Social Media Marketing For Small Businesses
In this modern and digital era, every human being trying to do their own business because technology has made work life so much easy and convenient because every process shifted from manual working to automated machines. Many individuals want to invest their amount and run a business either on a small scale or with big organization.
In the initial period businessman need to do full investment of time, and do a lot of struggle to promote their products and services related to tier business that is called Marketing. Marketing play a pivotal role in any business because strong marketing strategies will give powerful and effective growth to the business. There are many small brands that are new in market and searching for different ways and strategies of marketing through which they can divert heavy traffic of customers towards their brand to increase growth and reputation.
Marketing on social media is a new trend that is increasing day by day. Because social media has millions of active user through which business can promote their products and services easily. There are different practices used for effective marketing by including interesting and attractive content and attaching a link through which you can easily access to the websites of brands. Even engaging with your customers through comments and emails can increase your brand reputation because it seems that you are trying to make loyal relation with your customer.
What Are the Basics Of Social Media Marketing?
Social media use is one of the unavoidable aspect in individuals’ life. The average estimate show that user can use internet to run 5 different social media channels in one day. Estimated that users spend 2 hours daily is scrolling their social media accounts. So social media becomes a very handy tool for digital marketing in which different businesses use this tool to reach out their targeted audience to increase traffic on their brand.
Experts suggest that every brand need to utilize this service and make two social media accounts on different platforms that need to be active every time and run by some experts to stay connected with customers and update every thing about the brand. The one running social media accounts of any brand need to be active and upload pictures and videos or products and services and try to write engaging and attractive content on their pages to divert customer’s attention as well as brand need to attach direct link of products on their account so that customer can easily check newly launched products and services.
Brand can run promotion campaigns on social media because in this era mostly people prefer to do online shopping so marketing on social media is a handy tool. There are different social media platforms that one can easily access for running marketing campaigns like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc.
What Type Of Content Customers Want To See?
Brands need to do a survey to check which type of content customers want to see and what are the customer’s demands that need to full fill it will give a positive impression and will help you to design the accurate content. There are different forms in which you can upload your content on social media. Like live video, photos, static video, and polls in which you will display your product. Following are some of the types that can be easily uploaded on social media.
Video:
video content can easily be shot from your usual smartphone rather than a specific camera and the user need to upload portrait videos on Instagram and Tiktok while a video shoot in the landscape can only be uploaded on YouTube with exact quality.
Gif:
GIFs can easily be created in any form like static and animated but they don’t have any background sound or music supporting feature. You can write content and display it in GIF as well.
Photo:
there are many new smartphones that come with high quality cameras so there is no need to buy extra cameras all the social media channels readily accept the photos that are taken from smartphone and display them with same quality.
Written Posts:
LinkedIn and Twitter are the specific platforms that highly support content that is in written form rather than photos and videos.
Reasons For Using Social Media For Marketing
If you started a new small business and you are searching for the best ways for marketing of your products and services, then the use of this digital marketing tool is advantageous because there are millions of active users who can easily check your products and can access them through the link. There are several important reasons for using this digital marketing strategy. A few of the reasons are the following.
Through digital marketing you can reach potential customers, every businessman is aware of the fact that it is quite difficult to attract customers toward your baby brand. You had already spent hours designing new products and launching a brand but if no one is aware of your brand and no one reaches out then you are at a huge loss. Through social media, the owner can build engaging and creative content that will attract a wide audience toward their brand and increase reputation and sales as well.
Through this marketing strategy you can increase the awareness of your brand in public, owner is suggested to design creative and engaging content so that customers can share it with their friends and other followers and this chain will lead to the increased awareness of their brand.
By reaching out through social media, especially in live sessions, the owner can easily understand the point of concern of their customers, the owner can read their mindset and interest which will help them to design content according to their interests.
Social media marketing strategy will help the owner to understand the competition in the industry and check other competitors as well. By checking the activities of the competitors you can get an idea that which points need to be addressed wisely and what are the things that they need to add in their marketing to boost up the customer’s ratio.
Best Social Media Marketing Platforms For Small Businesses
Following are the best social media platforms that can be used to promote the products and services of small businesses.
Faceboook:
Facebook is the first social media platform that came into existence and it is still one of the best platform with advanced features on which any small business can promote their products and reach out to millions of customers globally. There are three positive aspects of Facebook on marketing.
Facebook has wide analytics in which the users are from all the age groups, genders and of different interests.
Facebook can be use for multiple purposes, like running marketing campaigns, track the customer’s data and most important run the e-commerce shop.
Owners need to define their target audience, and suggested to create the business goals that they want to achieve through powerful marketing and owner need to define the time as well like how much time they divided for social media marketing and what is their target they want to achieve in this defined time period.
Instagram:
If you want to do promotion of your products on Instagram then need to admit that you have to specify that which niche you are going to target like food, fashion, politics, health etc and keep remember unlike Facebook, Instagram is the platform where you will find users of specific age group like youth age between 18-35 and elders are only found on Facebook. It’s a great platform for some of the things that are bellow.
Instagram is the platform through which you can do your online shopping as well like if you see any product in post or reel, you can easily access the link and purchase it.
Instagram is known as visual platform that mostly deals with the business of fashion, beauty, travel and food blogging
Instagram users spend most of the time on this platform as compared to other platforms.
Instagram demands the owner to post creative and engaging content so that customers stay on your page and your content will urge the customer to buy the products. Owner need to stay in contact with the customers to make loyal relation that will motivate the customer to visit again. Owner need to spare time for designing the content because every platform need your struggles and efforts for designing content and instagram is rich in resources that user can use to design creative content.
There are many advanced features that will help the brands to divert huge traffic toward them and increase the sale.
Twitter:
Twitter is another appealing platform with millions of users and this platform can easily be accessed globally. Twitter demand from the brand owners that written content will easily be accessed by the users and people on Twitter are likely to engage more with written content rather than visual display like photos and videos. Twitter is the platform where people from all age groups are available and mostly Twitter is used by the person from the age between 30-60 years so you need to design the content by keeping many things in mind that are required within the premises of Twitter.
Twitter is the platform in which you can engage other businesses and customers in your conversation and explain them about the newly launched products and businesses.
Twitter is the place where customer can access to the things that are currently in trend from every corner of life.
Twitter is the platform designed specifically for the news journalists and organizations that are working related to politics so you need to stick with political niche.
Twitter is the platform where user can use hashtags to get their content on top of the feed where everyone can easily access. And hashtags will specify that how much content is available on the specific topic.
Twitter is the best place to make loyal relationships with your customer but firstly check whether you achieved the targeted audience or not. Type of content is the most important thing that need to be focused on because twitter accepts content related to news and if you are uploading the content that is from another topic then it will be best to switch this platform and choose other to promote your products and services.
Tiktok:
There is a wrong concept that Tiktok is not a marketing platform and brands can not promote their products here, tiktok supports outstanding brands and support their product in promotions because this platform has millions of users as this is the new and engaging platform so different brands try to make videos of their products that are creative so that many tiktok users watch video and check the products of different brands.
On this platform business can promote product with small budget without effecting the quality of product.
Tiktok demands that the content must be creative to attract customers and need to design content that is limited in the time range.
Tiktok can easily viral the videos that can be watched by millions.
Owner need to spare some time and make video that is eye-catching and attractive, TikTok has infinite features that anyone can use to make videos that can be accessed by anyone from the globe but the content needs to be designed in such a way that it will not cross the specific time limit. TikTok has the restriction that you can not make long videos.
Pinterest:
In the recent couple of years, Pinterest has shown a great change, in past this platform was used simply for creative categorization and different creative activities but now it has become one of the high ranked and powerful visual search engine. Pinterest users can design and get more new ideas from this platform and even they are making high purchases from this platform. Pinterest offer their customers a great experience because the platform is loaded with advanced features that any one can access with the legal credentials and account.
Pinterest users mark this platform as a positive enviourment space where one can easily work, this positive enviourment help the owners to boost up the reputation of their brand.
Pinterest platform works basically on the principal of visual display, because their belief is that visual can effect mind speedily and greatly rather then the written content.
Because of its visual display feature, it will be very easy for the owner to divert heavy traffic of customers toward their brand to boost up its sale and reputation.
Pinterest demand from the beginner user that they have to gather a lot of visual data before starting their marketing on Pinterest. User need to get high quality images for display so that their Pins can stand out high. The experts said that Pinterest is the platform that is greatly used by the women’s rather than men’s. according to the survey 75-80% users of Pinterest said that they are using this platform just for the online shopping, to make their experience better by exploring new things on this platform.
Youtube:
YouTube is one of the world’s best platform for sharing videos related to any topic of life. There are billions and trillions of active users on YouTube who are using this platform on daily basis. YouTube give a space for small businesses to do marketing of their products and services by shooting the creative and eye-catching video. YouTube is marked as one of the best and effective platform for promotion of small business to boost up their growth and sale. This platform is used to stay connected with your followers as well through the comment section through which the brand owner can easily check that which type of products and services they are demanding so that they can work and produce the desired items.
By the help of YouTube, the brand can divert heavy traffic because your content video can be watched by anyone around the globe and they can access your brand easily.
YouTube videos often appear in the search results of any search engine, this will directly improve the SEO of your brand.
User demand from the brand owner to design creative videos in which try to add engaging content that will help the owner to create awareness of their brand among community.
YouTube videos are not like the Tiktok videos in which you just need to shoot the video and upload it, in YouTube you need to design the authentic and valuable content for the video and then you required a good quality camera through which you will shoot the video and thirdly, user need to have good editing skills and software’s through which they can edit their video and then they can upload it on their channel so that no one can trace any mistake in content and quality meet the standard criteria of YouTube.
You need to watch other videos and content related to your content so that you can check which things are already present in other videos so that you can shoot unique content video that will attract large number of audience through which you can increase the sale of products and services.
Linkedin:
LinkedIn is one of the oldest platforms in the category of social media which is used specifically for business purposes. On this platform, different business groups and companies interact to share their plans and brief other about their business updates. This platform is crucial in supporting videos, if the owner had capability to create sound and focused videos of their products then they have high chances of boosting up their business to the next level. LinkedIn demand from their user to stay connected to and post content on daily basis related to your brand.
LinkedIn demand that your content must be reflecting the professionalism of your brand. Highlight the main things of your content in the start and focus on helping to grow the brand.
Your LinkedIn post must represent that you are trying to help the customers by providing resources to reach main product or brand.
Brand owner need to share the best events of their brand and achievement’s so that beginners can learn from their struggles. What ever you are going to post if your content is in written form then you need to provide visible image to increase the ratio of good experience in customers.
Tips and strategies for small business on social media
Once you are done with selecting the platform which will help you to boost up the growth of your brand because of digital marketing, now you need to understand different tips that you can use in starting any small business.
Plan your content completely:
Before coming on social media, the owner need to design all the content for the upcoming month and arrange them in dates on which he is going to upload that content and owner can take help through the Google Content calendar through which you can plan all your content to avoid mistakes that are occurred by designing the content at last moment. This is one of the biggest mistake done by the beginners of business industry, in start they try to post flying content on social media that has no meaning. And sometime they plan to post content regularly but it is quite time-consuming and its very difficult for business man to get free time.
So it is suggested to the beginners to try to use Google content calendar because it will safe your time. Google content calendar will help you to post mix content like images, videos, blog posts etc because you have time to do brain storming related to your content. There are few things that you need to keep in mind before designing a content calendar.
Type Of Content Either, Written Or Visual Display Etc.
You ned to enter the date on which specific content you want to upload
Which social media platform you need to post your content
Try to create a link for your content.
Add brief summary of your content that you are posting
Ad any of the special events or days you need to remember and any campaigns that you want to run.
Ad all the hashtags, links and tags that you want to ad in the caption of your posts.
Even there are many videos available to learn how to design the content calendar and you can see different free content calendars available that you can use for your content.
Programmer And Organize Your Posts:
Once you are done with designing the content calendar now, you need to design and create the content that you want to post on any of your social media platform related to your brand and then you are advised to use any of the scheduling tool like HOOTSUITE through which your posts will be uploaded on the social media automatically according to the settings.
By use these scheduling tools you can get a lot of time that you were used to spend in posting content regularly by yourself, now you will use that time to design the content. These tools are quite handy and they have very effective results.
There are different modern technology tools called as automation tools like the AI content creator and Chatbot that will help the beginners to save their daily hours that they were used to spend in the social media marketing of their brand.
Execute Community Management:
We admit, that posting the creative and attractive content will help to boost up the brand but owner need to carry out the community management as well because they also play vital role in the development of any brand. This means that owner need to build strong community with their customers by engaging them from the social media platform. This include the question answer sessions with customers, replying to the customer in comment box etc.
Feel it like you need to extend your connections with your audience like you need to interact with them as much as they interact with you. By doing this exercise you will feel a great change like when you stay connected with your customers you will maintain loyal relation with them and you increase their trust on your brand which will urge the customer to pay repeat visits to the brand and purchase different products. You have the option to use Hootsuite streams that will automatically like and reply to the comments and engage customers with brand.
Keep An Eye On Current Trends:
The owner is recommended to keep an eye on the trends running on social media so that they can create a content according to the trends so that people get tend to pay more attention than usual. You need to spare some time so that you can check different assisting tools like social listening, through which you can get the pool of desired information through which you can understand which things your audience want to see in your post. You can make it easy by using Hootsuite tool as well.
The brand owner can use streams for their brand and set up them on different social media channels so that you can get quick notification of any query and you can respond to the customer easily.
Sale Your Products On Social Media:
Social media marketing has become so much advanced that now they had included social commerce, that is the ability to sell different products on social media, the overall global market value is $480-$495 billion in last couple of years. Almost all the social media platforms are now selling the products online either Facebook, Instagram Shops, Pinterest Buyable Pins and more.
The social commerce has deducted many points of online shopping because sometimes its quite difficult to access the website then it will give negative impact of brand on customers. So if they introduce social commerce then person can sell and purchase products on social media platforms and that seems quite easy. The chances of huge sale are on social media because there are millions of active users who can easily purchase products.
Utilize Analitics To Follow Future Posts:
When you are running a business its very necessary to keep an eye on the analytics that which things are working good for your business and which things need to address in near future. This thing can be achieved by using Social media analytics tools that will give a rough chart and show you the progress of your business and calculations of different posts that which posts have high engagement rate and which posts are of low customer interest.
This data will help you to design more accurate future content because you will get the idea that which type of content gets lot of customer’s engagement. From these Analytics tools you can also check which social media platform is helping in doing strong marketing of your small business and which platform is not supporting your content well.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is one of the most effective and powerful tool in this digital world which will help many of the small business to grow up to the next level. Social media marketing is important because there are millions and billions of active users on different platforms from all over the world and its quite easy for them to access these products from different brands. Owner just need to do a lot of struggle and put efforts in designing attractive and creative content according to the platform on which you are going to post because every platform has different features and requirements and every platform supports different type of content.
So, content creator need to do analysis and check which type of content they need to build that can attract heavy traffic of customers toward their brand. There are different tips the owner need to follow to boost up the growth of their brand and build a good image and reputation of their brand in overall industry.
FAQs:
Is it possible to do social media marketing without experience?
Well, its quite difficult to do digital marketing without any exposure to social media and marketing. There are different crash courses available that you can do to get at least the basic idea of how to do social media marketing. If you start doing it without basic knowledge and experience, then there are higher chances that your business or brand will face a huge loss in near future.
What is the best social media marketing strategy for small businesses?
Brand owner need to get spare time and draw the basic chart and refine the goals that they want to achieve and choose any platform on which they are going to work and then focus on building high quality content for their products and services that they will post on regular basis. When you follow your planning then there are higher chances of success because pre planned things work better then the unplanned work.
