Surely it has crossed your mind how to develop your business you must have an active social media presence. You are not wrong! But you have no idea what to do; he social media guide it will help you grow your business step by step.
They exist now 4,2 billions of active users social media—almost twice as many as,what just five years ago. These users pass on average 2 hours and 25 minutes on social media channels every day. These almost 2,5 hours offer an incredible opportunity to:
- Build awareness
- Increase traffic to your website
- Build your audience
- Build relationships with your customers
- Establish your authority
- Increase your sales
And these are just a few.
While you are sure that social media is necessary, you have been stranded and you have no idea how and where to start. Absolutely normal! We were not social media experts yesterday, nor do we have the budget as small businesses to hire someone to deal only with this part!
With this article we will help you develop your business's social media step by step
Small Business Social Media Guide:
1. Start with a plan
It's easy to start using social media for business. We all use social media in our daily lives, so there is a comfort level with the tools. It costs nothing to create a Facebook page for your business, start posting on Instagram or create a Twitter presence.
But before you start, remember: every good business strategy starts with a good plan. Yes, you can use social media free. But the time and effort required are still an investment in your business.
Without a plan, you don't have a clear goal for what you are trying to achieve. This means there is no way to know if you are receiving performance in this 'investment' and you also can't organize your content or ads effectively
Take the time to create a social media marketing plan in advance. A social media strategy, that is, which is essential if you want one successful social media presence.
Here are some tips to get your business social media strategy right.
Set goals for your business and goals for social media
Create goals that follow the framework SMART(Specific, Measurable, Αttainable/ Acceptable, Relevant, Time-bound). That is, it should be specific, measurable, feasible, relevant and timed.
Base your goals on metrics that will have a real impact on your business. For example, you could target how many followers you want to reach by the end of time(always with realistic numbers).
Do competition research
How your competitors use social media; What do they post?; Find a successful business in your industry, follow her and get ideas. Caution, getting ideas does not mean copying. Would you like authentic content tailored to your measurements. A competitive analysis can help you learn what works and what doesn't for other businesses like yours.
Evaluate your efforts
If you already use social media, now is the time to take a step back and evaluate your existing efforts. See what worked best, what your audience prefers and give ground there.
Create a publication calendar
In the chaotic world of social media, organization is key. A social media calendar to organize what to post and when will free your hands and save you valuable time.
What content to post;
Try starting with the rule 80-20. use it 80% of your content to update, educate or entertain your audience. Use the rest 20% to promote your brand or sell the products your. It's a rule that works quite well for both large and small businesses.
2. Decide which platforms are right for you
Don't make assumptions about where your audience spends their time online. Your gut may tell you that if you're targeting Gen Z, you should skip Facebook and focus on Instagram and TikTok. But data shows that almost a quarter of Facebook users are of age 18 to 24 years.
If you are selling to baby boomers(ages above 60), social media may not seem like a No.1 priority. But it should be! Facebook and Pinterest are the top social networks for boomers. Adults over 65 year-olds are Facebook's fastest growing audience segment.
So you understand that you should have found your ideal audience in who are you addressing?. If not, read on:18+1 questions to discover the Ideal Audience of your business. also, see statistics and ask your customers which platforms they use.
Get an idea about the age and demographics of those using social media:
Source: Hootsuite
The fact that you will start from one platform does not prevent you from trying some others in the future. You can use different social media channels to approach different audiences or to achieve different business objectives. The average internet user has 8,4 accounts social media, so there is a lot of scope to move. A basic requirement is to be able to be consistent in your posts on the social networks you use.
3. Know your audience
One reason that using social media for business is so effective is that you can target your audience. You just have to find it first, as we said, what is it. Get started gathering data for your current customers. Subsequently, study them statistics of social media. You will soon begin to understand who is interested in your business and who is interacting with you online.
After define your audience, you can create buyer personas(buyer persona), which will help you understand the best ways to speak to your audience.
Read this too:How to build the ideal audience for your business with Social Media
4. Expand your audience
Once you have a clear picture of your audience, you can review your business's social media marketing plan. It's time to look for ways to reach more people like them. More audiences interested in your business and products means more conversions and sales.
also, if you are local business but you have the ability to sell your products anywhere, social media is the channel that will help you grow your field of action. The great asset of social media is that they don't restrict you geographically. You can sell your products even on the other side of the world.
5. Build relationships
After all, we are talking about social media. The unique advantage of social media marketing for small businesses is that it allows you to talk directly to your customers and followers. You can build strong relationships with people who are not only potential customers, but people who will when they become customers come back to you again and again, because they know you and trust you.
When people interact with your organic content or ads, it's a good idea to respond. This helps to building trust and in building a loyal following. As your content is liked by your followers and shared, you reach a new audience and for free. But in order to recommend you, someone will have to connect with you first.
So how do you build relationships, beyond responding to follower comments on your posts; Try these strategies:
Create a Facebook group
Facebook Groups are a great way to build a community and increase engagement with your business. These groups give a sense of belonging, which leads to an increase in confidence.
For example, the team Greek Digital Academy provides educational material for free regarding business and digital marketing.
Use influencer marketing
You think your business is too small to work with influencers; The micro-influencers and the nano-influencers with barely 1.000 engaged followers can be effective in establishing brand trust. As a bonus, is often within the budget range. The influencer marketing is a great tool to be viewed in new audience and increase your sales. It is enough that the influencer addresses the ideal audience of your business.
The underwear brand Lively collaborated with influencers, including those with small target audiences, to promote their bralettes and skin care products. The company found that this action had 75% higher conversion rate and 50% higher return on ad spend.
Tag followers in your posts and stories
To User Generated Content is the content that users create for you. They use your product and post on social media mentioning your business. The best; It's spontaneous and free!
Share the content of your creators on your social media (and tag them, of course). Doing so helps you build relationships with some of your most loyal followers.
If a follower of yours tags you in an Instagram Story, you will receive a notification in your instant messages. Be sure to repost it—it's an easy win-win.
Use social platforms' built-in interactive tools
From the Twitter polls until the interactive stickers on Instagram Stories(questions, polls, quiz), there are many ways to spark interactions with your followers.These interactive tools increase interaction and the attention of your audience.
6. Pay attention to trends
Read this too:Website vs Social Media: Why your business needs a Website
We're not saying you have to post every meme that goes viral. But it's a good idea to pay attention to social media trends, so that you understand what people are looking for when they enter social media. This helps you create relevant content that resonates with time.
The top five reasons people use social media now are:
- To be updated with new and current events
- To see funny or entertaining content
- To fill free time
- To keep in touch with friends
- To share photos or videos with others
8. Use different content formats
Be sure to change your social media post formats from time to time. Social media fortunately gives you many options to do so. Depending on the channel you can post photos or videos, to make stories and live, to create guides.
First, this helps you learn which formats work best for different types of content and for different social networks.
For example, Facebook's algorithm uses it “content type diversity” to ensure that a person's news feed had a good mix of content types. While Instagram has given rise to reels and at video in general.
When you want to use images and don't have your own material, you can use stock photo sites. It's a great resource for free, high quality photos to use in your social media posts. Such sites are the Unsplash, the pexels, the pixabay etc.. Another option is to create Ιnfographics on platforms like the Canva. Don't use random images you find online, they are usually copyrighted and that's where you might have bigger problems.
Caution! You can use stock photos or infographics as long as they fit your business strategy and style. But if, for example, you have a store with natural products such as handmade, jewelry, clothes, restaurant you should create your own photo library.
9. Focus on quality over quantity
The number of channels you can use is great. Especially for a small business that doesn't have the resources to hire someone to do it for them, being on so many social networks seems like a chore. The news is good! You don't have to be everywhere! It's more important to create quality content on a few key channels rather than having a presence on all social media.
Above all, make sure your posts on social networks they offer value. If all you do is promote and sell, there is very little incentive for people to follow you. Remember, social marketing is about building relationships. No one wants to be sold overt products and services.
Be human. Be honest. Publish great content. This is important and you cannot fake it.
Don't waste time being everywhere. Focus on using one or two social channels really well, at least to start. Once you master these, you can build on what you've learned and expand your efforts.
10. Start advertising
Advertising when done in the right way and with the right targeting brings great results. No matter how much you spend on advertising if it is not aimed at the right audience it will not work.
One solution here is to hire someone experienced advertiser for him to do it. But since something like this is probably out of your budget at the moment, you can start by yourself with simple steps. As we have seen above you must have made it clear who are you addressing?. That's how you'll know target audience of your ad. You also know at which social media platform are located so you can create an ad there.
End, since you are new to social media, run ads that increase the awareness of your business so that potential customers become familiar with you and recognize you. Such are the sponsored posts. At first invest a small amount and see its performance. Experiment with which posts work and for which audience. Gradually invest more in them and when you feel safe create a variety of ads.
11. Use scheduling and automation to free up more time
We talked about creating a social content calendar at the beginning of this post. After you create this calendar, you can create your social posts in advance and use programming tools. If you only use Facebook and Instagram then the Creator Studio or the Business Suite they will untie your hands. If you want to have access to other channels the Hootsuite it is an excellent choice.
Such tools allow you to devote a portion of your time per day or even per week to schedule your posts. It's much more efficient than wasting time every three or so times to make a post.
12. Track and improve your performance
As you implement your business's social media strategy, it's important to keep track of what works and what doesn't. Focus on what works and make improvements on the rest.
The tools statistics(analytics) they give you a great picture of your efforts. All social networks provide analytics.
As you find what works, expand your efforts and your audience. One of great advantages of social media for small business is that you can use the tools in whatever way makes the most sense for your business and your budget at any time. If you see something that doesn't work, you can change it.
We hope with this one social media guide to give you a good idea of what to do, how to get started, how to get organized as well as tools to leverage. Maybe at first it seems like a 'mountain', but the more you work on it, the easier it will be you create content and you will grow your business on social media. THE beginning is half the battle so get paper and pencils, open computers and start growing your business!
Tell us about, what worries you about putting your business on social media;
If you need any help we are here to help. Feel free to contact with us. We love small businesses and love to see them grow! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for even more information.
