Social media marketing tips for small business
Digital and social media marketing is hard, we get it. Social media algorithms are perpetually adjusting, and markets are saturated and competitive. You may be at a loss for what to do next, so, here are 20 quick-fire tried and tested social media tips to help boost your social media presence and improve your social media marketing for business. You may be surprised!
20 social media business tips
1. Target the right audience segments
Without implementing audience targeting on social media, you are marketing ineffectively because you are trying to sell your products and services to the wrong people! Identify your target audience segments and execute paid advertising campaigns that reach these specific customer profiles. You can also target your ideal audience organically on social media by using hashtags, keywords, creating content that appeals and is relevant to them, and engaging on platforms and in areas where your target audience is.
2. Ensure you choose the right social media channels for your business to start with.
Go where your audience are and build your presence on those channels only. Using social media for marketing is ineffective if you’re promoting yourself on channels your audience are not. Utilise the social networks your target customers and clients are using.
3. Mix up your content output
From all the research done into what makes a social media user unfollow a brand, the unanimous answer is content. Although being unfollowed gets rid of the online users who were never going to convert, so isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is also an indication that your content is too promotional, repetitive, boring, or lacks relatability with your audience.
Overhaul your content and grow your audience on social media by mixing it up with video, reels, product shots, polls, how-tos, product previews, behind-the-scenes peeks, relevant quotes or statistics, reviews and testimonials, user-generated content and images, tips, Q&A’s and downloadable resources.
Consider your motive whenever you curate or post content – is it to educate, inspire, entertain, advise, motivate or inform?
4. Build a content bank of go-to content
Speaking of content generation, we fully appreciate that it’s time-consuming and requires a lot of effort.
We recommend allocating time each day or week to produce a batch of content material and ideas for social media. This is the process of creating a content bank – go-to content that you can post when you haven’t produced anything new to post on your social channels.
Saving user-generated social media content for later use is also a fantastic way to maintain your posting frequency without needing to create anything new. After all, you have a business to run before anything!
5. Consider scheduling your content
By scheduling your social media posts for the week, you will save yourself a lot of time from pondering over what and how to post. You can also plan out your social media marketing campaigns more effectively.
6. Track and use your metrics and analytics
Over 40% of businesses don’t accurately track their social media ROI. If you aren’t looking at your analytics, you can’t make data-driven decisions and implement your findings into your marketing strategy.
Social media analytics and metrics give you insights into your engagement, most popular content types, audience demographics, best times of day to post, and so much more data that you can leverage to improve your social media game.
7. Increase your engagement with your audience
Engagement is key to working with social media algorithms – after all social media is meant to be social! Always reply to comments and direct messages, start conversations, and engage with other brands and your customers. Doing so will improve your social media engagement rates which ultimately helps your content get seen by more people, expanding your reach and growing your audience.
8. Focus on keywords and social media SEO (yes, that is right!)
It’s been reported that Instagram’s algorithm has shifted towards an SEO focus. This means that implementing keywords (words you want to be associated with and found for) within your profile names and descriptions, in your captions and your alt text, will mean that your content is more likely to be found and seen by potential customers.
9. Partner with nano and micro-influencers
Nano-influencers (1k-10k followers) and micro-influencers (10k-100k followers) have higher engagement rates which is more effective for business advertising than using a macro or mega influencer with a large following and low engagement (typically, the larger your following, the lower your engagement rate).
Whenever you are looking to do influencer marketing, you should find an influencer who works within your niche who has a high engagement rate rather than a gigantic following.
10. Don’t focus on vanity metrics or buy followers
Buying followers may help your brand look popular, but they aren’t real followers and they’re certainly not going to engage with your business content (so Instagram’s algorithm won’t favour your account) nor are they going to buy from you. It’s pointless! Your best bet is building up a loyal organic following – which we appreciate takes time – and focusing on your content quality rather than your follower counts.
Read more about social media no-no’s.
11. Involve all your team – day in the life, meet the team, takeovers.
Don’t be afraid to show your face on your business pages – after all, people by from people, and the businesses that do the best on social media are the ones who show the faces behind the brand and their personalities.
12. Use Facebook and Instagram targeting to find more followers who match your target audience
Facebook and Instagram offer powerful, granular targeting tools that allow businesses to promote their page and products to new users who match their current audiences in demographic, contextual and behavioural terms. This is a fantastic way to advertise on social media and find new customers who will actually be interested in your company and what you have to offer, meaning there is less wastage of your campaign budget.
13. Ensure you have an FAQ section across all social media profiles
Cover opening times, services, products, questions and queries. Host regular Q&A’s to answer more of your audience’s queries.
By having FAQ points on all of your profiles, you’re making it so much quicker and easier for your audience to find the answers they need, and this builds trust and loyalty.
14. Share customer content, testimonials and reviews
Not only does user-generated content help with content output on your social media feeds, it demonstrates that you hold your customers in high regard and helps build an online community. You could have an album, or a story highlight or section specifically for user-generated content. This is a customer-centric, people-first approach that audiences love.
15. Increase your story generation
We don’t recommend posting constantly but aim to have one story every 24 hours to maintain a top-feed presence. Stories are a great base for generating conversations through features such as polls and Q&As, which helps increase your engagement rates and reach, and helps your customers get to know you better.
16. Use Twitter to enhance your customer service
Twitter is an amazing network for answering customer queries and questions quickly and succinctly. A lot of your clients and customers will prefer a speedy resolution to a service or product issue via Twitter than playing email tennis.
17. Utilise video and reels
Reels receive more engagement than images on Instagram at the moment because Instagram is trying to compete with TikTok. Carousels also receive a lot more engagement than static images do. You know what to do next – but rather than churning out a number of reels or videos a week, focus on creating one extremely great reel or video rather than lots of mediocre ones.
18. Use social shopping features
Facebook and Instagram shopping makes it easier than ever for customers to buy products or complete call-to-actions online! Social e-commerce is the future, so capitalise on this now. You can also link to and tag products and collections across your stories and feed making it super simple for users to buy in a couple of clicks, similarly to Amazon’s successful model.
19. Switch on auto-responders on messages to ensure customers you will respond to them within 24 hours or offer them another point of contact.
There is nothing more annoying for customers than a business that doesn’t respond in good time to their problem or query! By using auto-responders you can assure your customers that you will get back to them whilst also setting an expectation of how long they can expect to wait before a reply, which takes the pressure off you.
20. Use Facebook groups
This won’t work if your target audience segments don’t use Facebook, but if they do, you can start a Facebook group around your business or niche or join and contribute to others within your field. Facebook’s algorithm has made it harder for Facebook Business pages to reach users organically, so using groups and getting involved in conversations will help you bypass this and generate brand awareness. Even Facebook pages with over 500k likes only have an average organic reach of 2%.
For the ultimate social media makeover or to start off from scratch, check out LOCALiQ’s social media marketing for beginners guide.
