70% small businesses consider content strategy as their
primary marketing activity.
52% business owners are using social media as to efficiently
address customer engagement.
More than 20% of business owners said that they are making
50% plus profit using social media.
The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on
an application of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade
employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is important to address
the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media for small
businesses.
Social media for small businesses is a great way for
emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly
updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional
mediums. Social media for small businesses gives brands an edge of control over
the content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way
dialogue process, it helps businesses to instantly identify what is benefitting
them. Social media for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth,
which is one of the best tools for emerging businesses.
Social Media for small businesses | 10 Tips to effectively
use Social Media
Define your Target Audience
The first and foremost important part that small businesses
should focus on is to define their target audience. This helps small businesses
to device their social media strategy accordingly. The target audience should
be defined basis age group, sex, location, users' online behaviors, their
likes, interests, and preferences. For niche products, business owners can even
target users based on their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone.
Audience targeting plays a very crucial role in the outcome of the results. For
e.g.: a local shop selling footwear should not target users with interest in
entertainment. The shop definitely won't get the desired results.
Set achievable goals
Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must
understand this basic fact. Generally, when a new business starts selling on
social media, there is palpable excitement is achieving more than set targeted
sales. Businesses need to set goals which are upwards and forward. To achieve
enormous goals, small businesses start updating social feed with multiple
updates in shorter duration. This leads to user's disinterest in the
product/service. The set goals should be in sync with brand's core capabilities
and expertise. For e.g.: if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn't
set a goal to repair maximum shoes in their area.
Choose the right medium
By now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid
campaigns can be conducted at a relatively low cost as compared to traditional
mediums. It is in this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the
bandwagon and creating profiles on all the available platforms. Creating social
profile doesn't hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong
platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is
advisable for SME's to first identify the right platform through which they can
maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to
aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won't get a plausible response as compared
to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.
Promote your core product/services
Since each and every business is riding in the social media
wave, it is important for a them to promote their core product/services.
Nowadays, we see a lot of businesses promoting their services as well as
promoting peripheral products/services, which revolves around their core
product/services. Majority of the times, this SME's doesn't have capabilities
to fulfill a requirement, which can lead to a bad word of mouth for their
business on social media platforms. Let us go back to our example; if a shoe
seller is trying to aggressively promote socks instead of shoes, it is not
going to benefit the business in the long run.
Create quality content
Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the
target audience, setting achievable goals, choosing the right medium and
promoting the right product/services let us now take a look at the type of
content a business should promote on their social pages. A business should always
focus on creating good quality content rather than not-good quantity content.
Even if the business updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant
to their business, advocates about its core products send across a clear
message it is considered as a good quality content. Antagonistically, if a
business posts multiple updates which aren't even relevant to the business's
products and services leads to users considering the business as fake/spam.
Also, new businesses should try and refrain from promoting other businesses on
their social platforms initially.
Create a content calendar
Making a small business successful on social platforms is no
small task. It takes a lot of efforts for the businesses to keep up their
conversion ratio. One such effort is to create a content calendar. Small
businesses must anticipate important events and create a content calendar
accordingly. Ideally, a content calendar must be planned a month in advance but
an even weekly content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to
avoid any last minute hassles, strategize much more effectively and it also
helps in creating curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.
Test and re-test
Social media is highly unpredictable. The content a business
posts today, might not work for tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always
test their content before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also
applies to the platform a small business chooses to promote. Small business
owners must always don the consumer's hat before posting about any product
feature, updates, schemes or offers. A consumer's perspective is the key when
testing the content that has to be uploaded.
Look for inspiration
Small businesses must always look for inspiration from a
competitor who is successful in the same category. Copy pasting competitors
idea or content is not the answer. Small businesses must look for the kind of
content its competitors are putting up and derive their own strategies
subsequently. Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to
create their own content that is appreciated by one and all. It helps in
increasing brand consideration, brand visibility thereby increasing conversions
for the business.
Calculate ROI
Even a small promotional budget is not justifiable if there
is no mechanism to calculate its return on investment. It is more important in
case of small businesses. It is very important for a small business to keep a
tab on the budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI related to
it. If a certain promotion is not doing well or the business is not getting
desired results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to
generate quality conversions.
Analyze and Re-strategize
There can be umpteen instances where a particular
campaign/promotion might not work for a business. That doesn't mean that the
promotion is wrong or the product/service is not good. Doing an analysis of the
campaign is as important as setting the objective. This helps the business to
formulate their upcoming strategies in more effective ways. At the end of every
campaign, brands must note down the learning's from that campaign and identify
if the content/idea was appreciated by their fans or not. This helps businesses
to skip the non-performing updates from future communications.
Final Thoughts
Social media for small businesses is definitely beneficial
and fruitful. If followed correctly, small businesses can benefit tremendously
from the power of social media promotions.
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