Whether you have a small business or a big company, getting social media wrong can hurt your reputation.
If you are a small business, you cannot afford to NOT be on social media any longer.
Small businesses should have a clear and concise plan when dealing with social media. We have got some social media tips for you to follow to ensure that you are not damaging your brand by how you act.
Start with a plan
Like with anything, you need to have a plan in place to ensure that you can follow guidelines. Set some goals and objectives to reach so that you can accomplish targets along the way. This should be a shot-term plan and a long-term plan. Gaining a certain number of followers or posting a certain amount of relevant posts can be great starting goals.
Create a social media calendar so that you can clearly see when you should be posting and what you should be posting.
Quality Posts
When quantity of posts increases, the quality of posts usually decreases. Make sure what you are posting is relevant and creative.
People can usually engage with posts more if they have not seen the same thing before or if an image is visually pleasing.
Know your audience
You should understand who your target audience is by now. If you don’t, we suggest you research that first before you do anything else! You will have to understand exactly what they are doing. If they work a 9 to 5 job, then their free times will be on the weekends and Friday nights. If your intended audience is a student, then they will have less money to spend on items. Maybe you should consider advertising a product that doesn’t cost as much. Use common sense.
Schedule Content
By scheduling posts, you can free up so much more time to work on other aspects of your business. Facebook Blueprint has courses on how to schedule posts and Sked Social is another software company that has tools to help you with this.
Which platforms to use?
You can create as many social media accounts as possible but if they do not align with what your business does, then you will be wasting your time.
A clothing brand would be great for Instagram as they can post images about new clothing products. Twitter wouldn’t really be appropriate as it is a platform usually used for text-based posts.
Respond!
A massive social media tip is make sure your respond to your followers. Respond to comments, shares, tags and private messages. Getting an interaction from your page will most probably make their day.
You can easily strengthen the relationship just be responding back to people. There is nothing worse than trying to get information from a business and they have left you unseen!
Frequent posting
People do not want to be bombarded with posts all of the time. Put yourself in their shoes. Do you really want someone to be telling you the same thing over and over again all of the time?
Be patient and grow your social media account through appropriate planning. This will give you some understanding of when to post and what to post.
Images and Videos
Having visual imagery that stands out throughout your social media campaign will get many more interactions. If you just wrote a post without any other content attached, you will most likely not receive as many likes, comments and shares. Images and videos work so well on social media if they are used correctly.
Promote products
Use social media to promote your products because it is a cheap and mostly free way to get your products or services selling. You can put up images of it and it will show clearly what you are trying to sell.
Just remember not to post too much as social media is not a selling platform it is a platform to interact with potential customers.
Find inspiration from successful brands
Especially as a small business, finding inspiration can help in such a big way. Sometimes you may be stuck on an idea or post and can’t seem to express your content in the way that you want.
There is no shame on having a look at what your competitors are doing and seeing if you can do something better.
Social media should is not just used for selling products. It is a tool to help your business grow and interact with your followers. It should be integrated with the rest of your marketing activities so that your campaign can be a successful one.
