Social media is one of the many ways that will help your business grow. Combined with a solid marketing strategy and decent budget spending, you can find customers for your products or services. But in order to attract and grow your target audience, you need to optimize your social media presence in a way that is effective and organized.
In this post, we’ll explore the best, simple marketing campaign tips to improve your small business's online presence in the social media era.
Consistent Content Calendar
We’ve mentioned before that consistency is key for all your business interactions. This is especially true when it comes to improving your social media presence. You can choose your posts to be funny or pretty serious and scientific (depending on your industry). However, you need to decide from the beginning and keep it that way. Then, your fans will know what to expect from you on their feed page.
Apart from your posts, your messages/email/phone response style should also follow the same pattern; it’s all part of your branding!
Even a small deviation from your typical content, will not go unnoticed on social media. Being consistent in all interactions with your audience is a must. This also means that your posts’ frequency matters, as well. If your Facebook account goes suddenly quiet for a while, your followers will gradually lose interest in your product. Make sure you keep the posts coming up at a steady rate, so your audience knows about your latest products, upgrades, and special offers!
Be interesting
And while we’re at it, let’s discuss a little bit about how your social media presence can become attractive, toο. Creating interesting content is the most important advice for the digital and social media strategy of your small business.
Pictures and other visual aids (graphs, infographics, etc) are going to “catch the eye” of existing and new followers and eventually, boost engagement. Remember, Content is King.
Especially posts on Facebook and Twitter have a much better interaction rate when featuring visuals, in contrast with plain status updates or links.
Be available
Social media are platforms that allow us to communicate with other people. When other people need to communicate with you, you have the chance to show your company’s quality and make actual sales! When you post a sponsored post advertising your products on Facebook, hopefully, people will be interested in finding out more about them and how they can purchase them.
So, one of the most simple and profound online marketing tips is to make yourself available. Both during “open office” hours and also respond to comments and messages as promptly as possible.
Otherwise, potential customers will again lose interest or become frustrated by your lack of availability and slow “reflexes”, assuming that your company is also slow in responding to their needs (which may be really not the case).
Point is, that once you decide to establish new sales channels, you have to be prepared to welcome and help customers as if they walked into your store/office.
Promote your social media accounts
Do you wonder how to do social media marketing for your small business correctly? It’s important to understand that you need to promote your social media profiles through your website and other promotional mediums.
For example, if your company is featured in the local newspaper, let the readers know they can also contact you on social media. Provide them with your Page (Facebook), urge them to follow you (Twitter), and connect via your Linkedin account.
This way you attract potential customers outside the social media, as well! If the medium is online don’t forget to include each profile’s link so you can drive traffic directly to it.
Give incentives
You have seen it done even by major brands to boost social media engagement; giving the audience incentives to follow them and buy their products.
You can create online contests, post trivia questions about your products for a prize, photo contests – you name it!
For example, if you own a small kitchenware business, you can host a recipe contest on Facebook. The participants can post comments on their best recipes and the one that gets the most “Likes” wins a blender. Giving incentives is simple and a win/win situation! You gain more traffic to your social media accounts and your followers know they can expect gifts from you – who doesn’t like free stuff?
Bottom line is, that it takes a lot of effort to build a solid social media presence and it’s an ongoing process. This is why you need to keep in mind that these simple techniques work best if you keep them aligned with your branding strategy. Remember that, they should become part of your day-to-day routine and reflect your business’s culture to get the most of it.