If you are trying to figure out how to use social media for small businesses, you are exactly the person this post is talking to and seeks to help. Social media marketing is what small businesses should do if they want to ensure good momentum in their marketing efforts, along with other platforms they use for promoting their business locally. Now, you need to be confident that you are starting right with your social campaign. So, here are the top twelve social media tips for small businesses to help you see if you're doing it right or not.
1. Have a Plan Before Rolling out Your Social Media Campaign
Planning your social media strategy will help you identify your goals. Failing to develop a plan before you launch any marketing strategy can result in budget problems. In the worst-case scenario, you will be forced to abandon your marketing campaign due to the absence of favorable results. A social media campaign plan can help you avoid the following:
Being Reactive Instead of Proactive
Without a plan, you will always find your campaign on the back foot as you only react to opportunities that come your way instead of taking a planned strategy.
Blowing Your Campaign Budget
Planning your campaign budget and keeping everything within the budget will ensure financial stability. Tracking your expenses and avoiding spending money on strategies discovered to be unproductive will make you feel you are doing the right things in the way you allocate your marketing resources.
Getting Poor Results
A well-planned, coordinated, and well-timed social media campaign guarantees favorable returns on your marketing investments.
Struggling With Stress
Planning your marketing campaigns will help you avoid physical, emotional, and mental stress. When you see metrics telling you that goals were not met, that can be very stressful for you and your team. If you come to a point when you see you’ve been draining your budget without reaping profits in return, that can give you a lot of stress, too. But if you have planned your marketing budget and strategies well and get positive results, you feel relaxed and encouraged. Above all, you will feel justified that you spent time and resources researching and planning your social media campaign before actually executing it. Planning is a vital part of your strategy for social media marketing for small businesses. It will help you and your team determine the right audience to target, the right social networks to join for promoting your local small business, and the type of content to share on various marketing platforms you will use. The logical thing to do is plan your content and strategy with your target audience.
2. Identify the Right Demographics to Target on Social Media
Understand your audience well. Doing this can give you valuable insights into the unmet needs of your target market. At the same time, it provides you with knowledge about the environment in which you intend to sell your products and services. Knowing your audience will also help you understand how you can make your products more beneficial to them and the right social media strategy to employ. For instance, contests are a great way to boost audience engagement, and they work specifically for people with kids or those who love pets. By inviting these people to join your contest, you allow them to interact with your brand, have fun engaging with you, and have a chance to win something of value. If you run a pet care business, you have the entertainment advantage because pets are naturally entertaining. So, you can hold a contest on social media where you ask your target audience to post funny pictures or videos featuring their pets. Then you can give discount codes for products or services as prizes. Contests are also great for boosting your campaign with user-generated content that multiplies as more and more of your target audience get involved. Contests are also an effective tool for making your brand memorable to your audience. How do you identify the right demographics to target? Start by getting the data of your existing customers. Here’s a sample template.
Age
What is the age range to target for your small business? In 2021, shoppers aged 45 to 64 accounted for 40.1% of pet store revenue in the US. Shoppers aged 25 to 44 follow at 38.7%.
Time of Engagement
At what time does your target audience use social media, and on what days? You want to know these times to ensure the best levels of visibility for your social media posts and ads. For instance, the Facebook engagement rate is 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. This rate goes higher up to 32% on weekends. Also, the best times to post content on the platform are when people are on their way to work, during lunch, and after work. So, schedule your posts and ads accordingly. Make sure to capture your audience at the time they are available on social media.
Interests
Leverage the things that your audience is interested in. With the content they share with you and others, you can have a good idea about what they like to do and the other businesses they interact with. Also, check the influencers your audience is following and try to develop similar content they consume.
Spending Patterns
You also need to determine the level of spending power of your audience so you can adjust your pricing accordingly.
Challenges They Face
What are your audience’s pain points?
Stage in Life
Not only do you need to know the age or life stage of your audience (retirees, teens, etc.). Also, consider the life events within your target age range (wedding, marriage, searching for a job, financial investments, travel, buying a new home, buying the first car, etc.). For an example of effectively identifying the target audience, check out the car-sharing company Zipcar. Zipcar, the world’s leading car-sharing network, has a mission statement that starts with identifying its target audience: “To urban-dwelling, educated, techno-savvy consumers who worry about the environment…” Note that the company is not targeting everyone who lives in urban locations. They have an audience focus, and their focus is on people who:
- Have some degree of education
- Live in the city
- Want to contribute to the protection of the environment
- Are comfortable using technology
3. Determine the Right Social Media Platform to Market Your Business
Now, how do you know the best social media platform to use for your small business? You have many options for this. You have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. To help you find the best match for your small business and marketing campaign, study the data about each of the available social media marketing platforms.
- Demographics: 25 – 34 years old, 2.7 billion users
- Purpose: Building relationships
- Downside: Limited reach
- Best for: Building brand loyalty
One important benefit of Facebook marketing is that the platform allows businesses to nurture and grow their followers and fans. While driving conversions and engagement are key factors on Facebook, it is also important to engage regularly with your audience on the platform. Concerning products to sell on Facebook, the best ones are those that are current, light, and fun. On Facebook, you find the recent trends in leisure, makeup, fashion, and even food. Facebook customers usually buy things on impulse, so make sure that your products look enticing in photos. However, not everything can be sold on Facebook. Adult products and electronics are examples of prohibited items to sell on Facebook. Check out the company’s commerce policies for details.
- Demographics: 30 – 49 years old, 353 million users, 68% male
- Purpose: Conversation, news, and articles
- Downside: 280 characters or less
- Best for: Public relations
Another excellent strategy for using social media to grow your business is Twitter marketing, and the way it works is by interacting, engaging, and retweeting with your followers on the platform. When using this platform, you must focus on doing the activities of replying, tweeting, and retweeting. Perform these activities together with Twitter ads, and Twitter takes. You can also grow your Twitter following by joining Twitter chats. One advantage of Twitter for small businesses is that it allows users to share information fast and initiate conversations with the target audience. Engage your audience with tweets that are tweetable and valuable enough to be shared. Some types of tweets proven to grow businesses on the platform include:
- Viral giveaway tweet: Use short, simple, and effective viral tweets. Check this viral tweet by Domino’s Pizza. Participants only need to retweet the post to get a chance to win the prize of s free one-year supply of pizza from Domino’s Pizza.
- Product teaser tweet: Build excitement and brand awareness by tickling your audience with product teaser tweets.
- Limited-time promotion tweet: Use the fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) strategy by posting a limited-time promotional tweet.
- Demographics: 30 – 49 years old, 442 million users. 78% female
- Purpose: “scrapbooking”
- Downside: narrow demographic, images and videos only
- Best for: Food, clothing, and art businesses; lead generation
Products you can sell on Pinterest include:
- Clothes
- Shoes
- Bags
- Jewelry
- Outdoor items, such as those for fishing, camping, etc.
- Fitness products
- Lifestyle products
As long as you have a data source of your product and its attributes, you can sell them on Pinterest. Upon approval of your data source, you can add products to your website, and once a product is added, Pinterest automatically creates a Pin for it. You use Pins to create your Pinterest shopping ads. Check out these examples of successful marketing strategies on Pinterest.
YouTube
- Demographics: all ages, 2.3 billion users
- Purpose: Educational, lifestyle, “how to,” etc.
- Downside: Lead generation, brand awareness
- Best for: Resource intensive
YouTube is now supersaturated with trash content creators, so you should share high-quality content on the platform instead. This content should be niche-focused and something that gives value to your target audience. Good YouTube content creators promote goodwill, and as a promoter of goodwill, you come with a friendly, helpful, and cooperative attitude. Once people know that you create value for them, they will instinctively subscribe to your YouTube channel. Then you can sell items like merchandise, EBooks, etc. Advertisers will then come rushing in for your promotion.
- Demographics: 46 – 55years old, 740 million users
- Purpose: networking, news, and articles
- Downside: Limited interactions
- Best for: brand awareness, business development
LinkedIn is the largest professional networking site in the world, and you can use it to build relationships within your industry. The marketing part of LinkedIn is huge, but that is just one part of this platform. The platform is also about sharing knowledge and building connections, and you cannot do the marketing aspect of the platform while ignoring the social part of it. In particular, the social part is especially important when you use the platform to expand your organic reach. If you connect with professionals and offer good value to them, then they will likely share your content with their own audience, further extending your organic reach.
- Demographics: 25 – 34 years old, 1.2 billion users
- Purpose: conversation, building relationships
- Downside: Images and videos only
- Best for: Beauty, food, entertainment, and retail business; lead generation
One of the best social media for business tips you can take advantage of is using Instagram. Instagram offers several marketing features, including:
- Stories: This feature allows you to post questions, account tagging, hashtags, GIFs, and stickers. Note that the photos and videos users post on Instagram disappear after 24 hours.
- Reels: Instagram also allows its users to make short video clips with overlay effects and audio.
- Posts: This is the most basic of all Instagram marketing features. Post pictures and mention your business in the caption.
- IGTV videos: This feature is not as big as YouTube, but this video platform of Instagram has gained popularity over the years.
These are some combinations of marketing features you can use on Instagram.
TikTok
- Demographics: 18 - 24 years old, 689 million users
- Purpose: conversation, building relationships
- Downside: Building community and brand loyalty
- Best for: videos only, very specific demographic
Here’s the secret to TikTok marketing:
- Use interesting and valuable content.
- Be genuine.
- Interact with other users on the app.
- Use popular hashtags related to your content.
One very important thing to remember about TikTok marketing is that you should always be authentic. You should create videos that are true to yourself and never copy others’ content. Be authentic, and your audience will respond positively to you. These are some of the best strategies of how to grow your business on social media.
4. Use Social Listening
Social media listening allows you to see what your target audience is saying about you and your business. It also allows you to see what people are saying about your competition. Social media listening is not the same as social media monitoring. Monitoring is concerned with numeric values. On the other hand, listening is concerned with the meaning behind the conversation or the topic being presented. Then you gather insights into how you can improve your campaign. Without listening, you cannot:
- Know what is being said about you and your brand.
- Know issues and misunderstandings. These things must be dealt with quickly.
- Know what your competition is doing or not doing and how you can use it in your favor.
5. Build Meaningful Relationships on Social Media
Build meaningful relationships with your followers and potential customers on social media. Building meaningful relationships online means you will have to use social media platforms to do the following:
Establish Your Brand Voice
It is crucial that you build a voice for your brand, and the best way to do this is to present yourself as an expert in your field. You can position yourself as an expert in your field by:
- Write a book to show your knowledge.
- Teaching your audience online.
- Guest posting.
- Pitching your personal and professional stories.
Come up with a plan for positioning yourself as an expert in your niche—for instance, deep dive into a theme or topic. Then start by posting a blog once a day and using viral hashtags in your niche. Make sure that you engage with those who “like” your posts and everyone who follows you.
Engage With Your Target Audience
By engaging with your audience, you can show them that you are not a machine that thoughtlessly schedules posts. Show that there is something real behind every blog you post and that you want people to connect and benefit from your brand.
Post relevant and timely content
If your audience finds value in your content, they will continue to engage with your brand.
6. Pay Attention to Social Media Trends
Monitor social media marketing trends and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly. For instance, augmented reality will be the consumers’ chosen way of interacting with brands. Other social media marketing trends that are taking shape in 2022 include:
- B2B businesses are increasing their investments in Twitter and Instagram.
- Social media advertising is becoming more and more sophisticated.
- TikTok will become huge.
- Smaller social networks are becoming popular for ads.
- Video content continues to rule social marketing.
- Paid advertising is becoming a necessity for businesses big and small.
Stories are always in trend, so consider infusing storytelling into your marketing. Storytelling catches attention, persuades, and motivates people. Also, it cultivates trust and fosters intimacy. All of these are recipes for building meaningful relationships.
7. Try Selling Products Directly on Social Media
This is part of what is called “social commerce.” Social commerce is the process of buying and selling products directly on social platforms. And it is one of the best strategies on how to grow your business on social media. Why is social commerce an effective marketing strategy? Although it impacts overall sales volume, it is not the only benefit that social commerce can bring your business. Social commerce can give your business the following benefits:
Customer insights
Social commerce tools on social media platforms can help simplify your efforts to evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns. Social media channels can provide metrics of reach, impression, engagement, etc.
High SEO ranking
You can encourage users to comment, like, or recommend your business by providing relevant content based on the user’s interests. To improve SEO ranking, simply ask your audience to link to your website when they share your content.
Consistent audience growth
Suppose you have relevant content and useful products to offer. In that case, the people you engage with on social media will be happy to recommend you to people they know will also benefit from your business.
8. Come up With a Mix of Social Media Marketing Formats
Make sure to switch up the formats of your social media posts. Examples of social post formats include images, texts, Infographics, etc. If your content is textual, try switching to images, and if you frequently use images for your content, you can use videos instead from time to time. You should also check the best formats that work for a particular platform. For instance, entertaining, motivational, and actionable content works best for the Instagram platform. Behind-the-scene videos and tutorials are also some of the best-performing content on the platform. If you want to use Pinterest as your marketing platform, use scenic photos or images. People like to look at attractive images. How-To and DIY content also generate the best results on the platform.
9. Focus More on Quality Over Quantity
Marketers have a lot of platforms they can use for social media marketing. However, you do not need to use them all. Focus your efforts on the channels where you can find your audience and create quality content for them. Create great content that offers value or benefits to your target audience, and do not just pitch and sell your products or services. If you frequently pitch and sell on your content, your audience or readers will easily get tired of you. Remember that your most important goal is to build meaningful relationships. So, post amazing content that people will love to consume. Also, be honest because people will recognize it if you are not genuine in your approach. Authentic content can help you boost your branding and online presence.
10. Use the Right Social Media Tools
Take advantage of available tools that can help you automate many of your social media marketing tasks. If you know how to use these tools, you can do marketing on your own and may not need to form a team to take care of your social media marketing. For example, you can use social media engagement tools to help you communicate effectively and consistently with your audience. You must have the ability to keep the conversation going to continuously offer helpful information. Also, having your analytics data in one place can help you get a clear picture of how your social media marketing campaign is performing. Marketing analytics tools are solutions that help marketers track and predict campaign performance. Try Google Analytics to see how such tools can be helpful and the impact they have on your conversions.
11. Establish a Realistic Social Media Budget
No small business should simply pay lip service to their social media accounts. Instead, businesses should allocate a budget for paid advertising on social media. However, you should not spend more than the profit that you can earn from your social media marketing. For any type of marketing, it is always reasonable to calculate expense versus ROI. Always bear this in mind when you think about how to use social media to market your business without going overboard on your budget.
12. Set up Your Social Media Accounts Properly
It is crucial for your social marketing to make sure that your social media accounts are set up correctly. You want to make sure that your visuals are consistent in terms of graphics, fonts, colors, etc. Also, take advantage of your entire social media estate. Complete your bios and profiles with vital information that you need to include. You can also provide opportunities for linking to relevant places. Would you like your social audience to click through to your website’s landing pages on your social accounts? This is possible. Simply add the links of those pages on your social account, but do this sparingly. Facebook is one example of a social site that penalizes links to outside pages. This is most especially true if the link is added to every post you share on the platform.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, my twelve essential tips to help you get started with social media for your small business. I know this list can be a bit daunting, but if you don’t feel confident about your social media campaigns, reach out to me after reading it. I am here to help your small business grow through social media marketing!
