How to Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Small Business
If you own a small business, you have likely used social media to spread the word out about it.
The thing is, not every entrepreneur does social media marketing right. Some of them would be in every social network known to man, not knowing that they are spreading themselves too thin.
On the other hand, some small business entrepreneurs are not jumping into the social media marketing bandwagon yet. That’s because they do not see the benefit of implementing it.
In this post, we will walk you through the seven steps on how you can use social media effectively to grow your small business:
Set Goals for Your Social Media Strategy
One of the most common mistakes that many business owners make is jumping straight into social media without clear goals.
But the thing is, skipping this step is a waste of time, even a recipe for disaster. To reap the marketing in social media, you need to have a set of clearly defined goals.
Ask yourself what your objectives are.
Do you want to:
- Build and create awareness of your brand?
- Engage with your customers actively?
- Drive website traffic and boost sales?
- Gain insight into your customers and use it for marketing purposes?
Once you know what these objectives are, then you can start planning.
Know Your Target Audience
Once you understand your goals, let’s get straight into how you can achieve those goals. A successful social media strategy is all about reaching out to the right people.
To do this, you can start by defining your target audience. To do this, you can begin by creating detailed personas or come up with a profile of your ideal customers.
Here, you can include customer demographics and their purchase behavior. By defining your target audience, you:
- Know what your customer’s likes and dislikes are.
- Segment your customers based on factors that matter for your business.
- Come up with customized products, services, and ads to meet the needs of your customers.
- Make a deep connection with your target audience.
- Generate leads in the long run.
When you tailor products and services to meet your customers’ needs, you will likely boost customer satisfaction. This can increase sales and customer loyalty.
Focus on Quality Instead of Quantity
In the same way, you should also focus more on quality rather than quantity. Make sure that the content that you publish is unique and high-quality, targeting your ideal customers, as well as the market’s demands.
The content you create should convey a powerful and meaningful message in a rather unique and engaging way. Doing so allows you to grow your following and improve your brand name.
The goal here isn’t to bombard your audience with posts. Making sure that your posts target your ideal audience is critical.
Ensuring that every post resonates with and valuable for your audience allows you to gain more traction. Meanwhile, it lets you gain more followers and expand your business’s market reach.
Connect with Influencers
Usually, influencers are individuals who have gained a massive following online. They can share their personal experiences about a product, making it one of the most significant advantages of working with them.
By connecting with influencers in your niche, you can discuss your collaborations to grow each other’s social media following.
You should also be aware that this is a type of advertising. In one way or another, you’re expected to pay these people with money, or sometimes with your product.
Don’t just stick to obvious social media platforms such as Instagram or Facebook. You might also receive significant success with Youtubers who will promote your products as well.
Reward Your Followers
Your followers crave unique content or want a special touch to it. So, reward them by offering exclusive offers as much as you can.
You can also develop competitions or giveaways to boost your engagement and make sure that the prize is worth the effort.
This subsequently allows you to gain more followers, and the prize winners will be raving about how good your business is!
Create a Consistent Brand Message
From your ad copy to your logo to your graphics, your should be consistent with your branding. This means that you are using a similar color palette and messaging whether you are on social media or your website.
Doing allows you to provide a consistent experience to your audience. This consistency can lead to familiarity and trust.
Moreover, you can use your branding when creating campaigns to promote your business. It does not matter whether it is organic or paid, as long as it is consistent with your branding style.
Keep Track of Your Competitors
Social media is also an excellent way to keep track of your competitors. This provides you with the opportunity to monitor or even draw inspiration from them.
You’ll gain insight into the type of content they’re publishing and how they interact with their followers.
In the same way, social media also allows you to learn about your competitors. There must be a reason why some brands are relatively better than you.
Know what their strategies are. Just ensure that you do not copy them. You need to know what works (and what doesn’t) for you.
Instead, you can draw inspiration from their ideas and then make them your own.
Over to You
Hopefully, you will better understand how social media can be beneficial to your small business. After all, it can be one of the powerful marketing tools that you can use.
That’s because it helps you promote your business while engaging with your audience. As such, you can build awareness around your brand and establish your reputation.
Just keep in mind, though, that not everything trendy will work for you. It is okay to give a tactic a try. If it works, good for you. If it does not, move on to the next tactic and how it will pan out.
The key to developing an effective social media marketing campaign is to know your brand and target audience well.
Kevin is a founder of Voy Media Advertising Agency NY. He helps businesses maximize the benefits of Facebook Advertising – leading to a dramatic improvement in sales while pushing down costs. Voy Media thoroughly studies each client requirement and comes up with tailor-fit solutions to bring about the best results.