The bottom line is – you need to be using social media in your marketing strategy.
Social media platforms give your small business the opportunity to get the most from marketing. What’s more, most of these channels are free to use — at least for their basic functionality — and have considerable reach across your user base.
But how do you tailor your social media management to achieve this? How does your small business grow its social media traffic and achieve real results from campaigns? Let’s take a look.
Get more traffic with the right approach to social media management.
We’ve compiled some practical tips to help you sell your small business on social media.
These are tips you can use right away to increase your traffic and your return on investment!
1. Create profiles on multiple platforms
Social media has expanded. While a social media marketing strategy once meant a Facebook strategy, plus some engagement on Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, it is now far more sophisticated.
Your users are likely to be enjoying plenty of other social platforms and hubs, and you need to adopt a consistent campaign across as many of these as possible.
2. Define your market goals
Just like with any other aspect of marketing, you need to have a target in mind. It is this target that you will use to measure your success and your return on investment.
Whether you are looking to build your audience, foster increased engagement, or experience direct revenue increases, you need to set a goal and a timeline for achieving this goal.
3. Post content daily
Social media is truly an everyday thing, with the average user spending 145 minutes daily on social networks.
Don’t miss out on this potential. Engaged users will be logging in every single day to see what you are posting. If your posting schedule is irregular or infrequent, they may lose interest.
4. Give consumers a reason to follow you
There are plenty of businesses out there, and all of them have social profiles. Why should your audience follow you? What do you offer that is different to your competitors? Think about these questions.
You may decide to offer discounts for followers and subscribers, or you may simply opt to let your content speak for itself by publishing posts that are simply better, funnier or otherwise different from those of your competition.
5. Form relationships with social influencers
Social influencers are hugely beneficial for businesses. Many of these influencers have a huge reach on social media, and this is something you can tap into as you promote your products.
6. Implement automation tools
Running a social media campaign can be hard work, especially if you are juggling several campaigns across a number of platforms. Fortunately, many of the tasks associated with this can be automated, taking much of the pain away from running your campaigns.
Deploy automated tools, such as post scheduling tools and workflow managers, to ease the strain on you and your team.
7. Encourage user-generated content
User-generated content is great for three reasons. Firstly, this is content you don’t have to worry about producing yourself — for example, a user may decide to leave a review of your product on social media or post a picture of themselves utilising it.
Secondly, users are only going to be generating content if they are really engaged with your business, so this shows you are on the right track.
Thirdly, your users will love the buzz that content generated by other engaged users creates.
8. Take advantage of ephemeral content
Ephemeral content includes elements like Instagram stories that are only available for a short time before disappearing. This creates a sense of urgency and immediacy.
You are effectively rewarding users for following your social media profiles closely.
9. Broadcast live video streams
Live video is taking off in a big way on social media. The live video streaming market grew by 99% in 2020 — pushed in part by the lockdown measures brought in as a response to Covid-19.
Also in 2020, 57% of marketers said they were using social live video streams in their strategies.
This is something you need to be using to your advantage.
Put social media at the heart of your marketing strategies going forward
Using social media in your marketing strategies is crucial as you grow your business and your revenue.
For years, marketers dreamed of growing a community that they could use as they promoted their products and their brand.
Now, that dream is a reality.
With so much potential right at your fingertips, it would be a needlessly risky strategy not to prioritise social media marketing.
