Social Media when used correctly can have a huge positive impact on a business. While there’s a good chance you’re already using social media day-in-day-out. Knowing how to use it to grow your business is often a different story, and finding time to connect with customers online can seem like a big task.
Here are some tips on utilizing social media as a small business:
Set up a Plan & Goals
Setting up your profiles is the easy part; the work lies in knowing and understanding why you want to use social media for your business. Without a plan, you have no clear goal for what you’re trying to achieve, in most circumstances, your goal should be using social media to drive customers to your business, and developing a brand image/voice.
To ease the process and help you get started, using content planners like a content studio or HootSuite can be very beneficial. You can stay on top of all your business social media posts by having them all in one place, and you can also track which posts are being received well through their analytics.
Knowing your Audience
The best way to do this is to consider who your businesses audience currently is and if that audience is who you want to target and expand on, or if you’re looking to attract a different demographic.
Some ways to expand your audience is to maintain consistency, build connections, connect with your audience, and stay up to date on current trends and popular content that fit with the type of people you want to attract.
Build Connections
Using social media as a small business allows you to connect with potential customers, followers and other business owners. You can slowly build organic relationships, that will hopefully lead to sales or some sort of mutually beneficial partnership. When people engage with your organic content or ads, it’s a great idea to engage back. This helps to build trust and form a loyal following. As fans share and like your content, you rise in the social algorithms and gain new, free, exposure. Connecting with similar companies to yours also allows you to keep track of your competitors, and stay in the know about your industry.
Some ways to build these connections can be done by creating Facebook Groups, connecting with influencers in the space or interacting with your audience.
Staying on Trend
Paying attention to trends in social media can help you understand what people are looking for when they sign into their social channels. After all, according to a survey with Hootsuite, the main reason that people use social media are to stay up-to-date with news and current events, fill up spare time & find funny or entertaining content. We’re not saying you should replicate every trending meme you see, but dabbling every now and then definitely won’t hurt.
Try Different Formats
According to Facebook, Visual Content is currently the most interacted with type of content on their site. Turning your usual written text posts or articles into a video, infographic, or series of pictures could be a great way to engage your followers in something new. There are various software’s you can use to help you in this, our favourite being Canva, as it comes with a bunch of different templates and cool features that make content creation super simple yet professional looking.