Social media sites are a promising avenue for marketing virtually every type of goods and services. But this form of marketing can seem rather overwhelming for startup owners, especially if they don’t know how to capitalize on social media for promoting small businesses.
From choosing the right networking site to carefully planning and implementing each marketing technique, using social media to increase brand awareness and attract more customers can become quite expensive and time-consuming.
To help you in your endeavors, I have highlighted the best practices in this article. This will enable you to leverage social media marketing without putting in too much time and effort.
Here are the top tips for social media marketing for small businesses that will help take your startup to new heights.
1. Determine the Best Platforms for Your Business
A major mistake that many startup owners and novice marketers make is that they try to advertise their business on each and every social media platform that they know.
While Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on each have millions of active users every month, the important thing to note is that you do not need to use all of these sites.
There are about 50 different social media platforms used by people of different backgrounds and different age groups. Not every marketer realizes this, but sometimes you can gain more traction by promoting your business on relatively smaller online platforms, rather than relying on the mainstream social media networks.
Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest, Snapchat and the likes might not boast more than 2 billion monthly active users like Facebook, but they might still be able to benefit you more than the social networking giant.
Consider your niche, target audience, and the types of goods that you are selling when selecting a social media platform for marketing. This will help you identify which networking site has the greatest potential to help your sales skyrocket.
2. Share High-Quality Content
If you don’t believe in the ‘content comes first’ approach, you might as well give up on social media marketing before you even begin it.
Content is king.
As cliché as it may sound, it’s still true. Content is the heart and soul of almost every form of marketing. Whether you are sharing your blogs on social media networks to drive more traffic to your site, or specifically writing posts for social media sites, you need to give due attention to the content that you are sharing.
Needless to say, there are countless businesses, both small and large scale, trying to promote their goods and services on social media. If you want to get a higher success ratio for your call-to-action, you need to feature fun and engaging content that compels the viewers to take immediate action.
If you think that creating quality content is not your cup of tea, don’t be hesitant to hire a reputable copywriting service. It might cost you a few dollars, but consider it a promising investment that’s bound to yield fruitful results.
3. Unlock the Power of Pictures
It’s pretty much all about unique and fascinating pictures on social media.
Remember the age-old saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words?’
It holds the ultimate answer for how to successfully advertise your small business on social media sites.
Images make your posts stand out amidst a sea of similar content. And if you can manage to find or click exclusive images that can catch the users’ attention as they are scrolling through their news feed, rest assured that you can use social media to the best of your advantage.
According to a study, Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than those without. Also, because visual elements boost memory and help retain information for a longer period of time, using impressive pictures in your social media marketing campaigns means that users will have no difficulty in remembering your posts and what they contained. So the next time they go shopping or need a particular item, they are more likely to recall your products.
4. Utilize the Tools for Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a big industry. As hundreds of thousands of businesses are trying to utilize social media platforms in the best manner, others are working on developing tools and software packages to make it all the more effective.
Today, you can download applications or subscribe to various services that make running a social media marketing campaign a piece of cake.
You might be publishing posts on different social media sites, or taking a somewhat aggressive approach by publishing multiple posts on a daily basis. In this case, keeping track of all things can become quite difficult. And this is where social media scheduling software such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and SocialSprout prove to be of immense help.
These apps let you manage different social media profiles from a single dashboard, as well as analyze how they perform across various platforms.
5. Build Relationships
Last but not least, you must remember that social media platforms are in essence, a place for ‘networking.’
Focus on putting out the best content that helps you gain more followers, but don’t forget to also keep an eye on how your target audience is engaging with your posts.
Try to reply to all the comments, messages, and queries that you receive. This is one of the main advantages of this marketing channel – it allows you to talk to the customer directly.
Even if the users are not addressing you, see what they are saying on your pages. For instance, if you notice a fan recommending your product to their friend, use the opportunity to offer them a discount or a special package. This will not only further increase your following, but also help you gain loyal customers by building trust and credibility.
This covers the basics of how to use social media for promoting small businesses. Follow these tips to develop the right strategy, and make the most of your social media marketing campaign.
