5 Social Media Tips
for Small Business Success
The best social
media tips for small business
The biggest failures small businesses
encounter in social media come from not knowing who their customers are, who
they’re competing against, which channels to target, and how to engage their
audience. Most are unaware of native analytics available in all major social
networks and don’t know how to integrate their online and offline marketing
activities or how to automate their social scheduling.
In this blog, I will show you seven important
social media marketing tips that every small business should know before
embarking on its social media journey.
1.Know Your Competition
Remember that having competitors who target
the same people is great because you can always check what worked for them and
what didn’t, and use this knowledge to adjust your own strategy.
My advice is to start with the big fish. These
guys are doing something right to get the kind of follower count and engagement
they have, so why not learn from them? There are a few ways of doing this.
Use Facebook’s Pages to identify your
best-performing competitors and compare their activity, engagement, and
audience growth to your own. You can see exactly what content they’re posting,
how often, and at what time of day they’re posting. Remember to not only look
at follower count but total engagement: it will tell you how their followers
are interacting with the content. Brands with high engagement rates are
typically the ones to watch.
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Facebook Pages Social Media Example
Not entirely sure who your competitors are?
That’s ok. There are tools out there that can help you find the competitors you
might not have been aware of. For example, with SEMrush’s Competitive
Positioning Map all you need to do is to enter your URL, and the tool will
automatically compile data showing you your top competitors, how much traffic
they’re getting and the keywords they’re ranking for:
·
SEM Rush Competitive Positioning Map
Pay special attention to the bubbles located
above you and to your right. They represent the competitors whose total traffic
exceeds yours and who are ranking for more keywords than you are.
This report will give you a good idea of who
has a strong online presence, and who is investing heavily in marketing. Brands
investing in marketing and getting plenty of traffic typically have strong
social presences, so they’ll be good ones to check out.
If you need more advanced social media
competitive analytics, tools like Rival IQ, SproutSocial, Klear, or SEMrush can
provide them. They will help you track your competitors’ social pages to see
how their posts perform, how much engagement they receive, which hashtags they
use, and what special offers and competitions they’re running on social.
Note: Never skip the competitive analysis part
if you’re just starting out. Your competition has tried-and-tested
recipes of what works and what doesn’t. Use them to your advantage.
2. Pick the Right Channel to Target
There are a lot of social media channels out
there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be on all of them.
If you are starting your social media journey
from scratch, it’s advisable that you pull together a survey and ask your
customers which social media channels they prefer or use the most.
If you’re already active on social media
channels, check their efficiency. Compare the size of your audience across
different channels, your engagement, and engagement rate metrics. For example,
the overview report in Social Media Tracker shown below will give you an idea
of which channels are worth putting effort into:
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Social Channels Social Media Tracker Example
Another way to pick the right target channel
is to analyze your competitors’ activity. Check which channels they put their
energies into, and start targeting them too: your chances of getting noticed by
the relevant audience will double.
Bonus Tip: Be ruthless in getting rid of some
of your accounts and prioritize your social media marketing capabilities. Not
ready to make videos? Skip YouTube. Don’t have time for blog writing? Leave it
for now and concentrate on one or two channels.
3.Simplify Content Creation
Creating social media content does take time,
but not as much when you have the right tools at hand.
For example, Ino reader will help you find
relevant content and keep up with your favorite information sources. The tool
allows you to save web pages for viewing later, and subscribe to social feeds
(even with the free version you can subscribe to as many sources as you like).
Photos and videos you take on your phone can
be easily processed with tools like Canvas and VSCO right from your mobile
device. Tools like Buffer, Sprout Social, or SEMrush Poster will help you with
scheduling and posting your content across different social networks.
Social media managers are always at risk of
making small errors, and social media can be merciless if you make a mistake.
Use tools like Grammarly to keep your brand’s reputation intact.
To find hashtags, use RiteTag—it is an
absolute must-have for any social media manager. The tool gives you tag
suggestions for images or text on any site or social network. All it takes is a
right click on the image or text.
Key Takeaway: have you ever heard about the
80/20 rule or Pareto principle? Apply this rule to the time you invest in
social media. Plan 80% of content in advance, and spend the other 20% on live
conversations with an audience.
If you don’t make an effort to automate your
posting routine, you will never have the time to focus on the essential things
that can truly help your business.
If you manage several social networks at once,
consider tools like Hootsuite and Social Media Poster. Instead of switching
between multiple tabs to post your content in each individual network, you will
be able to schedule content for all your social profiles from one tab and
create a personalized posting schedule. You’ll have multiple scheduling options
as well, whether you want your post to go live immediately, schedule it for
later or create a draft and revisit it later:
5: Interact with Your Audience on Social
There are two sides to this.
The first one is about monitoring your online
mentions across the web and responding to them. The other is about not
forgetting to respond to your followers’ messages on social. Both are crucial
if you want your business to succeed. So how do you manage both?
People will talk about your brand across the
web. And they will either be happy with your brand and want to say thank you,
or they’ll be disappointed. You have to respond to both types of mentions, be
it a positive review or a total diss.
Social media monitoring tools such as
Mention.com, SEMrush Brand Monitoring, or Brand24.com allow you to track and
categorize your online mentions, find influencers, and identify new promotional
opportunities.
If you have more than one social account, I’d
definitely recommend trying Buffer Reply. It helps you keep all your social
conversations in one team inbox and respond to them right from the tool’s
interface. Another great thing about Buffer Reply is that it provides you with
sufficient data about the person you’re talking to, allowing you and your team
to create personalized responses.
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