Are you new to social media marketing? If yes, then you must have questions about it. At Cube Creative, we usually get these questions:
- What is effective social media marketing for small business?
- How can I use social media to grow my business, build brand awareness, start building relationships, etc.?
- What are the best social media marketing strategies for a small business or startup?
Perhaps, the best tip to tell all online marketers is this: Start by setting the right goal.
But what is the right goal for using social media for business?
In social media marketing, the right goal is to:
- Build influence and authority
- Promote brand awareness
When your audience is already aware of your brand and trusts you, that is the time you can lead them further into your sales funnel.
On average, it takes businesses six months to generate results from social media marketing, but HubSpot, a leading CRM developer, says, “It depends.”
According to HubSpot experts, businesses need to develop an effective social media marketing strategy to generate results faster and take advantage of ways to track social media results.
Two Things to Work On for Social Media Marketing
To build influence on social channels, work on two things. First, work on your content, which means proving through your posts, videos, and webinars that:
- You are an authoritative and influential figure in your niche.
- You can help people solve issues that they need to deal with immediately.
Next, work on your marketing. If you already have great content, the next step is to level up your marketing. You can have amazing photos, video clips, Infographics, webinars, and so on, but your marketing may still need a lift.
To level up your marketing, follow the latest marketing tips and apply them. Brand storytelling and nurturing brand advocates are some of the best strategies you can apply in social media marketing.
You also need to learn online marketing, in general. What strategy works best for YouTube, LinkedIn, or whatever platform you intend to use? Is the social platform you intend to use the best platform for your business?
We will talk about other social marketing tips later. Meanwhile, let’s talk about the basics.
What Is Social Media Marketing? Why Is It Important for Small Businesses?
Small business social media marketing is the process of building connections on social media channels. The process involves content creation for social media platforms.
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Snapchat are the most widely used platforms at the moment, so these are some of the best platforms to consider marketing on. All of these social platforms allow marketers to communicate with followers and analyze the behavior of their target audience.
Why do social media marketing?
Why use social media for business and marketing? There are many reasons, including:
Lifestyle alterations
People from all walks of life adjust to the new digital landscape, and most of them rely on digital platforms to provide them with the content they need. Social media is one of those digital platforms.
You can engage with a broader audience on social media, including the older and younger generations. Even older generations are now embracing the digital lifestyle and looking for content on digital platforms.
Changes in consumer expectations
With the one-sided conversation no longer applicable in today’s digital world, marketers should adjust to new market demands. One of those demands is that they should be visible online, reachable, and always ready for customer interaction.
The crux of the matter is many people, all over the world, are on social media. The numbers are astounding. In 2020, more than three billion people were using social media worldwide, and that number is expected to increase to more than four billion by 2025.
So, it is not an option to be or not to be on social media. For your business to succeed or your message to be heard, it is a must for you to be on social media.
Pillars of social media marketing
The core pillars of social media marketing are a great guide to follow when building your content, posting ads, or interacting on the platform.
According to experts, there are four pillars of social media marketing, namely:
Uniqueness
There is a lot of competition going on in every industry, and all players are trying their best to beat others.
But, in trying to be the winner, you need to be unique. To be unique in your industry, you must achieve a certain level of distinctiveness that separates you from your competitors. That can even mean being exceptional or outstanding, which is what you and your competitors are trying to ultimately achieve.
But how do you achieve such a position in social media marketing?
One social media strategy that works to create an impression of uniqueness among your audience is to understand what they actually want. That is because you do not have a complete idea of what they truly want if you do not ask them.
Use customer data and surveys, test things out, and, above all, ask for opinions. Does your social audience want to see memes included in your content? Using memes is great for representing the feelings and thoughts of your audience.
Or, your audience might be expecting that you should be stiff and professional, or even casual and funny. To know which, you must elicit their opinion about it. Ask your audience, and do not assume that you already know.
Trust
Trust is a crucial component of marketing on social platforms. If your audience does not completely trust you, you cannot influence them into engaging with your business and patronizing your products or services.
The best way to gain their trust is to show them that you are genuine with your message and competent in your niche.
Influence
Building trust is a way to gain influence with your audience, and being influential allows you to persuade your audience in one direction or another. To build your influence over your audience, know how best you can influence them.
What type of content do they need? Should you use videos, photos, or plain text? Do they engage more when they play games or participate in contests and competitions? Or, do they appreciate you more when you give them educational content for self-improvement?
Whatever strategy you use to build influence, be ready to show mastery and expertise.
Relevance
You, your brand, and your content can become relevant in your industry faster than you think, but more importantly, you want to stay relevant for as long as possible.
Make sure to maintain a high level of relevance all the time, and the way to do that is by regularly updating your content.
Conversely, failure to update your content can mean your information is already obsolete. Worse, the information you provide is deemed to be false. Work on updating your audience at least two times a week.
How to Start Social Media Marketing
One of the things you want to know about how to promote your business on social media is how to actually get started.
Gear yourself with the following tips:
Helpful sources
There are a plethora of helpful resources available for both beginners and experienced social media marketers.
Some resources worth mentioning are:
- Copyblogger
- SocialFresh
- Social Media Examiner
These are informative blogs that help marketers on what to post on social media for small business.
Even if you already know your stuff, you still need to keep updated with the latest ideas and trends in your niche. For this purpose, bookmark these blogs, along with HubSpot, Ahrefs, Moz, and Kissmetrics Blog.
If you learn fast and better by way of videos, YouTube should be one of your best resources. It has a wealth of content for learning the basics and strategies of social media marketing.
Also, obtain a certification from a reliable digital marketing learning website. Certification programs cover all areas of social marketing for both beginners and advanced. Check the social media marketing course offered by HubSpot.
Choose the right platform
It can be easy to be overwhelmed as you start social media marketing because of the huge number of social media channels available nowadays. Just choosing the channels to join can already be mind-blogging.
Here’s the simple way out of it: Connect with your prospective targets where they already are.
For many businesses, that includes Facebook and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great platform for B2B companies. On the other hand, Facebook has more focus on B2C targeting. Beyond that, it depends on the specific market.
Pinterest and Instagram suit e-commerce businesses very well. Snapchat is one of the best platforms for you if you do localized campaigns. This platform is best for marketers whose campaign involves telling compelling, interactive stories.
A business whose target is younger markets in selling apps should market on platforms where the Gen Z market is found. That includes YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram.
Use content mapping
Know content mapping and the benefits it delivers. It is a strategy that allows marketers to outline how content can strategically relate and support the customer’s journey.
When effectively implemented, content mapping will show you the benefit of connecting every piece of your content to the particular stage of the journey your customer is at. Consequently, you can identify opportunities to better meet the needs of your audience from initial engagement all the way to purchase.
Plan the social media content you will post for the first few weeks ahead of time. Then track your analytics to see what content type works best and the best days to post your content.
Be authentic, be human
Perhaps, the best area to focus on in social media marketing is human interaction. Be engaging and be as human and authentic as you can. Engage with your audience as much as you can because that is what they expect from marketers they know will help them with their issues.
So, do not push your content too hard that you already compromise the human side of engagement. Instead, give ample time for responding to queries, feedback (whether good or bad), and additional inputs coming from your audience.
For this reason, avoid the use of automated bots. You do not want to talk to a machine either, and you cannot trust advice coming from an apparatus that knows nothing at all about human experiences.
Measure your results and fine-tune your strategy accordingly
Many marketers on social media and elsewhere make a plan and blindly follow it for months without reviewing or adjusting it. If you do that, it can cause you to waste a lot of time.
Periodically revisit your plan and make necessary adjustments. If a particular channel is unproductive for your business, the best way to proceed is to abandon it and give more focus to platforms that work.
Use social media marketing tracking tools, such as this software for social media monitoring powered by Birdeye.
Strategies for Social Media Marketing
Social media strategies should be geared toward developing trust, influence, awareness, and engagement. As long as you have identified the right audience to target and the best platform to engage with them, do the following.
Strategies to build influence
Develop your social influence with the following:
- Start with what you know – You will be comfortable discussing with your audience if you know well about the topic at hand. Also, focus more on the topic, not your brand or product.
- Get your name out there – Be active and let more and more people know that you exist. If you can, be wherever your audience is and engage with them. Use forums, popular blogs, guest post opportunities, etc.
- Keep your followers in the know – Read press releases and news alerts to keep yourself informed. Make sure to share the latest trends and news in your niche with your audience.
Strategies to build trust
Use strategies for building trust, including:
- Share high-quality, relevant content – Build your authority by showing people that you can provide what they want. People want to know whether or not you are valuable and not a waste of time. If you are the former, they will start trusting you.
- Nurture interaction – After knowing that you have the content they want, your audience wants to know if you are available for questions they want to ask directly to you. Allot time for audience interaction.
- Use trustworthy links – Followers of your social media account want to know your sources and how reliable and trustworthy they are. Connect only with networks that can help enhance the positive impression that your audience has on you.
Strategies to build brand awareness
To raise awareness of your brand on social media, follow these steps:
- Try to make your content go viral on social platforms.
- Use trending hashtags to take advantage of their popularity.
- Do ad campaigns – Facebook and Instagram empower businesses with attention-grabbing ad campaigns.
- Focus on visual content – Post engaging visual content, such as images of your products and even live streaming videos.
- Organize fund-raising activities – Create programs for a good cause to showcase that your organization is willing to help others.
Strategies to build engagement
For building social engagement with your target audience, do the following:
- Post content regularly.
- Stay relevant. By being timely and updated, you will always stay relevant.
- Get to know your audience better by monitoring their engagement and reading and responding to them.
- Run contests and promotional campaigns on social platforms.
Best Practices for Small Business Social Media Marketing
Remember these principles on effective social media marketing:
Social media marketing is part of the overall marketing campaign.
One of the most important social media tips for small business you must always remember is this: Your social media activities are not separate activities from other marketing activities you have for your business. You also work on SEO and link building, but overall, these are smaller parts of a broader marketing strategy.
For example, if you are trying to build an SEO-optimized website with link-building strategies, you can link your social media pages and posts to your website. Or vice versa, put links on your web pages directed to your social accounts.
Everyone should focus on the same goal.
Make sure that all teams involved have the same marketing goal. For instance, the goal for both SEO and social media marketing is to increase a business’s online presence.
If you work on amplifying SEO, your social media marketing efforts should support that goal. It will help you generate buzz and indirectly improve your business’s visibility and reputation online.
Visual content brings about better results.
Visual content is the most engaging type of content, and it works best for brand recognition. According to research, 65% of people learn better through visuals.
In social content marketing, using interesting images and graphics is an opportunity to elicit a strong reaction from your target audience and make them remember your content longer.
Social media as an opportunity for community building
Be personable and accessible so you can build a community of like-minded people through your social media accounts. It is helpful that you also try to develop a distinct personality and voice everyone can recognize as yours.
Once you have built a significant social media presence, cross-promote in different channels, including offline channels that include community partnerships, environmental protection programs, and the like.
Use Cube Creative Design for Marketing Your Business on Social Media
Once you know the basics of social media marketing and the best strategies to use to start your campaign on social media, it is time to find the best marketing agency to work with.
Choose the best agency to work with using the following criteria.
Personalized customer experience
Find an agency that offers customized services. Some companies use the same strategies for all their clients, but that does not work for everyone, all the time.
At Cube Creative, we customize a unique solution and offer a personalized experience catered to the needs and goals of clients.
Niche-specific marketing
At Cube Creative, we offer specialized expertise in a number of niches, including plumbing, landscaping, autobody shops, private schools, and HVAC.
With our niche-specialized expertise, we offer a broad range of social media marketing services, including paid ads and social media management.
If you need social media strategies geared towards your niche, in particular, contact Cube Creative Design.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is not an easy thing to do. It can become overwhelming if you are careless. However, there are strategies you can use to simplify the process.
You just need to keep track of your results to identify where you make the biggest impact. That is where you need to focus your efforts while assessing your failure in marketing on other platforms.
It will also help you divide the work among team members so you can generate more posts for the platform where you are most productive.
