones can be worked into your monthly schedule and if you’ve done some of these ideas already, try to see which ones actually work.
If you don’t know where to start, here are some steps and tips you can do for your SMM:
- To plan a strong social media campaign,
- Review top-performing posts or content from your competitors.
- Investigate what makes their posts stand out from the crowd, and decide whether incorporating such elements would benefit your brand.
- Consider creating seasonal promotions to drive more sales,
- Review what you hope to achieve with each post by checking off your goals.
- Keep an inspiration folder filled with interesting images, graphics and articles that capture your brand’s essence; refer back to this folder often when deciding upon new topics for discussion.
- Ask your audience what they want to see more of on social media,
- Stay on top of the market trends: read the news (or search the web) for trending hashtags that might appeal to your target audience and play music while you work in order to get into a creative frame of mind.
Make time for your engagement with your audience
A great way to grow your small business with social media is to become a community manager.
One study found that 57% of customers said they feel positively toward businesses that are active on social media. The same study found that nearly 80% of consumers have used a business’ social media profiles to ask questions about products, services, and companies. When 83% of people have asked a question before buying from a company, it’s important you show them you’re an engaged company with an expert social media presence.
Take the time to interact with people on your own social media pages and those of other companies in your field. Spend at least 30 minutes a day interacting with people on your own social media pages and those of other companies in your field.
The more time you spend engaging with people the stronger their relationship with your brand will become creating organic growth for your small business.
Final Thoughts
Now that you have an understanding of how to use social media for your small business, it’s time to take action. Remember: not every type of content or strategy will work for every company. Find what works for you, learn why it worked or didn’t work, and keep making improvements!
Not sure where to start?
Book a no-obligation call with our strategist now!
Stay tuned for more marketing tips and tricks! Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest!
