Social Media Solutions for SMBs: 6 Tips for Initiating Your Plan
On this page, we’ll cover:
- Why you want to invest in social media solutions for small businesses
- Tips for getting started with social media marketing
- Social media solutions for SMBs from WebFX
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Why you want to invest in social media marketing for small businesses
You’ve heard people tell you that you need to put your business on social media, but how does it benefit your business? Here are three reasons you invest in social media for your small business:
1. You connect with your audience
Social media is one of the few platforms where you can connect directly with your audience. You know those who follow you on social are interested in your business and can interact with them on your social profiles.
Having an immediate connection with your audience enables you to deliver tailored information to them. Not only can your audience get valuable information directly, but they can engage with the content and ask questions.
When you have a direct connection, you build better relationships and can nurture those leads towards becoming customers for your business.
2. You increase brand recognition
Social media for small businesses enables you to increase brand recognition. When your posts appear in a user’s feed, they become more familiar with your business each time they see your content.
Each time they see your posts, they become more familiar with your business, what you offer, and your company values.
Building brand recognition is critical for earning conversions. When people are more familiar with your business, they’re more likely to choose your business when they’re ready to convert.
3. You can deliver tailored ads that increase conversions
When you invest in social media solutions for SMBs, you can increase conversions by delivering tailored ads to your audience. Social media platforms offer some of the most advanced ad targeting available to your business. You can target people based on demographics, buying habits, and more.
Tailored ads enable you to reach people who haven’t discovered your business yet. You can put your business in front of them and deliver information that’s valuable to them. Additionally, providing tailored ad content leads to more conversions for your business.
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6 tips for getting started with social media marketing for small businesses
Now that you know why social media is critical to your business’s success, it’s time to look at how you can get started with launching your strategy. Here are x tips for launching a successful social media strategy:
1. Identify your target audience
The first step to being successful with social media for small businesses is to identify your target audience. If you want to have success with your strategy, you need to target the right people who will engage with your content.
To establish your target audience, you want to look at your current customer base and identify common characteristics of your audience, like:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Occupation
- Income
- Buying habits
- Interests/hobbies
You can take all this information and form buyer personas. Buyer personas are fictional representations of real types of customers that frequent your business. These personas help you target new people that are most likely to be interested in your products or services.
When you know your target audience, you can identify which platforms to use to reach them. You can choose from some popular platforms like:
You can choose platforms where your audience spends most of their time so that you can reach your audience more effectively.
2. Use visuals to make your social content eye-catching
When you invest in social media marketing solutions, you want to ensure that visual content is part of your strategy. Visual content helps you create a more engaging and exciting social presence for your business.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn enable you to make text-only posts, but if you only post text, your audience will lose interest in your content. You want to post visual content to engage your audience.
You can post visual content like:
- Photos
- Videos
- Infographics
- GIFs
You can even use a platform like Canva to help you make professional graphics for your social channels. They even have templates!
The type of visuals you can use will depend upon your platform. You’ll want to investigate your platform first to see what you can use.
By posting visuals on your profile, you’ll catch your audience’s attention and get them to engage with your posts.
3. Create a social content calendar
One of the most important social media strategies for small business is to use a social content calendar.
When you have a social media strategy, you need to post content often. Your audience follows family, friends, and other businesses — and with so much content in their feed, you need to post frequently to ensure that your audience sees what you have to offer.
Creating a social media content calendar will help ensure you post content consistently and on a schedule.
Keep in mind that when you create your social media content calendar, you only want to plan a month’s worth of content. Planning a month’s worth of content enables you to be effective in your planning while staying current with your content. If you plan too far in advance, things can change, and content can become outdated.
You should consider using a content calendar for all your platforms. When you have all your content planned out, you can identify gaps in the month where you need to create more posts.
4. Engage with your audience to build positive relationships
As we stated previously, one of the most significant benefits of social media is that you have a direct connection with your audience. One of the most important social media marketing strategies for small business is connecting and having direct conversations with your audience.
If your audience comments on your content, whether positive or negative, take time to comment back. Show your audience that you’re paying attention and listening to them. It will help build confidence in your business.
One of the biggest benefits of social media is that your audience can message your business directly with questions. Many times its simple questions about your products or services that, when answered promptly, can nudge them to convert.
You want to answer questions quickly and efficiently for your audience. On some platforms, like Facebook, you can set up a chatbot to answer common questions fast, so you can focus on answering more in-depth or complicated questions.
5. Create a branded hashtag to see what people say about your business
If you want to have success with social media for small businesses, consider creating a branded hashtag. A branded hashtag can help you curate content from your audience that’s related to your business.
When you create your hashtag, you want to ensure it’s easy to remember and focuses on your brand. So, for example, if you own a nail salon called “Nailed It,” a great hashtag would be “#NailedItNails.” This hashtag is brand-specific and easy for people to remember when posting.
After creating a branded hashtag, you can track that hashtag to see what content your audience posts about your business. This hashtag creates an opportunity for you to find user-generated content. User-generated content is great for helping you showcase real people enjoying your products or services.
6. Run paid advertisements to reach new leads for your business
Social media is a great place for you to grow your business online. Aside from posting organic content, you can run advertisements to help you reach new people interested in your products or services. Social media ads appear in your audience’s newsfeed tagged with the word “sponsored.”
To get started with social media ads, you need to know who you’re targeting. If you already have your target audience established, you can start setting up your ads to reach them.
You’ll also want to set your ad objective. The ad objective is what you’re hoping to achieve — it can be goals like:
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase leads
- Increase sales
- Increase form submissions or sign-ups
Your ad goals should align with your business’s overall objectives.
When you create your ad, try different advertising formats to figure out what works for you. From carousel ads to video ads, you have numerous options for advertising your business to your audience.
As for your ad content, make sure you’re using high-quality visuals for your ad. A low-quality, grainy photo will deter your audience from engaging.
Overall, if you have a high-quality ad that targets the right people, you’ll drive more leads and sales for your company.
Social media solutions for SMBs: Partnering with a social media expert
When you look at social media marketing for small businesses, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of work that goes into developing and maintaining your social presence. If you don’t have the time to dedicate to building your strategy, you may start looking into other social media solutions for your business.
If you want to reap the benefits of social media while focusing on running your business, WebFX can help.
WebFX is a top digital marketing company that specializes in social media marketing and social media advertising. We have over a decade of experience in creating social media campaigns that engage audiences and get leads to convert.
When you partner with WebFX, you’ll get everything you need for a successful campaign:
- Audit of your current social media efforts
- Competitive analysis of your competition’s social media
- Brand reputation analysis
- Daily monitoring of your social accounts
- Cover profile and profile photo design
- And more
Our team of over 250+ experts will help you launch your social media campaign and track it’s performance so you can optimize your strategy to drive the best results.
So, why choose WebFX to manage your social media?
- We’re experts in our field: At WebFX, we have a team of avid, ongoing learners that are eager to help you. We’ve read over 27,000 books and stay on top of the latest tips and trends in marketing to ensure your strategy stays current.
- We’re qualified: We have multiple qualifications, like being a Meta Business Partner. You can feel confident that we have the knowledge and experience to help you create a successful campaign.
- We know how to drive results: In the past five years, we’ve driven over $2.4 billion in sales and over 6.3 million leads for our clients. You can feel confident we’ll drive the results you desire.
Invest in social media marketing solutions today
With social media solutions for SMBs, you’ll put your business on the fast track to building a robust and engaging social media presence. If you’re looking for a partner that will help you drive success, look no further than WebFX.
Contact us online for a free quote or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our SMB social media management services and social media advertising services!