Small business social media marketing.
How can social media marketing help small businesses grow?
There are many perceived barriers to using social media to help small businesses grow. It is often seen as time consuming, complicated and scary! However, social media platforms provide a valuable tool to raise awareness of your business, to grow your reputation and to build a community.
Social media is a relatively cheap tool to get your brand in front of your target audience. There are 53 million potential customers using social media in the UK (77.9% of the population), spending an average of 1 hour and 50 minutes per day on social platforms [Source: Cybercrew]
How can social media help small businesses grow?
Social media marketing can help you to:
Build awareness of your products and services to your target audience – with millions using social media, platforms like Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are great places to find new and highly targeted leads and customers.
Communicate and engage with your customers – it is so easy to get your brand messages out there and also encourage conversations with your target audience.
Generate leads and traffic to website – by using links to your website on your social posts it allows potential customers to take the next step and find out more about you without a high level of commitment.
Build a community and improve customer service – by encouraging engagement on your social posts you are giving your target audience a place to give opinions. Positive feedback will encourage potential customers to use your product/service and it also gives your business the chance to make improvements based on your customers experience with your brand.
Humanise your brand – you can do lots of great social posts around the people in your business, showcasing their talents and expertise. This, in turn, builds trust in your brand.
Gain insight from industry leaders and competitors as well as staying on top of new trends – follow key businesses and people on social platforms with no commitment so that you can keep up-to-date with trends and conversations.
Before you get started…
The trick with using social media to help small businesses grow is to make sure your target customer is at the centre of the planning process.
To do this, you need to understand who your customer is, what interests them and what problem/challenge your product or service can help with.
Once you have thought about this and you know what you want to achieve with your social media marketing, you can start putting your content ideas into a social media marketing plan.
The importance of a social media marketing plan.
A good social media marketing plan ensures that you have thoughtfully planned out which platforms to use, what messages and content to post and when you will post. Don’t forget, your content should be informative, educational and relevant.
Need help? If you’d like some help with your social media marketing then please get in touch to book a free, friendly consultation.