Is Social Media Marketing Important For Small Business?

Social Media Is The New Customer Service Hotline

It might feel intimidating to be online with all the big companies. But there is plenty of room for your small business to engage in a meaningful way. Creating connections online with your ideal clientele is one of the most valuable initiatives to make to create trust. When  trust is created, you can leverage that trust by asking them to do things for your brand that matters. For example, getting opinions on a new launch or service. For this reason alone, social media has the ability to change the entire direction of your business in a good way. You get to determine that direction, where will you take it?

As a small business, you already have a unique upper hand for genuine connection. Because most people are tired of large corporations and all their false promises. There's a need for authenticity. So leverage that, how?

#1. Provide Free Support and Be The Solution

There is so much noise and false promises on social media, you need to position your company as the voice of reason. The first step in accomplishing this goal is to consistently provide solution oriented content and support. 

Solution based content are snippets of content that resolve an issue within your industry. So if you're in the health care industry and the problem is a lack of reliable health care providers write a blog about the top three best providers.

Then post it to your social media along with a fun quote or interesting fact. Your audience is more likely to engage because you're showing them that you care in a genuine way.

As an example we used Care Source, a health care company, to show the different post types. Observe how they us fun graphics in their solution oriented post and social proof for empowering community support. 

Lastly, the idea of encouragement or empowerment in any industry is a must! Any audience from any niche love quotes that affirm their beliefs.

Be supportive, be the solution.

#2. Be Creative In Your Messaging And Post Structure

No one likes to read boring sales copy.
Don’t fall into the trap of boring copy. Instead develop a creative tactic to build your copy. Your entire post structure should encourage people to react. 

Engage your audience so they don’t feel like your a sales person. Great copy strategy speaks 'to' the audience, not 'at' them. Consider how you talk to friends, talk to your audience with the same fun demeanor.

Your goal is to leverage the 80/20 rule. What is the 80/20 rule? It's a strategy or standard that implements 80% of your social marketing to being 'social' and 20% devoted to direct selling. More about that later. But there are a few company’s that are winning at this concept. For example, Side Projects Ohio, a company that provides a monthly co-working space for entrepreneurs.

In this post they leveraged 80%  rule. They had a direct call to action but leveraged being 'social' to engage.

After you’ve established a copy strategy your next goal should be post structure. How would you like to engage? What’s the easiest way for you to post right now?

After you answer these questions consider how much variety you can handle. We suggest having a healthy distribution between photos, videos, gifs, blog shares, and memes.

Videos typically has a higher reach, so definitely invest time in creating simple fun video and finding video online.

Also as a small business you want to leverage 'Live' video, on Facebook and Instagram. Going 'Live' on your socials provides an organic experience for your audience and allows them to connect directly with you.

That’s the main advantage of small business, there is less friction to engage with customers. And the more you engage by video the more your audience will feel like you have a genuine interest in them.

#3. Use Social To Grow Your Audience Participation

As a small business it’s vital for you to show up on your socials in order to get your audience to show up for you!

You can use social to grow your audience participation by going Live and having live testimonials from previous clients that have used your products before.

This post strategy gives your service or product validation. The more audience engagement, the more your product is validated and others will see that and become customers as well. Granted this isn’t bullet proof, so you’ll have to experiment.

Another way to use social to grow your audience is by getting them to participate in online contests. Run a post that gives them an opportunity to win a free product or service.

Have them repost to their audience to win, this gives you more reach and an opportunity to engage with your audience creatively. Once you’ve chosen someone, make an additional post about who won. Keep this incentive going and see what happens!

Having contest gets people involved and excited, because people love free! So leverage that! 

Simply put, stay active! The algorithm works in your favor...

if your consistently posting and showing up online. Plus as people are searching your industry within your area, you’re more likely to come up in the search results. If your blogging, that'ss also a great way to build up your businesses social and search imprint.
A great way to hold yourself accountable is by using automation, more on that below.

Next choose the best platform that will complement your business...

Explore the unique features of them all. For example, Facebook, we all know the basic structure being a photo with words. However, if you do your research on the Facebook post types and tools, you will find that Facebook allows you to go Live and you can add someone on the Live with you.

This is such a powerful tool for any small business. Having the option to have two people talking on a Live at once is amazing, leverage it!

Make you efforts streamlined by using automation and tools right on your phone.

For instance, use social media automation tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Latergram to automate posts. So if you work at 9:00 a.m, make the content needed for the post at 7:45 a.m and mark for it to publish at noon. It matters that you do this, so that you are leveraging the right online crowds at the right time. Plus you have the extra benefit of not having to pull your computer out at lunch to hit ‘publish’.

Lastly, there are mobile tools that help with making creative posts that are sized properly, according to the platform. Canva is a great tool to design a professional photo, post, banner, flier, etc. Automation is king!