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Social media use by business is exploding as companies seek the most effective ways to grow their brand and reach new customers. In fact, there are 40 million active small business pages in Facebook and 4 million of those businesses pay for social media advertising on Facebook. (Source: Forbes) If your company is ready to take on new business and increase its online presence, here are six keys to making the most of your social media investment.
Develop a Plan
Your business has a target audience of people who are most likely to have interest in your products or services. Don’t waste your time investing in social media platforms that don’t appeal to your target or sharing content that is not of interest to users of that platform. Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely follow a brand via social networking (95%), followed closely by adults aged 35-44 (92%) (Source: MarketingSherpa) Understand your audience and know which platforms they use. Those businesses looking to reach older adults probably won’t find them using Snapchat, as they are king of the 12-24 year-old demographic. (Source: Hootsuite)
Consistency is Key
If you want to build trust and loyalty from your audience you need to consistently provide quality content. Demonstrate your expertise and share relevant content on a regular basis. This can be time consuming, but it is also important to remember that you don’t need to create content from scratch every time. You can re-purpose or share content across social media sites as long as you keep the demographic and “personality” of each platform in mind.
Use Images and Video
Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. (Source: HubSpot) The power of social media is sharing. Create something that others will want to pass along to their own followers and you can quickly increase your reach.
Balance Your Message
You don’t want your message to come across as too sales-oriented. That is a quick way to turn people off to your message. Using the 80/20 rule of providing mostly relevant and interesting content will open your audience up to hearing more about your company the other 20% of the time.
Measure the Results
Social media has some of the most sophisticated reporting available for small business marketing campaigns. You can get a clear picture of which demographics are engaging with your content, when they are most active, and what type of content is getting results. Take advantage of this in order to understand what is working, what isn’t working, and make adjustments to your approach.
Get Started!
All of the best laid plans aren’t worth the paper their written on if you don’t put them into action. Social media is a cost-effective way for small businesses to reach potential customers and build their brand. The first step is to take the leap and just get started.