According to Hootsuite, social media platforms reached 4.6 billion users in 2021, with 13.5 people joining social media every single second! Long story short, social media marketing should play a big role in your brand strategy and success. Here are a few ways to use social media marketing to grow your small business.
1. Choose the right platforms
If you’re interested in using social media marketing to grow your business, know that not all platforms are created equally. Each one serves its own purpose and they all have strengths and weaknesses. The social media sites you choose to use should be determined by your industry and audience.
For many small businesses, the right networks to invest in are Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Facebook is a great way to connect with local community groups and your personal network. Engage with them by commenting on posts related to housing or local events.
You can also spread the word about your open houses and other in-person and virtual events.
Consider sharing news from key neighborhoods to establish yourself as a thought leader.
A purely visual medium, Instagram is the place for sharing your most interesting photos and video. This makes the platform a great opportunity to build authenticity for your brand.
Target specific groups of buyers by tagging high-value points of interest near or around your listings. Use Instagram Live to tour properties and answer questions in real time.
While you can share photos and videos here too, LinkedIn is at its best when used for networking and building your industry reputation.
Make sure you’re joining and participating in groups relevant to your industry and connecting with VIPs. You can also post professional tips, share interesting thought leaders and any info that your audience would enjoy.
If you’re unsure what platforms are right for your business, look up your competitors. If they all seem to be using Pinterest or Twitter or even TikTok, include those in your plan of attack.
2. Learn best practices
The key to learning social media best practices for each different platform is time. Using social media marketing to grow your small business won’t happen overnight. Each platform has its own set of rules (both written and unwritten) and ways to connect with your audience. The best way to learn these rules is to watch what your competitors are doing and what brands in similar industries are doing. Give yourself time to figure it out.
Keep in mind that what works for someone else’s audience might not work for yours. Create a plan, evaluate your results, and adjust along the way.
Remember, social media marketing is an ever-changing world, so it may take some trial and error to find your groove.
3. Set realistic goals
This can be tricky. Sure, you’d like to have 100,000 followers on your Instagram account within the next six months. But is that really possible? And do those followers equate to true success?
When you’re just getting started on using social media marketing to grow your business, it’s hard to gauge what is feasible and what’s a pipe dream for followers. You might slave away creating a valuable piece of content that only gets a share or two. You may spend hardly any time on a tweet or Facebook post and see tons of engagement.
Don’t spend too much time and energy on worrying about your follower count. 100 followers who are engaged and enthusiastic are worth more than 10,000 random follows and bots. This is especially true if your business is highly local, like a real estate agent or a retail shop. Focus on acquiring relevant followers who live in your community, not just anyone on the platform.
Speaking of bots, or “fake followers,” buying followers to boost your numbers is a quick fix to see a larger number, but it’s not a long-term solution. It’s a bad way to represent your brand and it often leads to social platforms penalizing brand pages and businesses.
Let your brand organically grow and gain the right kind of followers.
4. Track and measure progress
How you measure your progress will depend on your goal. Using social media marketing to grow your small business is, as we’ve already explored, very individual.
And as we discussed earlier, follower count is not the only metric that matters. You should also be keeping an eye on:
- Likes
- Mentions
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Shares/retweets
- Comments
- Direct messages
You can pick one of these metrics and set a growth goal, or you can watch them all and see whether you’re trending in the right direction. Whatever your goal is, make sure you check in at regular intervals.
5. Create content
This is one of the most important and time-consuming tasks for using social media marketing to grow your small business. You need to understand what your audience wants. Then you have to spend time researching, writing, sharing, and promoting that content.
Demand Metric found that content marketing generates 3x more leads than traditional marketing, all while costing 62% less. On the flip side, consumers will be frustrated if your business provides irrelevant or uninteresting content. Irrelevant often means too self-promotional, which is why we recommend following the 80/20 rule when deciding what to post. Any way you slice it, the content you write and share has a powerful impact on your business.
If keeping up a regular cadence of interesting posts sounds too time-consuming, OutboundEngine can streamline the content creation process for you. We craft the content for you and publish it where it matters, so you’ll have more time to focus on capturing all your new leads or selling more products.
6. Share and engage
You can work with social media marketing software like OutboundEngine or you can take the DIY approach. If you’re posting your own content, you also need to take time to engage.
Most people think that replying to comments is all you have to do. The truth is, the focus for each social account should be to build a community. This community should allow people to engage with both your brand and each other.
How you go about doing that is your choice, but the first step is creating a space for them to find each other. Your audience might be car enthusiasts looking to trade upgrade tips with industry experts, or first-time homebuyers in need of mortgage advice.
Whoever they are, make sure you put in the time to get to know them as individuals. Find new ways you can help them, then create the content they’re looking for.
If you do all of this, over time you’ll build a consistent group of fans who love your work and be able to use social media marketing to grow your small business.
Final Thoughts: Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses
It can seem overwhelming at first, but by breaking down the process step by step, you will see how social media marketing can grow your small business. Finally, remember that the marketing experts at OutboundEngine are available for advice and marketing help when you need it.
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