By As a small business owner, one of the things you must do is to be strategic with your social media marketing. The more strategic you are about promoting your business, the higher the chances of attracting the kind of audience you want.
It is not rocket science, as you can now use social media platforms like Facebook for your marketing. In this article, we discuss the top social media marketing tips for small business owners looking to scale and make more sales.
How Does Social Media Marketing Help Small Businesses?
Table of Contents
There is a reason why the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accept paid adverts. In addition to being one of the major income streams for these platforms, ads also help business owners connect to the target audience in real time.
Besides, the increased usage of social media platforms is a testament to the fact that you can promote your business faster and to those who need the products or services you offer.
Marketing on Social Media Ideas for Small Businesses
Now that we are clear about the social media benefits for small businesses, let us now dive into the ideas.
Here is a list of the top 9 social media marketing tips for small businesses:
1. Start by Choosing the Best Social Media Platform
The fact that your competitor is making tons of sales on Facebook doesn’t mean that you will get the same result.
The rule of thumb is to choose the right social media platform and this often has to do with your type of business.
If you are in the cosmetics, makeup, and body enhancement business, Instagram has to be the preferred social media platform because that’s where people “pose for the gram.” The platform is dedicated to photo and video-sharing and is the right one to use for businesses and products in the same regard.
We recommend you follow these Instagram marketing tips from some of the best brands across the globe. Also, read this article that reveals 5 ways to get more Instagram followers and likes at no cost.
2. Consider Cross-Posting Your Business’ Content
Cross-posting means posting content on multiple platforms, usually at once. It is an ideal way to test your audience’s engagements across different platforms.
Meta has now made it possible for users to post on Facebook and Instagram at the same time. You can also use third-party cross-platform apps to streamline your business’ content distribution.
3. Having an Effective Content Marketing Plan is Important
Today, prospective customers are closed on a sale not just because of the benefits of the product or service, but mostly because of how it is presented.
In addition to hiring a copywriter to help your brand put out the right narrative, you also have to be particular about the type of content to share about the business.
While write-ups and videos are the common types of content, there are many others you should also explore. Examples are making live videos, creating and distributing podcasts about some of the business offers and what the target audience needs to know. You can also learn how to create Instagram memes to help your brand get more followers and by extension, customers.
Below are some of the top content marketing ideas you want to start using now to promote your small business on social media:
4. Pay Attention to Trends
Trends are season-like narratives that can go viral in a few hours on social media. As these platforms are easily accessed, it doesn’t take time for the information to circulate. Therefore, your brand can benefit from leveraging the trends to market the business.
We must however warn that not all trends are to be “jumped on.” Some trends are better left out to avoid putting your small business in a bad light.
5. Content Format
What type of content will you create for promoting your small business on social media? The trends you use may differ, depending on the social media platform. For example, on Facebook, videos and textual content work best, but videos and images work best on Instagram. Twitter is a mix of both.
You can also go deeper to experiment with other content formats, such as infographics and making blog posts. If you choose to incorporate blogging as one of your content formats, do not forget to learn search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is what guarantees that your content will be discovered on search engines. A mixture of different marketing strategies works every single time.
6. The Use of Hashtags
Hashtags (#) can help increase the visibility of your small business on social media, especially when your target audience uses those keywords when looking for information online.
Therefore, research some of the popular hashtags in your business niche and use some of those in your content. Using a hashtag generator tool, you can find loads of relevant hashtags that suit your business. Some of these free hashtag generator tools can work for both Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
7. Generate and Qualify Lots of Leads
One mistake that most small business owners make when using social media is to make assumptions about their target audience. In our previous article, we discussed a wide range of social media marketing mistakes hindering your startup growth. (You may want to check if you are guilty of them).
If you are working on a budget, it would require making lots of posts, changing your content strategy at intervals and testing different approaches until you find the one that clicks.
However, if you have a few bucks to spare, it wouldn’t be a bad investment to generate leads for your business. The amazing thing about this digital marketing tip for small businesses is that it allows you to get a greater percentage of people who would likely patronize your business.
What’s more? You get to keep their information (contact address, telephone number, full name and email address). You can always keep them in the know when you have new offers to make.
8. Looking for Faster Sales? Use Influencers!
If you are looking to make sales faster on social media and you don’t have all the time to spare, it is worth it to consider a different option.
You can hire the services of influencers to help publicize your business. One reason this works is that these influencers have consistently built a following of people that pay for services, as well as people that trust the influencers’ recommendations.
On the flip side, influencer marketing costs a lot of money and may not be one of the ideal digital marketing strategies for small businesses. If you have a product that solves a unique problem, you can reach out to Emenike Emmanuel to see if he can promote it on his ever-growing social media platforms.
9. Spying on Competitors is an Excellent Social Media Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses
Perhaps, you have tried different approaches to promoting your business on social media, but none returned the kind of results you wanted. Instead of giving up, why not check or spy on competing brands to see what they do differently? The chance is that you will get new social media marketing ideas just by mirroring what your competitors do, in terms of marketing.
Final Words
Marketing on social media is not a tough job, but it can be tasking if you don’t know what to do and when to do it. This article has helped you uncover some of the social media marketing tips that will help your small business make more sales.
