Social Media Marketing for Small Business

No matter if you are a small business, startup or an entrepreneur, social media has a great potential to bring your followers and qualified leads.

Nielsen reports that four out of every five organizations in the U.S. are now leveraging social media to help expand their brand, audience and build a relationship with customers.

It’s no secret that social media has now become the indispensable part of our everyday lives and that its stake in the success or failure of a corporation is growing larger day by day. Using social media marketing can allow small businesses and startups looking to expand their reach to more customers.

Nowadays, people are interacting with brands through social media, therefore, creating a perfect social media strategy and presence on the web is the key to capture the interest of your audience. If done correctly, marketing with social media can bring tons of success to your small business.

If you are a small business owner, or just launched your start up and looking to ramp up your own presence and quickly master the art of social media marketing for small business, then creating a solid social media marketing plan is key.

If you want to connect with more potential customers and market your products and services by using the power of social media? Read these important steps to leverage social media for your small business.

Create a Great Strategy

Behind every successful social media campaign is a solid strategy. Social media is all about connecting with a wider audience. To do that, all you need to intimately understand your existing and potential customers.

Start by determining your target audience. Figure out your customer demographics, interests, behavior, profession, etc. Write down all the details and find images that truly represent your target customers.

Next, create a message that you want to convey with your social media marketing efforts. Based on your target audience, what are the main problems or issues you can address to solve? Write key marketing messages you want to communicate to your audience.

Carefully create profiles for your audience to convey your message to them. Now figure out which social media channels they prefer most. Because every social media channel is different. Each one has a different audience, focus, and cadence. Therefore, it is important to understand the differences so you can expand your social media marketing efforts on the right channel.

Incorporate Sharing Button on Your Blog

If you treat every social media network as an individual effort, your success will be limited. Your all social media channels should work together to help you achieve your marketing goals. Your website is your brand’s face. Coordinate your social media marketing efforts to get an audience to your website where they can read your website content, buy your products or services.

Use your company blog to establish your brand voice and share quality, informative articles. Indeed, it is a great opportunity to engage with your audience and leads them through sales funnel. You can optimize your website and blog for social media by simply adding a few things to your web design.

If you want people to follow you on social media, then you need to make sure you display social media buttons prominently in your sidebar, header or footer. These icons link directly to your profiles so your visitors can follow you immediately on social media.

You can add a CTA button at the end of your blog posts asking visitors to follow you on different social media platforms. When people read valuable content, they will surely share it with their followers. And if you don’t have sharing buttons, chances are your visitors will likely click away and you will be missing out on a great opportunity to reach a wider audience.  

Start with Realistic Goals

Okay, now you have defined your target audience and you know the channels to reach them and you have also optimized your website. What’s next? It’s time to get social.

Social media marketing success takes time, energy and determination. Set yourself up for success by starting with small, realistic goals. Start with one or two platforms. Incorporate social media into your daily routine. Turn off all the distractions and set aside time to manage your social media accounts. Post something interesting in different time slots.

Use a timer to track your social media activities. Create an editorial calendar and keep track of original and curated content that you will share from time to time. Your ultimate aim is to solve your readers’ problems by providing them useful information. When you share relevant information, people come to check your blog as a guide.

You can use social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social to organize and monitor your social media performance and activities.

Social Listening is Key

Social media interactions are happening all around in real time. Believe it or not, social listening is a great tactic to monitor what your audience is saying about your brand. Carefully respond to every comment, mentions, and feedback. Respond negative comments in an amicable way to turn haters into leads.

You can use Mention app to monitor the web and social media channels and check out who mentioned your brand name or any target keywords.

To stay active on social media, you need quality content. Therefore, set up a process for organizing and collecting quality content that provides value to your readers. Feedly is an amazing way to collect great content from around the web that is related to your industry. Trust me, it will greatly help you to find out relevant and informative content to share.

Create an Action Plan for Your Daily Social Media Activities

Once you have a steady stream of content to share, you are all set to post and engage on social media. Create a plan for your social media activities and stick to it.  

Join different groups and communities and actively participate in conversations by asking questions and posting something informative. Above all, stay active on social media. Success isn’t about chance, it’s about careful planning, great strategy, and powerful tactics.

Go For Paid Marketing Techniques

If you want to accelerate your social media marketing efforts, it’s worth your time to get the most out of some paid marketing options.

Facebook offers a robust number of advertising and remarketing solutions to help businesses generate more sales, website traffic, brand exposure, and customer engagement.

You can also use Twitter for social advertising to promote content and accounts both. LinkedIn also offers a myriad of opportunities to reach a specific audience. You can use sponsored updates to feature to boost your brand visibility.

No matter if you have a small budget, there are some paid social advertising options that can produce great results (increase your online visibility and success on social media) in a low budget.

Measure Your Results

It is important to analyze your results and find out which tactics are working best and which are not. Tracking performance data can help you measure your growth, engagement, and sharing.

Keeping track of which social media platform is driving the most traffic is important. Google Analytics can help you monitor website traffic and interaction on your website and blog.

In addition, track and measure your performance is important to stay on top of your social media marketing plan. Sprout Social can help you create metric reports that can help you analyze and manage your performance.

Key Takeaways

When using social media for your small business or startup, keep all the above-cited points in mind. Start your social media marketing efforts by defining your audience and choosing the right platform to reach them. Do your homework, integrate your social media buttons and links, share valuable content and keep regular track of your social media performance.