Essential Guide to Social Media for Small Businesses.
Social Media is the new word of mouth for businesses with worldwide users expected to grow to over 3 billion monthly users by 2021. Done right, social media can help your business to build awareness and drive sales, reach a broader audience, gain valuable customer insights and show the human side to your brand.
In this 3 part series, we’ll explore why your small business shoould be on social media, look at what the main platforms are, and how to get started on them.
Let’s start with the 'why?'.
8 reasons why your small business should be on social media
Build your brand identity by showing more of your personality.
Interactivity - with social media you can build community in a way that TV, radio or newspapers can’t. Your readers can comment, share, react and start a conversation.
Audience interaction - your audience can add reviews and provide feedback or talk to you in real-time.
Reputation management - proactive engagement on social can enhance your business's reputation for customer service.
Potential for viral marketing exposure - the right message can spread very quickly.
Improved search engine rankings - engaging posts can help drive more traffic to your website.
Reduce overall marketing costs - social media channels can be a very cost effective way to get the word out.
Targeted advertising through social media - target people based on location, demographics, interests and age and easily measure the performance of your campaign.
What Platforms and Why?
Facebook is the biggest and is a non selling environment – it’s all about personality, casual endorsement, being a proactive and responsive company. Promote your team, products and events. Engage with your followers and reach a new audience with Facebook Ads.
Twitter is strongest with millennials (18-29 yrs). It’s a great place to follow industry influencers and get a feel for what’s trending. Share clever comments, links for interesting articles or pages from your own website.
LinkedIn is the virtual networking event with a slightly older audience(61% are 30-64 yrs). It's great for B2B businesses who want establish their company as a thought leader by sharing longer form content with commentary.
Photos and videos are shared in Instagram, and they provide your viewers with a more personal connection with your brand. 90% of users are under 35 yrs. Post images that showcase your products and align with your brand positioning. Using hashtags will index your posts and make them more searchable or discoverable.
Video sharing sites
Video is a very powerful tool for marketing. These sites are great for storytelling, product demos and sharing useful information in a creative way.
YouTube - The most popular video hosting site, YouTube is free to use and is also the second largest search engine behind Google.
Vimeo - Not as big as YouTube but has more specialised appeal so it can be a great place to reach your niche audience with great quality videos.
Vine - For short creative videos up to 6 seconds long. Vine is a popular place for comedy, music performance and journalists.
Pinterest is a place to discover, collect and curate other people’s images. Every pin has a link to the source of the image so you can use your irresistible images to drive traffic back to your website.
There's even more social channels such as Snapchat and Google+ which means there really is a social channel suitable for all types of small businesses.
Getting Started on Social Media
Choose the platforms you are most comfortable with and dedicate some time each week to explore the channels, create posts and build your own community. Unlike your website, social media is fluid and more relaxed. Take an honest open approach and be yourself. You’ll find it easier as you go to create posts and add comments.
To help you on your way, we’ve listed a few tips for your social media activity:
Focus on quality – One of the best ways to build your following is to give your audience what they are interested in.
Avoid the “hard sell” – Seek to inform and educate your audience first, rather than bombarding them with sales pitches. A “softer” sell approach works best on social media.
Know your audience – By using and monitoring the same social media channels as your audience, you can gain insights into what makes them tick.
Be responsive – If you get a message or comment, make sure you respond in a timely manner to thank them or provide solutions.
Measure your metrics – Within each platform you can measure engagement and followers. Google Analytics can provide data on visitors to your website and conversions.
Monitor your competitors – Seeing what your competitors are doing in regards to social media marketing can be helpful in designing your own campaign.
The channels you choose will depend on your business but because they have different audiences and purposes, it’s worth having more than one to deliver on multiple objectives.
Good Luck and Get Social.