Social media has become an integral part of our day-to-day lives. Businesses of all size and shapes have started making the most of available mediums. Today we will try to anatomize tips on social media for small businesses. There are a plethora of small businesses eyeing social medium to promote their business/services. However, majorly these small businesses are failing or not being able to make optimum use of social media for their business growth. There are many theories and strategies on how to effectively use social media for established brands, but the topic social media for small businesses is seldom addressed. According to Digital state of eMarketing India 2017 Octane Research:
60% small businesses promote their business on social media. 50% focus on
SEO and 35% use multichannel marketing funnel.
70% small businesses consider content strategy as their primary marketing
activity.
52% business owners are using social media as to efficiently address customer
engagement.
More than 20% of business owners said that they are making 50% plus profit
using social media.
The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on an application of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is important to address the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media for small businesses.
Social media for small businesses is a great way for emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional mediums. Social media for small businesses gives brands an edge of control over the content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way dialogue process, it helps businesses to instantly identify what is benefitting them. Social media for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth, which is one of the best tools for emerging businesses.
Social Media for small businesses | 10 Tips to effectively use Social Media
Define your Target Audience
The first and foremost important part that small businesses should focus on is
to define their target audience. This helps small businesses to device their
social media strategy accordingly. The target audience should be defined basis
age group, sex, location, users’ online behaviors, their likes, interests, and
preferences. For niche products, business owners can even target users based on
their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone. Audience targeting
plays a very crucial role in the outcome of the results. For e.g.: a local shop
selling footwear should not target users with interest in entertainment. The
shop definitely won’t get the desired results.
Set achievable goals
Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must understand this basic fact.
Generally, when a new business starts selling on social media, there is
palpable excitement is achieving more than set targeted sales. Businesses need
to set goals which are upwards and forward. To achieve enormous goals, small
businesses start updating social feed with multiple updates in shorter
duration. This leads to user’s disinterest in the product/service. The set
goals should be in sync with brand’s core capabilities and expertise. For e.g.:
if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn’t set a goal to repair
maximum shoes in their area.
Choose the right medium
By now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid campaigns can be
conducted at a relatively low cost as compared to traditional mediums. It is in
this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the bandwagon and
creating profiles on all the available platforms. Creating social profile
doesn’t hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong
platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is
advisable for SME’s to first identify the right platform through which they can
maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to
aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won’t get a plausible response as compared
to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.
Promote your core product/services
Since each and every business is riding in the social media wave, it is
important for a them to promote their core product/services. Nowadays, we see a
lot of businesses promoting their services as well as promoting peripheral
products/services, which revolves around their core product/services. Majority
of the times, this SME’s doesn’t have capabilities to fulfill a requirement,
which can lead to a bad word of mouth for their business on social media
platforms. Let us go back to our example; if a shoe seller is trying to aggressively
promote socks instead of shoes, it is not going to benefit the business in the
long run.
Create quality content
Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the target audience, setting
achievable goals, choosing the right medium and promoting the right
product/services let us now take a look at the type of content a business
should promote on their social pages. A business should always focus on
creating good quality content rather than not-good quantity content. Even if
the business updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant to
their business, advocates about its core products send across a clear message
it is considered as a good quality content. Antagonistically, if a business
posts multiple updates which aren’t even relevant to the business’s products
and services leads to users considering the business as fake/spam. Also, new
businesses should try and refrain from promoting other businesses on their
social platforms initially.
Create a content calendar
Making a small business successful on social platforms is no small task. It
takes a lot of efforts for the businesses to keep up their conversion ratio.
One such effort is to create a content calendar. Small businesses must
anticipate important events and create a content calendar accordingly. Ideally,
a content calendar must be planned a month in advance but an even weekly
content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to avoid any last
minute hassles, strategize much more effectively and it also helps in creating
curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.
Test and re-test
Social media is highly unpredictable. The content a business posts today, might
not work for tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always test their content
before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also applies to the
platform a small business chooses to promote. Small business owners must always
don the consumer’s hat before posting about any product feature, updates,
schemes or offers. A consumer’s perspective is the key when testing the content
that has to be uploaded.
Look for inspiration
Small businesses must always look for inspiration from a competitor who is
successful in the same category. Copy pasting competitors idea or content is
not the answer. Small businesses must look for the kind of content its
competitors are putting up and derive their own strategies subsequently.
Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to create their own
content that is appreciated by one and all. It helps in increasing brand consideration,
brand visibility thereby increasing conversions for the business.
Calculate ROI
Even a small promotional budget is not justifiable if there is no mechanism to
calculate its return on investment. It is more important in case of small
businesses. It is very important for a small business to keep a tab on the
budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI related to it. If a
certain promotion is not doing well or the business is not getting desired
results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to generate
quality conversions.
Analyze and Re-strategize
There can be umpteen instances where a particular campaign/promotion might not
work for a business. That doesn’t mean that the promotion is wrong or the
product/service is not good. Doing an analysis of the campaign is as important
as setting the objective. This helps the business to formulate their upcoming
strategies in more effective ways. At the end of every campaign, brands must
note down the learning’s from that campaign and identify if the content/idea
was appreciated by their fans or not. This helps businesses to skip the
non-performing updates from future communications.
Final Thoughts
Social media for small businesses is definitely beneficial and fruitful. If followed
correctly, small businesses can benefit tremendously from the power of social
media promotions.
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