Social media marketing is the talk of the town these days. And for good reason. It is one of the absolute best ways to build brand awareness, engage your audience, and drive new traffic to your website. Social media marketing helps build a stronger online presence to successfully grow your small business.
But social media marketing is all but meaningless if it isn’t done right. Like all online marketing tools and techniques, it’s possible to put a whole lot of effort in without seeing any results. The fact of the matter is that social media marketing can be somewhat confusing and time consuming.
Fortunately, all it takes to learn to use social media effectively is a little know-how. Keep a few key tips in mind when running your social media marketing campaign and you’ll be well rewarded for your efforts.
Continue reading below for six of the best ways this one-of-a-kind marketing tool helps guarantee your company’s success. Our run-through of social media marketing’s benefits is then followed with a brief discussion of the top social media tips to get the most out of your marketing campaign.
- Learn About Your Audience
One of the most overlooked benefits of using social media as a small business is that it helps you learn more about your audience. And an understanding of your customer base allows you to then tailor your marketing efforts towards them.
Most of the major social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter allow you to access information, or metrics, about those that visit your pages. These insights show you where in the world your audience is located and what languages they speak as well as their age and gender. All of these factors can then be taken into consideration in future marketing campaigns and product offers.
- Control Your Image
As a small business, it can be difficult to craft the brand image you desire on the web. Social media is a built-in way for you to take on more control over this.
Maintaining a professional social media account is vitally important. You should also ensure that yours displays your logo and has a link to your website. Regularly posting – and interacting – with users is also important. It’s a bit like meeting someone new for the first time. First impressions (created in the first few seconds of interaction) greatly shape their eventual perspective of you.
- Find New Customers
Social media not only helps your small business better understand your current customers, it helps you find new ones.
For instance, simply sharing quality content (image-heavy content is huge right now) can boost your customer base. When you post information other people want to share with friends, your audience automatically grows. Some social networks like Twitter even allow you to seek out potential customers through geo-tag searches.
- Monitor Competitors
Keeping an eye on what competitors in your field are doing has long been difficult. Fortunately, social media makes it a whole lot easier.
Dedicating time to a social media marketing campaign will allow you to see what others in your industry are doing. You are able to see how they are promoting their business and how they are connecting with customers. You will also be able to see how successful they are in both of these endeavors.
- Improve SEO
An important side benefit of social media marketing is that it helps you improve your Search Engine Optimization. Though there are other better ways to improve SEO, why not take advantage of its social media applications?
Search engines these days are smarter than ever before. Most of them now take social media signals into account when providing search results. In fact, creating engaging and shareable content on your small business’s active social media platforms sends positive signals to search engines. Regular media activity gives your business domain authority over those that aren’t active on social media.
- Cost Effective
One of the best things about using social media marketing for your small business is that it is cost effective. There are a lot of different ways to implement it successfully. The majority of them are very cheap.
Actively updating and otherwise maintaining your social networks yourself can have a big impact. Better yet, it’s completely free. The only thing it will cost you is time. On the other hand, some people prefer to invest in professional social media marketing services. These services take care of your social accounts for you so you are able to dedicate your time to other aspects of your small business.
Top Social Media Marketing Tips
There are dozens and dozens of ways to increase the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts. However, these can be winnowed down to five. Employ these top tips in your own small business’s marketing campaign and your chances of success increase exponentially.
- Regular Posts – An inactive social media account is useless. To reap the rewards of this type of marketing, you must stay active, posting new content to all your accounts on a regular basis.
- Image-Heavy Content – The most successful social media accounts today focus the majority of their efforts on image-heavy content. Your viewers are much more likely to share content that includes videos, pictures, graphs, or graphics.
- Interact With Users – One of the biggest social media mistakes by small businesses is a failure to interact with users. When someone comments on your post, take the time to respond to them. This is a great way to build a more personal relationship with potential customers.
- Up-to-Date Information – Always ensure that the information on your social media accounts is up-to-date. This seems straightforward but you would be surprised at how many small business’s have out-of-date and unused website addresses and phone numbers on their Facebook and Twitter pages.
- Professional Image – Above all, keep things professional on your social media pages. They’re not your personal pages.
Why You Need Social Media Marketing
As a small business owner, there are numerous reasons why you should invest in social media marketing. The six benefits discussed above are honestly only the tip of the iceberg.
What social media marketing all boils down to is engaging your audience, creating the brand image you want your company to have, and increasing your online presence. Though other marketing methods can and should be implemented alongside it, there can be no denying that promoting your business through social media works.