Successful Social Media Strategies for Small Businesses

We are sure that you are present on social media. Every small business is today. But what we would like to know is if you follow a proper strategy for achieving success or not.

Today, social media has become the core of online marketing campaigns. Use it the right way, and your business will enjoy so many benefits. Use it the wrong way, and you have so much to lose.

Social media can help you build your online visibility, spread word, increase brand awareness and improve your customer satisfaction levels. But the very same social media can also hurt your reputation, bring down your customer engagement levels, and eventually cause you to lose them.  You can avoid all of this is if you have a proper plan in place and follow effective strategies.

Many small businesses have the misconception that being on social media means spending too many hours and wasting time. What they fail to realize is that it is not about time. Instead, it is about how good your social media strategy is. The better it is, the less time you will be devoting to it.

In this article, we have highlighted some tried and proven strategies for social media success. Use them to the utmost and watch as you build your brand.

Focus on quality rather than quantity

You will have heard this a dozen times, but we still felt that is worth mentioning. Your content is all about value; each and every aspect of your online campaign should focus on providing value to customers, and the same can be said for social media. Whatever you provide your target audience with, it should be knowledgeable, entertaining or inspiring. 

There are so many brands which produce a lot of content for their followers. But while doing so, they ignore quality, which renders all their efforts useless. The point is that you should opt for quality rather than quantity. Posting one great price of content is so much better than posting three pieces of content which are poorly written and sound dull. Yes, you should try to deliver more content, but without comprising on the quality.

Give a face to your brand

Do you know why your consumers follow you on social media? Because they want to know you better. Yes, they do want to keep a tab on your latest promotional deals and just-in products, but they also want to find out more about the people behind the brand that love so much.

Use social media to give more information about yourself and your business to your clients. Share your successful stories, behind the scene happenings, awards which you won and the people on your team. Your target audience will relate to your better, and will be more interested in doing business with you.

Focusing on showcasing your personality, and you will be surprised to see increased engagement from your followers.

Don’t hesitate about outsourcing

Social media is a great tool for winning business. We have all heard this one a thousand times before. But all this is when you put in time and efforts. Being a small business owner, this may not always be possible. There are so many more important business operations which you have to manage and which require your attention. All these tasks take up your schedule. So how do you fit in time for social media? You can’t do it, and even if you could somehow manage, it will not give you the results you want until your complete focus is on it.

If your schedules are too busy and your days are too full, you may be better off in assigning the job to someone else. You can either hire your own social media manager or outsource it to a third party. Yes, you will have to spend, but the money is worth it in the long run. Social media management companies have more experience than you do and can bring you much better results than what you can achieve on your own. Plus, they can monitor your social channels 24/7, something which you cannot do by yourself.

Follow other people

We have seen so many business owners engrossed in implementing their own social media plans. While at it, they forget that they can gain visibility and get an edge by following their competitors. Do this on social platforms so that you can learn from other businesses. Observe their content strategies, and if they are working for them, you can try implementing them as well. Plus, when you follow your competition, you come to know more about their products and services. This information can be used to improve your products and services.

Gain more followers

One big concern about social media is always associated with getting more followers because until you have them none of your strategies will work out properly. How do you get more people to follow you? Spreading the word and promoting yourself is one way. You can try to improve your customer services as well so that you can get your customers to become loyal, which will make them want promote your business on your behalf.

Another great way of getting more followers is to offer an incentive. You can offer a discount to them, reward them with a free product or anything else which seems suitable.

Hold a contest

Online contests can cause your customer engagement levels to rise, and even entice people to join you. You can ask your followers to share an interesting story or an image, or try to get more likes for a certain post. And do not forget to reward the winner in the end!

So act on our advice, use social media well, and see the resulting effects on your business. Your brand awareness, credibility, customer satisfaction levels, revenues, and sales will all increase, and you will be on the path to growth and success.