As a small business, your marketing department is probably small or doesn’t exist at all. Because of this, the world of marketing and social media, in particular, can be very confusing. Not only that, but companies usually have limited time, staff, and money, which makes it hard for them to set up an online presence.
To stay relevant in the digital world of today, however, you need to bring your business into the social space. According to a report by We Are Social and Hootsuite, there are now 2.8 billion active social media users around the world. This means that it has never been more important to use social media to your advantage.
As people move away from traditional media and toward digital and mobile, social media is becoming more and more seen as the best way to promote your brand, raise public awareness, and connect with your target market. But how do you get quick results? Follow these tips to get your business up and running on social media.
Be picky with platforms
To make social media work for you, you need to be consistent, but that doesn’t mean you have to make a profile on every platform. If you add more than you need, your activity will be random and inconsistent, so focus on the one or two platforms that are most important to your audience.
So, which site will help your business the most? Here’s a quick list of the most important places:
Facebook: Facebook has always had the most users and been the most popular social media site. This has gotten worse as time has gone on and more people who use it are older. It lets people talk to their friends, share links, photos, videos, and events, join groups, and do other things. There are both free and paid ways to get people to see your content.
TikTok: The newest app on this list, TikTok took off during the pandemic. Social Films says that in the UK in 2021, there were 3.7 million active users who spent an average of 41 minutes a day on the platform. At the time, more than 1 million people in the UK downloaded the app every month. 26 percent of users were between the ages of 18 and 24.
Twitter: A lot of people think it’s the best platform for engagement, and it’s becoming more and more popular as a social customer service tool. It’s fast-paced and lets you react. Users can post messages with up to 280 characters, share photos and videos, make custom lists, send direct messages, and more. Promoting content can happen on its own, with Twitter cards, or by paying for it.
Instagram: Instagram is a social media site where you can share photos, videos, and stories. Statista data from 2022 shows that about 30% of users are between the ages of 25 and 34. This is the largest group of users. Now you can use Instagram on your computer as well as your phone, which is more convenient than when you could only use it on your phone.
LinkedIn is the biggest professional social media network. LinkedIn is a business-focused network where users add connections, share links, join groups, write recommendations, and search for connections by company, location, industry and skills. There is also advertising that costs money.
YouTube is a site where people can watch, upload, rate, share, subscribe to, and comment on videos. It has more than a billion users. There are 36.5 million users in the UK, and 44% of them are between the ages of 25 and 44. The male to female user split is about even, with 54 per cent males and 46 per cent females use of the platform.
Follow a plan
Social media should be handled like any other business task. There has to be a reason for it, and you have to figure out what your goals are and what you want it to do for your brand. Do you want to increase sales, make more people aware of your brand, or get your customers more involved? Once you’ve decided on a goal, keep it in mind when you’re making a plan.
Take the time to look at the profiles of your competitors, find relevant content, and set up a posting schedule for each platform you use. Instead of posting here and there, you should think about big campaigns that you can run on multiple platforms, like a promotion or a contest. Brands can also use seasonality in their content, so think about what’s coming up on the calendar and plan your posts accordingly.
There are a lot of tools that can help you come up with content and make it easier to post regularly. If you make a business profile on Facebook, you can use the free publishing tools and post insights. For other platforms, you can use free tools like SproutSocial, Hootsuite, and Buffer to schedule content.
Stay social
Building a following requires interaction, so content plans and strategies are important, but you also need to respond to conversations and interact with influencers if you want to stand out. Join groups and follow the most important people in your industry. Share, retweet, and comment on posts that are relevant to your brand. It can be helpful to keep an eye on what they’re talking about on social media and figure out how you can join the conversation. Whether it’s giving your opinion or starting a new conversation, building relationships with influencers can lead to new customers.
Become a valuable contributor
One of the keys to doing well on social media is to stick with it. Once you know who you want to reach and what platforms to use, you need to give your audience valuable content that sticks with them. Sharing your expertise or knowledge, offering solutions, and giving valuable market insight will motivate your customers or potential clients and keep them interested.
No matter how you choose to improve your social presence, the key is to plan ahead. Once you have the basics in place, you can start having fun and building your following.
Review your strategy regularly
For a number of reasons, it’s a good idea to look over your social media plan from time to time. First, the way people use social media is always changing.
A lot of the time, platforms change what they offer or how they work. Like TikTok, Instagram now shows posts from popular users in a user’s feed instead of posts from their favourite accounts. Since then, this has been changed to match the old feed model. It is important to keep up with social media news in order to stay on top of these changes and trends.
Not only that, but it’s also likely that your audience will change. Younger users may flock to new platforms, your audience’s tastes and values will change, or a scandal can turn people off of a certain network.
You should also look at how the social media posts on all of your sites match up with each other. Is the branding the same everywhere? Is the voice always the same? Make sure they describe what your brand is like.
You might want to add things like Instagram Shopping to your service if you think your users would benefit from being able to buy from there. You could also join forces with another business and make content for their customers.
Using your analytics tools can help you see what’s going well. If a product or type of social media post is doing well, do more of that! In the meantime, think again about the ones that aren’t going so well. Maybe there’s a way to change them so they do as well as your other posts.
While you’re there, look into getting rid of fake accounts and followers. You don’t have to change your strategy to do this.
Reviewing your plan of action every six months is a good benchmark, so try to aim for that.
