If you’re not on social media, you’re nowhere
In today’s digital world, almost everyone we interact with has some sort of a social media presence. It’s important and critical to use social media for small business, so they can tap into this valuable resource and implement it into their daily marketing efforts. Most, if not all, companies have a website or social media account to gain access to clientele and potential customers. It makes sense to have various social media strategies for any and all of your channels so they can offer their product and services.
Social media has allowed the world to connect in an instant. It’s done wonders for marketing and made it easy for people to find your business or service with just a click of a button. It also opens up a host of other avenues for you to utilize and hone in on your specific client base.
Social media marketing itself can feel like a whirlwind of a concept. It can be hard to wrap your brain around all the different factors of a proper social media marketing strategy. It may seem intimidating and multi-faceted, but there are some simple strategies to utilize to make it an easier process when it comes to social media.
Plan Ahead
Planning ahead is a good approach in most aspects of life. It makes just as much sense when it comes to social media marketing as well. Plan your marketing approach at least a month in advance and schedule posts to go out. Using a social media management tool such as Buffer can be beneficial to make the process more streamlined for your business.
Set Achievable Goals
As a business, you have goals for the future and plans for growing exponentially. It’s important to set some achievable goals for your social media as well. Set goals that are actually attainable for your business, such as increasing your business’ brand awareness in the industry.
Tackle small goals first, and check them off as you go along. Your goals actually influence your social media approach, including which networks you should utilize. For example, if you hope to increase brand awareness for your small business, posts shouldn’t all be promotional and advertisement-like. Try posting helpful information, such as starting a blog and sharing information-rich articles with your followers.
Research Your Key Audience
The great thing about social media is it can be easily tracked with analytics. Google Analytics can be a valuable tool in your quest to improve your audience engagement. Gain valuable insight and understanding of your company’s current marketing performance.
Analytics make it easy to understand how visitors interact with your website. You can also use Google Analytics to connect with other platforms, such as a CRM or point of sale. This will allow you to get an even more accurate picture of your customers. You can even use it to measure analytics on your blog as well.
It’s important to know which social platforms are good for which type of audience. For example:
- Facebook and YouTube are great for advertisements because they reach a lot of people all the time.
- Instagram users are usually younger people under the age of thirty that appreciate eye-catching content and images.
- Women are the majority users of Pinterest when compared to men.
- LinkedIn users are well-educated and appreciate industry-specific content.
Search Your Competitors
It’s important to know where your competitors rank when it comes to their social ranking, online engagement and social media. Research their approach to social media marketing and notice how their followers interact. Take note of what’s working and what’s not. This is important when implementing your own marketing strategy. Determining what’s working for them is a valuable tool for you to take into consideration.
Create Engaging and Informative Content
An effective social media campaign is all about the content marketing. Engaging content can do wonders for your business in terms of sales and growth. It’s important to cover topics and news in your specific niche or industry. Most importantly identify which social media platforms are for you. That way you know which type of content you should be creating.
A blog is an excellent way to improve your chances of bringing more traffic to your website and in turn, more customers for your business. WordPress is a great platform that offers free, customizable blogs. This is a great strategy in improving your results in search engines as well. The biggest authority gets the highest ranking (i.e. shows up first in search engines like Google).
Cover as many topics as you can that pertain to your industry to drive home the point that your company is a subject matter expert. This will also increase your authority and lead to higher rankings in search engines.
Send Regular Newsletters or Emails to Customers
Email blasts or newsletters are a crucial part of internet marketing. What this allows you to do is engage your customer base fairly regularly with new information, products or sales that they may be interested in. Without a doubt one of the most effective social media strategies. It also keeps them coming back to visit your site when you link out to it and other valuable information your customers may want to know.
Post in Relevant Directories
There are so many online directories out there it can make your head spin. This is an effective tool to utilize going forward in your marketing efforts. Check your online directory listings and apply social media strategies to see if there may be more desirable directories you could be tapping into. Many are free and allow people searching for specific companies like yours to get to your website faster and more efficiently.
Create an Email Opt-In Option
Let interested clients stay up to date on the latest news in your company. Create a simplistic email opt-in option on your website. As i mentioned earlier this is one of the most effective social media strategies. You want your customers to sign up for more information, because they will in turn be more likely to continue to utilize your services.
Hire an SEO Specialist
SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the process of affecting your online visibility in search engine results. There is a multitude of factors that affect it and it can easily be overwhelming for a novice. Hiring a contractor or specialist in the field of SEO could greatly improve the chances of your website
Experts in the field can help optimize your website and content across all platforms to make your local business easily searchable and SEO compliant. SEO is a specific marketing discipline that requires detailed research. It enables growing your visibility in organic search engine results. SEO includes both the technical and creative elements to improve rankings in search engines. Because of the in-depth process, it is important to hire professionals with SEO experience if possible.
Conclusions
Social media marketing has many different factors and ways to increase your brand awareness and traffic to your website. Social media strategies is an essential tool for any brand or business if they hope to grow and become successful. If you utilize all the different parts of marketing, you are sure to increase traffic and eventually sales in the long run. Remember, social media marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires updated and frequent changes to be successful. The focus shouldn’t be to appear in everybody’s news feed for a couple of weeks but for a couple of years.
Every small business owner should use these tips on social media strategies going forward, and you’re sure to crack the social media code in no time. If you would like more professional marketing help, BryteBridge would be more than happy to assist you in your marketing efforts. Visit our website or call for more information at 1(407)-857-9002.