5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Social media is an accessible web-based technology that helps many small businesses to interact with customers in a more personal way. It helps to build better customer relationships at a reasonable cost. So what is social media marketing?

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing (SMM) is the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and Snapchat to connect with your target audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic.

It involves publishing great content on your social media profiles or pages, listening to and engaging your followers, analysing the results of your performance, and running social media advertisements.

According to these stats, 97% of marketers are using social media, and 78% of salespeople outsell their peers by using social media for their business.

And according to these stats, 73.3% of people purchase items or services because of social media.

I have listed below five social media marketing tips to boost your social media marketing efforts.

Do you want results in your social media marketing? Check out these tips below.

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Social Media Marketing Tips

1. Your Strategy

Whether you’re just starting or you have a well-established brand, there is always room for improvement, and you can use social media to grow your following, generate leads and sales.

Building a brand through social media might feel like a daunting task because of the growing number of platforms available.

But it’s easier than ever to use social media to connect with people and grow your brand organically.

It would be best if you have a plan in place that defines what role you want social media to play in your overall marketing strategy.

Besides having a personal account on favourite social networks, you must also consider getting a separate business account on these sites.

What are your goals? Decide whether you want to use social media for:

Increasing brand awareness
Drive website traffic and sales
Generate engagement around your brand
Create a community
Generate more leads
Serve as a customer support channel.

Having solid SMART goals is imperative to your social media strategy. You can’t measure or develop your strategies over time if you don’t have strong goals. Your social media goals should have a deadline and must align with your overall marketing plan and marketing efforts.

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your target audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. Click To Tweet

What social media platforms do you want to focus on? In this our digital world, connecting and engaging with your target audience is crucial in today’s marketing if you want to make a profit. But to do so successfully, you need to know everything there is to know about your target customer such as their demographics and psychographics.

For instance, do you know which social media platforms your customers like to use and hangout?

There are several social media platforms available on the Internet, such as (in no particular order): Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Tumblr, TikTok, Anchor, Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat and lots more.

Knowing which social network your target audience and influencer uses the most is key in determining which platform you will also create your profiles and pages to focus your social media marketing efforts.

Be sure to read the terms and conditions of these social media websites to ensure that you are not violating the same by creating many accounts for personal and business use.

What hashtags are you using? Regardless of what some may say, hashtags are still very much relevant to social media marketing. Not only are they useful in finding relevant content, but they are also strategic for building communities of loyal followers and brand advocates.

The world’s leading brands are experts at using this technique to build an online community. Some notable examples (in no particular order) include:

#ShareACoke by Coca-Cola
#IceBucketChallenge by ALS Association
#LikeAGirl by Always
#WantAnR8 by Audi
#NationalFriedChickenDay by KFC
#RunFree by Nike

2. Provide Value

Providing value with your social media content means you are informing, educating or entertaining your audience.

According to this article, practical-value content is any type that the audience can implement instantly and easily, without spending too much effort.

For example, if you are a hairdresser, posting tips online and answering questions could provide great value.

So it would help if you always challenged yourself and/or your team to ensure every piece of content either informs, educates or entertains and will help you create more powerful content marketing for your audiences.

Make your social media presence a multimedia experience for your audience by sharing a variety of text posts, infographics, GIFs, videos, images and interactive content.

These days, for your content to reach your intended audience, you need to take the algorithms’ preferences of each platform into account when creating social content.

Social media has not just disrupted the way consumers shop; it has changed the way consumers view the world wide web.

These days, conversing with your existing and potential customers through social media channels is a great way to establish your social community as a popular online destination.

Remember that people connect with people. So you need to be personable in your brand message and provide value through your content. To do this, you need to be authentic.

Do you know which social media platforms your customers like to use and hangout? Click To Tweet

Authenticity helps to build trust. Therefore, so many brands rely on video content to share their message on social media. Through video, they can reveal the actual humans behind the brand.

By providing valuable content, you position yourself as an expert in your area of specialisation.

Rather than focusing every social media post on promotional purposes, think about how you can add more value.

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3. Avoid Spam

As the use of social media continues to grow, so will the number of professional spammers looking for a way into your social feeds.

Spamming is the easiest way to turn people off your business. Rather than trying to reach a million people in a day, you need to start by focusing on 5 or 10 people interested in your products or services. Think quality, not quantity!

Regardless of which platform you use, there is a likelihood that some accounts on that platform are fake, i.e. robots that automatically comment, like, and follow other accounts for a follow-back.

Unfortunately, many businesses have been duped and lured into buying followers from sketchy sites. So when you come across accounts that have gained a huge following in a relatively short time, it is most likely they are bots or used bots.

Many platforms are implementing strict policies to crack down on such bots. So if you find your follower count suddenly dwindling, that could be the cause. Or God forbid you to find your account suspended, this could also be the cause.

There’s not much you can do about it. But if you identify such accounts, most platforms have features through which you can report content or accounts that you think are suspicious or factually incorrect.

If you want to maintain your reputation as a trustworthy brand on social media, here are some specific types of practices you need to avoid at all costs.

Bulk messaging: Avoid the use of bulk messaging to cause a certain topic to trend artificially. And do not use bulk messaging to spread malware or malicious links that can harm, mislead or damage your follower’s device.

Fraudulent reviews: Don’t encourage the use of fake accounts to post fake reviews.

Sharing undesired or excessive content: Too much of something can be unhealthy. Don’t bombard your followers with tweets and post about your brands around the clock.

Click baiting and like jacking: Click baiting is the act of posting sensationalist headlines to encourage the user to click through to the content to generate online advertising revenue. Like jacking is the act of tricking users into posting a status update for a certain site without the user’s prior knowledge or intent. When the unsuspecting person clicks the link to visit the page, this action can trigger a script in the background to share the link.

If your brand regularly publishes posts that receive zero or worse, negative engagement, your page could look like a spam account if you don’t take action. In this case, you may need to consider boosting some of your posts from time-to-time since most social platforms have become pay-to-play platforms.

4. Prompt Response

Before social media, customers had to seek customer service through email, phones or even pay a visit to the customer service centres.

Make your social media presence a multimedia experience for your audience by sharing a variety of text posts, infographics, GIFs, videos, images and interactive content. Click To Tweet

According to this article, these days, social media is becoming a platform for customers to lodge their concerns, reviews, and complaints. If you are quick to respond and address problems, it shows potential customers that you value their opinions.

This means that you need to adjust your strategy and turn to social media as well. For example, have you considered creating a separate account on social media dedicated to providing support and customer service to customers?

Beyond providing excellent customer service via social, increasing your social media response time goes hand in hand with customer loyalty. Prompt response on social media will help keep your customers from going to your competitors.

Provide prompt response to questions or complaints raised about your brand, products, and services. Be authentic, sincere, and human.

Keep the conversation public. Drop the corporate tone and converse with the customer on a personal level.

5. Maintain Brand Consistency

A good way for your brand to stay consistent with social media is by using your brand’s specific voice. Once you determine your brand voice, you can use that voice across platforms, creating a personality that your audience will recognize and identify with.

You need to know what your brand stands for and reflect that in every post on social media. Keeping your mission, vision, and values in mind when selecting your voice and the content of your posts can help create the balance and consistency needed to market well on social media.

Please show what you know by sharing what your audience will find relevant to their lives. Once you find a good balance in the amount you post for different content, be consistent when sharing that content.

Ensure that your website address, emails, blog post and social media accounts all branded. Maintaining brand consistency will make you look more professional and help your customers identify you from your competitors.

Have you considered creating a separate account on social media dedicated to providing support and customer service to customers? Click To Tweet

Conclusion

These are a few social media marketing tips that can help your business stand out from the crowd.

Social media marketing is sometimes time-consuming and tedious for many small business owners. That is why I recommend that you outsource it.

Do you have other tips that we have not mentioned above? Tweet us @mauconline to let us know.

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