Social media marketing is now an integrated part of our day-to-day lives. Businesses of most size and shapes have started making the absolute most of available mediums. Today we will try to anatomize tips about social media for small businesses. You can find a plethora of small businesses eyeing social medium to market their business/services. However, majorly these small businesses are failing or not to be able to make optimum use of social media for their business growth. There are numerous theories and strategies on how best to effectively use social media for established brands, nevertheless the topic social media for small businesses is seldom addressed. In accordance with Digital state of eMarketing India 2017 Octane Research:
60% small businesses promote their business on social media. 50% concentrate on SEO and 35% use multichannel marketing funnel.
70% small businesses consider content strategy as their primary marketing activity.
52% business owners are employing social media as to efficiently address customer engagement.
More than 20% of business owners said that they’re making 50% plus profit using social media.
The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on a credit card applicatoin of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is very important to handle the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media marketing for small businesses.
Social media marketing for small businesses is a great means for emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional mediums. Social media marketing for small businesses gives brands a benefit of control over this content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way dialogue process, it will help businesses to instantly identify what’s benefitting them. Social media marketing for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth, which is one of the greatest tools for emerging businesses.
Social Media for small businesses | 10 Tips to effectively use Social Media
Define your Target Audience
The first and foremost important part that small businesses should concentrate on is to define their target audience. This helps small businesses to device their social media strategy accordingly. The market must certanly be defined basis generation, sex, location, users’ online behaviors, their likes, interests, and preferences. For niche products, business owners can even target users based on their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone. Audience targeting plays a really crucial role in the outcome of the results. For e.g.: an area shop selling footwear should not target users with curiosity about entertainment. The shop definitely won’t get the required results.
Set achievable goals
Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must understand this basic fact. Generally, when a new business starts selling on social media, there’s palpable excitement is achieving significantly more than set targeted sales. Businesses need to create goals which are upwards and forward. To accomplish enormous goals, small businesses start updating social feed with multiple updates in shorter duration. This leads to user’s disinterest in the product/service. The set goals should maintain sync with brand’s core capabilities and expertise. For e.g.: if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn’t set a target to correct maximum shoes inside their area.
Choose the proper medium
Right now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid campaigns could be conducted at a somewhat inexpensive as compared to traditional mediums. It’s in this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the bandwagon and creating profiles on all of the available platforms. Creating social profile doesn’t hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is advisable for SME’s to first identify the proper platform whereby they could maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won’t get yourself a plausible response as compared to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.
Promote your core product/services
Since each and every business is riding in the social media wave, it is essential for a them to market their core product/services. Nowadays, we see plenty of businesses promoting their services as well as promoting peripheral products/services, which revolves around their core product/services. Most of the occasions, this SME’s doesn’t have capabilities to fulfill a requirement, which could lead to a bad word of mouth for their business on social media platforms. Let’s get back to our example; if a shoe seller is trying to aggressively promote socks in place of shoes, it is not planning to benefit the company in the long run.
Create quality content
Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the market, setting achievable goals, selecting the most appropriate cheapest panel medium and promoting the proper product/services let’s now have a go through the form of content a business should promote on their social pages. A small business should always concentrate on creating high quality content rather than not-good quantity content. Even when the company updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant to their business, advocates about its core products send across an obvious message it is considered as a high quality content. Antagonistically, if a business posts multiple updates which aren’t even relevant to the business’s products and services leads to users considering the company as fake/spam. Also, new businesses should try and avoid promoting other businesses on their social platforms initially.
Create a content calendar
Making a small company successful on social platforms isn’t any small task. It requires plenty of efforts for the businesses to keep up their conversion ratio. One particular effort is to create a content calendar. Small businesses must anticipate important events and create a content calendar accordingly. Ideally, a content calendar must certanly be planned a month beforehand but an even weekly content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to prevent any last second hassles, strategize a lot more effectively and additionally it helps in creating curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.
Test and re-test
Social media marketing is highly unpredictable. This content a business posts today, mightn’t benefit tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always test their content before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also applies to the platform a small company chooses to promote. Business owners must always don the consumer’s hat before posting about any product feature, updates, schemes or offers. A consumer’s perspective is the main element when testing this content that’s to be uploaded.
Search for inspiration
Small businesses must always look for inspiration from the competitor who is successful in exactly the same category. Copy pasting competitors idea or content isn’t the answer. Small businesses must look for the sort of content its competitors are setting up and derive their very own strategies subsequently. Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to create their very own content that’s appreciated by one and all. It can help in increasing brand consideration, brand visibility thereby increasing conversions for the business.
Calculate ROI
Even a small promotional budget isn’t justifiable if there is no mechanism to calculate its return on investment. It’s more important in case of small businesses. It is very important for a small company to help keep a tab on the budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI linked to it. If your certain promotion isn’t successful or the company isn’t getting desired results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to generate quality conversions.