If you’re a small business owner, you are likely to search for ways to use social media more easily and effectively! This isn’t surprising because social media is a great way to find your prospects online. In fact, almost 71% of small businesses worldwide use social media to promote their products and services to more than half of the global population.
Promoting your brand to a sea of people on such a grand scale is great, but you should know how to approach them to get the most out of your investment. We’ve listed here the seven best and easiest ways of using social media to promote your small business effectively.
1. Create a plan
Millions of users log in to social media daily, so the idea of jumping in and starting to post immediately may seem alluring, but it is not ideal. The first step you must take is to create a social media marketing strategy and then execute it. Although you can get the help of a professional social media management tool to get more organized, you still need to put in the time and effort to ascertain the business goals you want to achieve.
While planning your social media marketing strategy, keep in mind the following points.
- Go the SMART way – Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.
- Study your competitors – As a business, you’re in a constant race against time and your competitors, so it is imperative to know what’s working and what’s not working for small businesses like yours by monitoring your competitors.
- Audit your existing plan – If you have already been using social media to market your brand, it is time to audit your existing effort and determine its effectiveness.
- Be inspired – Inspiration can come from other industries as well, so keep an eye out for success stories from different businesses.
- Mark your social media calendar – A social media calendar can save your time and make it easy to share the right content on different platforms with minimal effort.
2. Pick the right platforms
Choosing the right platforms to post on is an important part of your social media strategy. Never make assumptions when deciding the platforms you want to be on based on your instincts. Instead, do research on the various platforms to determine which ones suit your business best.
For instance, if you’re a small cafe owner, you may assume that Pinterest is not a good platform for your business, but that may not be the case. Pinterest can help you attract more followers because it allows you to share irresistible pictures of your menu, drinks, and dining area.
Here’s a list of the most popular platforms to give you an idea about the type of content you can share on them.
Facebook – This is a great platform for you to share videos, infographics, behind-the-scenes, and even your industry milestones. Being the most popular social media site, Facebook is a must to include in your social media strategy.
Instagram – With Instagram, your business has the ability to get more creative while showcasing your products and services. Businesses that deal directly with their customers tend to have the best response on Instagram.
YouTube – This is where you can share long-format videos to create a loyal following for your brand.
Snapchat – If your target audience is primarily the youth, then this platform is wonderful to share short videos and fun pictures.
Twitter – This is one of the best platforms to create brand awareness and create conversations.
3. Acknowledge your customers
A recent study shows that 71% of social media users are more likely to purchase a product or service based on social media referrals. To get your customers to share your business on their social media, you must provide them with a good experience. As a brand, you must ensure to proactively acknowledge and respond to any social media comments, mentions, or concerns.
It can seem daunting and confusing to keep a track of all the comments and questions you get on different social media accounts manually. The best way to take care of this is to use a social media marketing tool that can compile all your comments in one place, making it easier for you to respond to all of them.
4. Build and nurture relationships with your audience
Social media allows business owners to directly communicate with their audiences. This is a great way of building a trusting relationship with them over time so you can sell to them upfront in the future. Show your love and gratitude towards your customers by mentioning them in your stories or posts.
By nurturing relationships with your customers, you can build a loyal community of followers that can benefit your small business in the long run. It can help you retain your customers and keep your business safe from other competitive brands.
5. Keep an eye on the current trends
There’s no need to follow all the trends blindly, however, identify the ones that can blend well with your products and services. This can help your brand look more appealing and welcoming to existing and new customers. Besides, people use social media for the following top reasons.
- 36.5% of people want to stay updated with news and current affairs.
- 35% look for entertaining content.
- 34.4% consider it a good way of spending their spare time.
- 33% of people like to use social media to stay in touch with family and friends.
- 27.9% like to share their photos and videos with others.
- 27.5% research for new products to purchase.
- 27.8% like general networking with others.
6. Pick quality over quantity
As a brand, you want to make sure that your social media content brings value to your followers. Steer away from sharing promotional posts all the time as being overly spammy can be detrimental to your brand. It is better to have a strong presence on a few social media channels than on all of them where no one notices you.
Keep your approach clear and straightforward, and post great content to maximize your audience engagement. If you’re not sure what to post regularly, automate your social media marketing with an intuitive tool like Practina. It can adapt quickly, suggest the best post ideas and automatically share them to your multiple social media accounts. This way, you can save time to focus on your business and see your social media thrive.
7. Use the right tool
You can make your social media more effective by using the right marketing tool. Not only can it simplify your effort but also generate much better visible results. The right tool can be your personal marketing team that can take care of your social media automatically.
If you want to spend more time growing your brand and managing other aspects of your business, then getting a marketing tool is the right thing to do the following for your business:
- Automatically create and publish personalized branded content to your multiple social media accounts regularly.
- Identify and post at the best time for your social media.
- Suggest and use more responsive hashtags for your posts.
- Suggest better content for your social media accounts.
- Organize and manage your content calendar to keep your social media running.
- Track your social media performance and refine it wherever needed.
To conclude
It doesn’t matter if your business is big or small, the suggested ways of using social media can help you accomplish more with little effort. Social media is the only platform that lets you reach a larger audience without breaking the bank. Start your successful social media journey with a clear vision and an objective to accomplish.
Created with small businesses in mind, the social media marketing and management tool Practina is ideal for those looking to simplify their marketing processes. Besides the previously mentioned features, Practina can also help you run Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads in less than five minutes and connect you with the right audience almost instantly. This tool can give detailed metrics of your social media performance and suggest ways to improve. This is also the quickest way to know more about your audience so that you can tweak your future content according to their liking for increased engagement.
To get started today, sign up for a free trial of the Practina Professional plan, which comes with a dedicated marketing specialist with whom you can connect for a personal consultation.
