Social Media Tips for Small Business Marketing

Running a small business but still not on socials? Don’t worry, it’s not too uncommon, but you might be missing out on the chance to grow your business! 

Basically everyone is connected to social media in some form, and guess what, that means some of your customers are on there. If you want to reach them, have a read and find out our best social media tips and tricks.

Choose the right platforms

The first step in a social media strategy (or any marketing strategy, really) is to figure out who you want to reach and where you can best connect with them. Within the world of social media, this is all about choosing the right platforms that suit your brand and your audience. Whether it’s Instagram, Pinterest or somewhere else, prioritising the right platforms is essential to making sure you exist in the same spaces online that your customers do.

It might seem useful to be on as many platforms as possible — that maximises the amount of people you can reach, right? In reality… not really.

Plenty of your target customers won’t use some platforms you might try to be on. Or, even if they do use them, it might not be where they would want to interact with your brand. And on top of all that, trying to manage consistent posting on so many platforms is a near impossible feat for a small business. One of the best social media strategy tips: spend your energy where it’s going to be best received by the highest portion of your target consumers.

Mix up your content

Industry information, silly humour, sale reminders, giveaways — all of these are tools in your social media arsenal. Your content can be varied, and this often helps to maintain your audience’s attention. On social media, you can allow your brand to be fun and professional, but always be guided by the overall tone of voice of your business.

One strategy that can be very useful is to share specific insights into your industry, and to think of interesting things that your audience might not know about. Consider what goes on behind the scenes that could be unique and shareable, including how products are made, the process that goes into organising a service, or even how you pack and prepare orders.

Develop a content calendar

This one’s all about organisation, and while it can take some time to establish, it always pays off. Creating a calendar or schedule of some kind will help you stay consistent with posting, allowing you to be seen more often by your audience and giving them more opportunity to build a positive association with your brand. You can make use of online scheduling tools to help you achieve this, including free ones like Planable.

To help you manage the overall workload of social media too, try and regularly add to a list of content ideas, so when it comes time to prepare your posts, you have a well of ideas to draw from. This saves a lot of time and also alleviates the stress of trying to come up with 15 posts in the next 15 minutes!

Engage with your community

Social media is at its best when you think of it as a conversation, particularly when you’re a small business trying to grow. You’ve chosen to start the conversation by posting something, but many in your audience will take the time to reply to your content. This is a good opportunity to connect directly with audience members, giving them answers to questions they have, thanking them for their support, or even just shouting them out for being awesome!

Community engagement adds an important human dimension to your digital presence, and shows your audience that you genuinely care about them. It takes time and attention, but can create a significant amount of loyalty for your brand.

Monitor the performance of your posts

To grow on socials, you need to know how you’re performing. Regularly monitor how your posts perform for important metrics like engagement, reach and website clicks. If you’re using a scheduling tool, you may have access to an analytics tool within the tool, otherwise you should be able to access metrics directly on the social media platforms.

Try and keep track of how your posts are performing in a document or spreadsheet of some kind, so you can track the overall state of your brand through a given time period. Tracking will help you identify areas for improvement, and also whether any changes you make are having the intended impact on performance.

Research trends and partnerships

It’s pretty cliché to say at this point, but social media is constantly evolving. It’s worthwhile to try and stay on top of what is trending and whether it would work for your category. Importantly, this isn’t saying you should capitalise on every trend that appears; it should still make sense for your brand and audience. Don’t try too hard to force it.

You can also try and collaborate with relevant influencers in your category, who can deliver your brand to a wider audience that trusts their opinion. Don’t pick blindly though: only choose influencers that align with your brand values.

(Secret bonus: run paid ads if you can)

Organic social media is very useful, but there is a chance you could miss out on some members of your target audience. That being said, they aren’t just completely inaccessible, and the audience targeting capabilities of paid social media ads could help you reach them. 

Naturally, this might not be a cost that your small business can afford, but if you have some extra cash to put into promotion, combining organic and paid social media could help you keep building loyalty with your existing audience while also adding new customers into the mix.

Stay patient

Building a successful presence on social media takes time, and at times it can be disheartening to put in heaps of effort and feel like you aren’t seeing that reflected in the performance. We encourage small businesses to stay consistent with their posting schedule and to stay committed to making quality content, even when it feels difficult. 

The immediate effects might not look as good as you want, but you can’t receive any long-term gains if you give it up. Be patient with it, and keep doing the good work you’re doing. There’s always an audience for you somewhere.

If you need help on top of that, we’re always up for a chat and a social strategy brainstorm. Get in touch to learn more about our small business social media marketing service and we’ll have you owning your share of the platforms in no time!