With more and more people on social media than ever, if you have a small business, it’s important to get on trend with the latest social media marketing techniques to ensure you can maximise your exposure. Whether you have a small Etsy shop selling your artwork or a larger business – social media can play a key role in advertising and communicating with customers.
As a small business, you may not be able to afford to employ someone to deal with your social media and digital marketing strategy. You are faced with two options:
- Outsource
- Educate yourself
Importance of social media
Recommendations have always been and still are the best way to get new customers. Whether recommending your hairdresser to your friend or a place to go on holiday, nothing beats word of mouth.
Social media gives the opportunity for people to recommend you to others. Customers can tag you in posts or write reviews about their experience.
This opens the door for you to engage with customers, gain trust and ensure they keep returning.
It allows you to get to know your customers more and be able to understand their needs – from this, you can build a social media strategy aimed at establishing yourself as someone who can meet their needs.
Types of social media.
The big three are:
Facebook is a great way to share updates, hold competitions and advertise – but you must remember that you have to pay to get your posts in the feeds of your followers. Organic reach isn’t great for Facebook since they changed their algorithm a few years ago making essential to promote posts to get it seen.
Facebook makes it easy to promote posts – simply pick a post you would like to promote, or something that already has some engagement, then select how much you wish to spend, the duration and the type of audience you would like to reach. Simple!
Instagram is great for showing behind the scenes footage and promoting new products. You are also able to promote Instagram posts in a similar way to Facebook posts. Stories offer an even greater insight to your business, allowing you to get a little more personal and even speak to your customers. It’s recommended to post on Instagram around once a day.
Twitter is more about instant updates in real time. Twitter is often used as a customer service tool – many people hop onto Twitter to complain or report a problem with a company. Twitter is all public – so ensure you deal with these conversations in a professional way.
You can also explore Pinterest, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.
Creating content.
Social media gives you the chance to listen to your customers to see what is important to them or what problems they have. This allows you to plan content or products/services around their needs.
It’s important to remember two things:
- Social media marketing takes time to build up
- Social media marketing takes time and money
Social media doesn’t grow overnight – it takes time and effort to build a following. You have to be in it for the long run and be patient. You can build strategies to grow your following quicker, but you won’t become an overnight success.
Even if you are using free platforms, it will take time away from other tasks you could be doing within your business, as well as the time of your employees if you have any.
