In almost every business you find today, social media has become essential to their operations. It’s no longer about having a presence on these platforms; social media is redefining how businesses should interact with their target audience.
In fact, in this new digital dispensation, only businesses leveraging social media have the advantage of building their brand awareness, reaching a broad audience, and connecting with potential customers.
And it doesn’t end there. The business world is evolving rapidly, and only those businesses with the foresight to adapt to emerging models will thrive.
Social media is undeniably one of these emerging models, and as a small business owner, it’s crucial to have a social media strategy in place to stay competitive and grow your business.
Why Should Your Business Have a Social Media Strategy?
As a small business owner, you’re most often confined to the limited budgets and resources you have to operate your business. Now, this is never enough to compete with the big dogs in your industry—you know, the companies with the big checks and large marketing spending.
So, how can you level the playing field? That’s where social media comes in.
Now, the mistake some small business owners make is to think of social media as an ordinary platform to show their presence and appeal to millennials.
However, these “business owners” don’t know they are setting themselves up for failure because the business world is very brutal, and only those who know their strengths and weaknesses will prevail.
Social media is not just a “platform”; it’s a tool and perhaps the most incredible tool for every small business owner to compete with larger competitors and convert more leads.
But achieving this feat is not that simple; you can’t just open a Facebook page today and have the whole of San Francisco demand your product tomorrow. You need a social media strategy.
While you may be eager to learn these strategies and move on quickly to sell all your products, you must understand that implementing a social media strategy requires time and patience.
To minimize the trial-and-error phase and get things rolling quickly, you can opt to work with a reputable social media agency to help you set up your social media and apply all the needed strategies. However, if you intend to handle it yourself, then you have to be patient and follow the steps below:
Define Your Audience
First, you have to know who your target audience is. When I say target audience, I mean your potential customers.
Understanding their demographics, interests, and pain points is the best way to know what kind of content to create that they will like. This will help when planning your marketing campaign.
You also have to know what social media platform they’re on. Don’t make the mistake of thinking every social media platform has the same demographic. No! They don’t.
If you deal in cosmetics, you have little to no business on X (formerly Twitter); your primary focus should be on platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, or TikTok.
Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be on X; you can still use the platform to share updates, release memos, or other official business details.
However, your marketing efforts should be on visual-centric platforms like Instagram that can help you reach your ideal audience effectively.
Start Creating Appealing Content
After identifying your audience, your next focus should be creating high-quality, engaging content for them.
You have to understand that every potential lead will likely choose a brand they trust, and what’s the best way to create trust if not with good and engaging content they can relate to?
It’s left to you to pick which content you feel will resonate more with them; this can be anything from an educative blog post to entertaining videos, beautiful JPEGs, or even memes. The goal is to provide them with something they can engage with daily.
While they engage with the quality content you’re providing, you’re quickly building trust and credibility with them in the process.
However, ensure you’re consistent with the frequency of posting these contents. A good suggestion is to design a content calendar for your posts. The schedule on the calendar could be that you post four times on all working days and eight times during the weekend.
The calendar should also have the time these posts should be uploaded (at 6 a.m., 2 p.m., 6 p.m., 8 p.m., etc.). This will ensure you know exactly when to post and remove the reluctance that comes with uncertainty.
Leverage Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is an essential tool you need to get acquainted with as a small business owner. While your larger competitors are focusing on billboards and broadcast media, put all your energy and budget into running paid ads on the social media platforms your potential clients are on.
Instagram, Facebook, X, and even TikTok all offer this feature. However, don’t just jump on it and spend your money without any objective. Remember, you only have a small budget to work with. So, ensure you optimize the expected ROI.
Before starting the ad campaign, set a clear objective you hope to achieve from the ad. Please don’t make the objectives too many; they should be a primary objective, like getting new subscribers, gaining new followers, or perhaps increasing your website’s traffic.
Whatever objective you choose, make sure it’s simple, direct, and something you can measure it’s progress on.
Monitor and Analyze Performance
While using social media to promote your business, you have to make adjustments and improvements along the way, and this involves monitoring your performance, be it on your organic posts or paid advertising.
You have to be sure of what’s working and what’s not. Most social media platforms offer features that can help you gain valuable insights, like your weekly reach, engagements with your posts, and website traffic.
What you need to do with this data is observe what got the most engagements and re-strategize your social media efforts around that content while experimenting with other content and ideas.
After the end of the week, observe the metrics again to see what’s engaging your audience the most and focus on it. With time, you’ll build your audience with this strategy and grow your brand to the point where you can now be seen as one of the big competitors in your industry.
Wrapping Up
Owning a business is not easy; at some point, you’ll need all the help you can get to promote your business and make profits. Leveraging these strategies should help you do just that.
However, it would be best to be patient with them rather than expecting quick results. Just like everything else, you’d have to learn from your mistakes while implementing these strategies and make an informed decision the next time you try. Good luck!
