5 things you may be missing in your social media as a small business

Usually, a blog post or article like this would tell you to utilize social media. If you’re a brave entrepreneur starting a small business, you already know that. Instead, we urge that you utilize social media correctly. Here are five easily overlooked tips to make the most of social media efficiently.

 

1. Trim the fat

Starting a small business means talking about it – a lot. It means planting that seed in the minds of everybody you know and meet so that they know who to call when they need what you provide. If your business plan and sales pitch aren’t on point, you’ll realize quickly how easy it is to lose leads. Simplicity is one of the basic tenants of marketing.

Consider social media: if an advertisement pops up in your Instagram feed or interrupts you before viewing a video on Youtube, the commercial is usually short. New small businesses, know that they have a limited time to deliver their sales pitch before you keep scrolling or “skip ad”.

Apply the same thing to your daily interactions with people. When you’re asked about what you do, whittle your answer down to a point. Name, problem, solution, feed. Your business name, the problem in existence, the solution your small business is built around, then feed by showing how necessary it is for them to have what you’re providing. All within 30 seconds to a minute!

2. Know your audience

Know your demographic. Tools like Facebook have made it easy to pay for general sponsorship on a post. That post gets randomly placed on the feeds of people from all over the world. This sounds incredible, but many entrepreneurs can find out fast that hitting the “boost” button doesn’t mean your likes go up! You need to dive into the settings and target your key demographic.

If your small business sells beard oil, your demographic is largely male so you need to make sure your spread is mostly towards men. If you only ship within the USA, then why are you boosting your post all over the world? Refine it to Americans. If almost all your customers are between 18-40, then don’t target 60 year-olds. The examples are plentiful.

Toy with those settings and only pay maybe $5 at a time to experiment. Do this once a day at different times over an entire month, for example. After 30 days, you’ve spent only $150 and you’ve got data to analyze about which boost settings worked for you. Time to spend the big dollars, which brings us to…

3. Be patient

You’ve worked out your target audience by age, gender, income, profession, location, etc. Well done! Now we recommend spending a minimum of about $10 a day on boosting your advertisements, but be warned – this is a long-term game. You won’t see gains immediately. The idea is that your post is now getting in front of the right people on their social media feeds. They might ignore it the first few times. Consistency means that at some point, they’ll finally notice that “these guys have popped up numerous times in the last few weeks, so they must mean business! Might as well check them out.” There’s a potential lead!

Take your time with social media and understand that with so many new ideas flooding the market, it’s tough to grab and then maintain someone’s attention. The goal is to get your product or service in front of them enough to eventually notice. This is where you can have the edge because so many small business owners give up soon after beginning because their leads haven’t grown exponentially.

4. Provide a soft landing

Social media is not the only aspect of small business to focus on. Having great outreach doesn’t mean a curious fish will like what bait looks like after smelling something tasty from afar. A Facebook user might come across your sponsored post on their feed and follow it to your page but if it’s sparse and unengaging, they won’t be there for long. The same applies to your website.

Ensure your design is as catchy as your product is. Facebook also lets visitors to your page know how responsive you are, so achieve a fast response rate by actually being responsive! Ensure your contact details are up to date and that your product is fully described in detail. These are little things but they’re all so important in creating a legitimate and professional business that visitors can respect.

5. Use the horse’s mouth

Nielsen, one of the most respected sources for statistics about almost all forms of media, shows in one of their global studies that approximately 3 out of 5 social media users review products or services they’ve used while 60% want to provide positive reviews for the company’s improvement. Starting a small business means confidence in your product or service. Harness that confidence and allow people to review what you provide, then post those testimonials on your social media pages in quotes and on your website. New customers prefer customer generated reviews than the high praise of the business owners themselves.

 

Revisit your online presence. Are you following and incorporating these five social media tips? With social networks holding as much power over marketing as they do now, it’s crucial you tailor your social media experience to your customers so you don’t miss a lead or sale. Spice up your online presence and watch the customers flock to you!

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