Want to use social media, but struggling to gain traction?
Wondering how to start, but not sure where to start?
It might be frustrating.
In reality, only 53% of small businesses say they are actively using social media. The rest? They say they have no bandwidth, capital, space, cash, or power. And that’s what I get. As a small business, you can feel stretched thin as you run the day to day. Apply to that your business ‘ relentless advertising and you’ve got a meltdown making.
How to Use Social Media for Your Small Business?
1.) Building a Credible Reputation.
It is not as complicated as it sounds to build a credible presence on social media for your business.
Would you like to know why?
Because you don’t have to do it with a huge amount of follow-up!
As a local business, you just need to communicate with the RIGHT people instead of interacting with a lot of people.
By creating brand awareness, you can start this process. The best way to do this is to create an online identity that reflects exactly who you are online as well as offline.
Start by using visual marketing to translate your product. You need to model a look and feel that fits your identity from your logo to your homepage, blog and social media graphics.
Find someone who can assist in producing graphics that suit that meaning. Create exciting and professional visuals representing you and your company.
There are so many people who can help you with this process— and you can find someone whatever your budget is. Or, if you have more time than money— you can choose from a myriad of tools (many of which are free) and learn how to do it yourself.
2.) Attracting potential customers.
If you want to do this for your local business, the first step is to ensure that the geotagging is properly set up on your Facebook Business Page.
You need people who are at your company to be able to check-in. It’s free advertising for you every time someone does so, as all of their mates will see their check-in.
The average user of Facebook has 100 friends (and most are local)— so think of every check-in as marketing for 100 new potential customers! Therefore, this type of post is better advertisement than a boosted post as it is a real customer check-in (not a boosted post or ad).
Want even more? Offer special incentives for people to visit your business.
Experienced social media marketers have updated their cover photo from Facebook— plus posting a Facebook post and an Instagram post.
By doing these 3 things, they were able to fill their event with zero budget!
This is a great example of how the right buyers could be drawn by a small business owner.
We focused on interacting with their target market instead of attempting to cast a wide net and attracting a bunch of people who may or may not be interested in their products.
The takeaway— only small changes can have a huge impact on your advertising on social media!
Now that your content has been set up for the whole week— you can pop up 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening on social media to answer feedback, answer questions, and reach out to like-minded business professionals.
This will help you to make such important connections as during the time you are online you will be focused on people!
This will help you to make such important connections as during the time you are online you will be focused on people!
3.) Diversify your Efforts in Advertising and Marketing.
We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” You certainly need to diversify your online marketing activities just like your offline marketing.
Does this mean you are supposed to build a profile on any social media site?
Not at all.
What this means is you should be laser-focused on who your target audience is. Instead of concentrating on the consumer groups you HAVE— consider focusing on the customers you WANT.
Which data will tell you what social networks to spend time on.
When you know more about using social media for your small business, you can almost see the social sites you should be on.
If you don’t have a clear understanding of which social networks to be on, you can start with a presence on:
- Facebook (set the geotargeting up for sure).
- Instagram (small business excellent).
- LinkedIn (like a Rotary Club International!).
- Facebook (giving valuable insight to the discussions on Twitter).
When you decide the social networks you are going to use— be sure to promote the content in your other pieces of online marketing and public relations as well!
Through diversifying your online marketing, you’re going to expand your business ‘ scope beyond your imagination.
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