In this day and age, social media has grown to the point where it is nearly impossible to ignore. Facebook has well over 200 million users within the US, Instagram has over 100 million, and Twitter is at just under 70 million. These numbers are continuously growing and with such a large proportion of active social media users, having an effective social media marketing strategy has become an integral aspect for all types of small businesses.
Building Your Social Media Presence
Before you begin developing a social media marketing plan, you will need to create social media profiles that accurately portray your business with well written content and quality imagery. It is important to maintain some continuity between your business’s social media pages. Because each social media platform has its own set of rules pertaining to character count limits and image sizes, you will need to populate each profile accordingly without losing sight of providing a professional representation of your business on all accounts. Once you have created and added the cornerstone content to your social media pages, you can write and publish a couple of relevant posts, giving new visitors to your profiles a small taste of the benefits your business offers its customers.
Growing Your Social Media Following
Your business may provide the best products or services in your specific industry, but if potential customers aren’t aware of that, how are you supposed to turn them into new business? To build your social media following, you may want to start by non-obtrusively inviting current acquaintances and customers to “like” or “follow” your social media pages. This helps you establish a base of followers so that when newcomers visit these profiles, they can see that your business has at least some recognition, furthering their capacity to trust in your brand. It is also important to keep your followers engaged. Creating and publishing unique, quality content can lead your current followers to share that content, expanding its reach. Make sure to respond to all pertinent comments and messages on your pages, enticing users to continue engaging with your brand while boosting the overall positive perception of your business.
Expanding Your Reach and Growing Your Business
Once you have built a decent organic following, you can begin developing and implementing social media marketing campaigns, targeting the people who are most inclined to buy your product or service. Each social media platform gives you access to powerful advertising tools, enabling you to specify the demographics of the users you want seeing your ads. As with any effective advertising strategy, you should create compelling content that increases the likelihood of users taking the desired action; whether it be calling to schedule an appointment, clicking through to purchase a product from your website, or whatever your specific goal is.
Building on Your Success
After running a social media marketing campaign, carefully analyzing the results will help you learn how to make your next campaign even more successful. What worked? What didn’t work? Which demographics had the most positive response rate? Taking the answers to questions like these into account can aid in increasing future ROI, helping you achieve your desired results at lower costs.
