SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

Using social media for business is commonplace but it can be daunting for a business owner if you aren't ‘au fait' with using social media for that purpose. We have compiled some tips to help you guys get your heads around using social media for business and making it work for your business. Plan Any implemented strategy within a business needs a plan and social media marketing is no different. The simplicity and low costs mean many business owners just jump in and start posting. Hold your horses!! Take time to make a good plan first to make sure your strategy positively contributes to your business goals. If you want to see results set specific goals for using social media to give you something to work towards. Gaining new customers or increasing your enquiry rate are other options to just gaining likes on posts. Also, look at what your competitors are doing on social media. Are they missing something that you could focus on or are they getting it bang on the money, in which case what can you learn from them? What have you already achieved on social media? Pay attention to what has worked well and what hasn’t. What led to high engagement? What haven’t you managed to do yet? Is all your information still relevant and correct? Check these things and make amendments as part of your plan. Use a social media calendar.. AKA Content Calendar  This will help you to make sure you are delivering your content at the right times and to the right social channels. Ensure that you are mixing up the content with informative and interesting posts as-well-as brand-specific posts. Decide which platforms are right for you. Research into where your audience is spending their time. Don't just assume that your target audience is all using Instagram and overlook the potential of Facebook or LinkedIn. You will need to get to know your audience. Social media allows you to home in on your audience but to be able to do this you will need to find out who your audience is. If you use data about your current customers and then dig deep using social media analytics and you can get a firm idea of who is buying from you and who is engaging with your social media. Once you have done this, use your plan to target more people who are like those you are already reaching. Build relationships Customers tend to stay loyal when they feel valued and social media is an easy way to talk directly to your customers and build relationships with them. A report from Twitter and Research Now suggested that 93 per cent of people asked planned to purchase from a small business that they follow. You can build a rapport over time rather than jumping straight in with hard-sales tactics and this will initiate trust with potential clients. When people engage with your content you can interact back and form a bond between customer and business. A Facebook group is another way to establish relationships and loyalty and create a welcoming environment to deliver content to a group of like-minded clients. Establish connections with influencers.  You might think your business is too small to work with influencers but micro-influencers are often not out of budget for small business and they are extremely effective in creating trust for new brands or products. Expand your audience Facebook targeting options allow you to reach out to new customers with interest that suggest they will engage with your social media posts. Use targeted campaigns to grow your audience by using content that might have a wider appeal than your usual posts and entice a broader spectrum to interact with your social media and become a potential customer. Share images People are more likely to engage with posts that have a visual element. We aren’t just talking about photos, you could share a video, infographic or GIF. Images on social media directly translate to action in the real-world. More than 50% of millennials have visited somewhere or eaten at a restaurant because of an image a friend shared on social media. Schedule content Once you have a social content calendar in place you can create posts in advance and use scheduling tools to post them automatically and at specific times. This means that you can assign one block of time to create social media content and not be constantly active on social media throughout the day. Monitor performance As you begin to roll out your social strategy you should make note of what is working well and what isn’t so that you can amend your strategy as you go along and improve it to get better results. Get in touch with Purely Personal Marketing for more information on how our expertise and creativeness can help your business reach more customers.   For information on Social Media Marketing, just drop us an email at  ​purely-personal@outlook.com