Marketing your small business on social media continues to evolve.
As consumers actively look to sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus prior to making purchase decisions, it’s no longer a matter of if you should get active, but how fast you can create a viable presence.
In fact, if you’re a local or small business, you can no longer afford to avoid social media.
With 97% of consumers using the Internet as a resource, building your social media presence is a critical component in your overall marketing strategy.
Producing quality content, whether it’s created or curated, is essential to promoting and growing your business online.
However, starting out on social media — or accelerating your current presence — can feel overwhelming.
Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are excellent conversation facilitators, but knowing how to navigate them effectively stumps even the most seasoned online marketers.
That’s why it’s so important that you know where to begin.
I recently had the chance to speak with a group of college students about managing social media for small businesses.
Below you’ll find the presentation — along with ideas to help you jumpstart a new social media campaign or reinvent your current strategy.
Get Noticed on Social Media
1. Know Your Goals
Define your goals and then put them in writing. As Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, found writing down your goals makes a significant difference.
In a goal-setting study that included 267 participants, Dr. Matthews found that,
Those who wrote down their goals were 42 percent more likely to achieve them.
Who wouldn’t want those odds, especially when building your business?
If you want to get clear about your goals, answer these questions first.
Goal-Setting Questions
- What type of social media followers/fans do you want?
- What makes you unique? Translate that into your social media profiles. From Facebook to Twitter and Google Plus, your message should be consistent across all channels.
- How much time can you commit to managing your social media? Will you need to outsource to a company or virtual assistant?
- What results are you hoping to achieve? (increased exposure, leads, traffic)
2. Listen and Respond
As you begin to venture into social media, making new connections is critical to your online health.
Begin by listening to what is being said in and around your industry or niche. Pay attention to what the needs of your potential clients are.
Then begin to join in the conversation. The only way you can create meaningful relationships is to engage consistently.
And I don’t mean talking “at” people. Instead, talk “with” the community you’re building. They’re real people that need to know you value their opinion.
Ask questions, and then listen to the response.. Focus on what is important to them and then share content that meets a need or solves a problem.
Someone who shines when it comes to knowing and understanding her audience is Kim Garst. Watch how Kim interacts with her fans and followers.
Do you see the difference between someone who’s actively participating and someone who is simply blasting a message? It’s an art every small business should work to perfect.
✫‿✫ Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate, Before you criticize, wait.
— Kim Garst ツ (@kimgarst) March 13, 2015
@InsLud or Listerine 🙂 — Kim Garst ツ (@kimgarst) March 13, 2015
3. Build Relationships, Don’t Just Collect Numbers
This one falls in line with the last. As you start to share content across your social media platforms, focus on building relationships.
If you constantly send out boring data or confusing statistics, but you don’t talk and engage with the people in a meaningful way — you’ve shot yourself in the foot.
Basically, you’re talking to a brick wall.
It is considered poor social media etiquette if you don’t interact. Stop shouting at your fans and followers and get into the conversation.
I’m always impressed with the team at Sprout Social. As a company focused on providing a robust social media management tool, Sprout Social walks the talk.
Just browse through their Twitter stream and you’ll see how interactive and responsive they are.
@DahliaElGazzar Hi, Dahlia! You can find more info about our webinars here: http://t.co/Q2vjBhlyO5. We appreciate the #SproutLove!
— Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) March 15, 2015
4. Post Consistently
Your updates on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest need to be hyper-focused on your target market.
They also need to happen on a consistent basis. Create a schedule that easily works into your day.
Tools like Buffer can help you manage your content and share without fail. Then integrate your account with tools like IFTTT (If This Then That) to create rules for specific actions.
For example, every time I post a new article, the link is sent to my Buffer account and scheduled to tweet.
And as you choose content to share, remember to mix it up.
Include your content, other peoples content, business related posts, quotes and other topics that will capture the attention of your potential audience.
Simply posting industry content isn’t appealing day in and day out.
Give insight into who you are and what your business stands for. Have fun, be valuable and stay relevant.
5. Be Visual
We live in a visual online world. From Facebook to Instagram, eye-catching images are the order of the day.
As my friend Neal Shaffer with Maximize Your Social says,
Visuals appear prominently in news feeds of social networks, so take a visual approach to not only posting information, but to communicating as well. Combine this with your own unique branding and perspective, and you’re bound to stand out in this noisy social media world of ours. (via PostPlanner)
How can you do this? Grab quotes from your latest article and add them to Facebook and Google Plus. Then pin it on Pinterest and share on Instagram.
Give your target audience a visual experience that allows for unique insight and awareness around your business and brand.
Remember: This is not about being spammy and shoving your product or service down their throat.
It’s about offering valuable insight in a highly-shareable format.
Want an example of this in action? Just take a look at Susan Gilbert, Founder and CEO of Online Promotion Success, Inc.
Susan offers a substantial amount of advice — all with a giving spirit — no matter where you find her on social media.
6. Get Local and Get Found
Concentrate on building your social media networks with people in your service area or community.
The more locally involved you get, the more interactive you are with people in your local space, the greater possibility the leads and potential buyers will come to you.
A surefire way to get your content in front of the right people? Use hashtags!
Use a tool like hashtags.org to identify which hashtags within your local area get the most traction. Once you’ve identified the top two or three, start using them in your tweets and posts.
Someone who knows her market is Jodi Okun. Jodi is a College Financial Aid Advisor and frequently uses hashtags in her tweets.
Jodi knows that using those hashtags over and over builds credibility and helps potential clients take notice.
Financial Aid Award Letters http://t.co/7neLnWAKaU #CollegeCash #SmarterStudents pic.twitter.com/pfeA4c77Ne — Jodi Okun (@JodiOkun) March 15, 2015
7. Stop Selling and Start Sharing
Don’t sell yourself before you know someone. People want to get to know you.
They want to find a commonality — it could be as simple as you both live in the same city.
It might be that you both have a dog, or that you have both eaten at the local ice cream shop.
Build on these things. The very best thing that happens within online networking circles is when someone else shares a link of one of your posts.
It’s more important to converse with others than to simply spam their social media feeds with uninteresting content.
Your posted content should look something like this:
- 20% linking to your content
- 20% linking to other people’s content (A local sports team, restaurant, school district, government office, local blogger, reciprocal linking, etc.)
- 20% other business talk
- 40% personal talk and networking (Ask how your followers’ animals/kids are! People love it online just as they do offline)
Getting Started
There are a number of social media channels that might benefit your business.
I would encourage you to choose only a few as you get started and build once you are comfortable and consistent with your strategy.
Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn are completely different platforms and will attract different personalities.
Pay attention to where your potential clients are hanging out and then dip your toe in the water.
Master that social media channel, making it a successful marketing extension of your business strategy.
Impressive post specially the points you mentioned about the strategies could help me in my business. Some of the points were familiar to me and some them is very new for me.
Thank you so much for sharing this post with us. I’ll follow your blog posts from today onward.
Great Job!
As consumers, we now consume orders of magnitude more information compared to previous generations. The rise of the search engine and the smartphone made the world’s information accessible to anyone on a 24/7 basis. New business intelligence technologies are positioned to bring similar changes to the business world.
Hey,
Amazing post!!
I definitely agree with you that we live in a visual online world. And being visual is very important.I mostly use animated Transitions to represent my thoughts in videos and presentations
Thanks a lot for sharing your post. It helped me a lot!!
Looking forward for more posts!!
I am just new to social media promotion and at first, I don’t know what strategy should I use to make my campaign successful. I’ve tried a different kind of strategy within 6 months. I end up with 7 steps that can really help my campaign the first step is set goals and objectives. Pick your platforms, Set your voice and tone, Create a content plan, Lastly, Test and Evaluate. If you will do this seven easy tips in the right way surely your campaign will be successful.
Very true. When we stop selling and put the emphasis on sharing, we get the results. Thanks for an excellent article!
Well said Monty!
Hey Rebekah,
When it comes to leverage social media you made some valid points here. When it comes to social media, engagement is key. Building relationships and becoming a person of value to others is important.
One thing that caught my eye was the subtitle “Stop Selling And Start Sharing”… as a matter of fact it’s one of my points in a new blog posts I’m working on now. I use to do this, and I see many people still doing this online, especially on Facebook. Once we start to balance everything out, you will see a major difference as far as results!
Thanks for the valuable info Rebekah! Have a great rest of the week!
So true Sherman. If you want to grow your online presence, you have to build relationships.
I look forward to seeing your new post. It sounds like a perfect complement to this one!
Rebekah: Could you list some small business that have received attention on social media lately?
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking Martin. Are you looking for examples of small businesses that are doing well on social media?
Rebekah: Yes! 😉 I would appreciate if you could give some examples. I think that could be of great to the readers here and to the readers over at BizSugar.
Great article! A strategy is essential. Without knowing your goals you’re just spitting in the wind.
That’s exactly right Becky. You’re just wasting your time.
Thank you Rebekah!
Fabulous article and gentle reminders of what I need to start utilizing … again. I need to wrap my head around the concept of IFTTT receipt to mix with our Buffer account. My desktop is now full of the additional links you included, so my afternoon is going to be all about digging in deeper.
Thank you again for the info! Happy Thursday ~j.
Hi Jan! Once you give IFTTT a try, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. Start testing a few recipes and see how it goes. It’s a lot of fun!
Hello Rebekah maam,
Thanks a Lot for putting so much effort on your posts to help us out. Yes I think consistency is the key. If you give 100%, be the “real you”, and start helping and interacting with your social media following you are sure to get noticed.
Getting local is another thing that is one of the most essential for local businesses.
One question, how do you design your images? They are fab. Waiting for if you don’t mind answering this.
Thanks so much for including me, Rebekah! Love all your points and agree 100%!
Of course Kim! It was so great to see you this last week. There’s never enough time to catch up, but it’s always fun to see everyone.
Hi Rebekah,
Another awesome piece! There are soooooo many to takeaway from this article and I don’t (even) know where to start!
Maybe the best part is it is NOT about the numbers but relationship. We are one-too-often chasing for numbers (including me) and I think we need to change our mindset.
Great article and thanks for sharing!
You are 100% correct ! I always refer to Social Media News feeds as Main Street. It Matters, Its where We Get Found And Begin Contact with Today’s Customers. Heck, If The BIG Brands are Using it, Then Mom and Pop Business Had better or They will get Pushed out Even More. NO one Can deliver Honest To Goodness Warm and Fuzzy Customer Service Like a Independently Owned Business, They Just Need to Let People Know How to Find them. Great Post Rebekah!! Thank you!!
As someone who was recently thrown the social media hat to wear, I sometimes feel like I am drowning, it can be soooo overwhelming! But you have so many helpful articles, I think I’ve added like 10 of them to my bookmarks bar. Thanks for all your great advice!
I\’ve been getting that daily IFTTT recipe suggestion email for years and I\’ve done nothing. It\’s hard to know where to start. I\’ve had more luck with Zapier and moving my stuff around with zaps. That company is super user-friendly and always making suggestions that somehow seem more approachable.Rebekah, are you using Canva for your slideshare slides or something else?
Good advice Rebekah. Most small businesses I work with struggle with creating quality content so they rely on content curation to fill the gap between blog post articles. I’m going to have to take a 2nd look at ifttt to see if I can come up with a new recipe that doesn’t duplicate my current content curation model.
I REALLY need to start using IFTTT, there so many things I know it could automate for me – thanks for the kick in the arse I needed on that one, Rebekah! 😉