Nowadays, social media is everywhere as it provides everyone with exceptional tools that can help them reach out to their target audience and build a great relationship with them. As a consequence, every small business should always strive to boost their social media presence to get more potential clients and solidify their relationships with existing ones.
However, it is noteworthy that social media can be difficult for small businesses because it demands lots of time, effort, and other resources. Therefore, small businesses must learn certain simple yet effective ways to improve their social media presence without wasting their limited resources.
Given this, here are the five tested and trusted ways that small businesses can use to enhance their social media presence:
- Have Social Media Goals
As a small business owner, you should understand that you must optimize the limited resources you have. Therefore, it is not just about setting up your social media profiles; you need to create social media goals that you can follow to get a great result.
So, what would you like to achieve with your social media presence? Do you want to get more customers to visit your site and buy your products or use your services? Are you trying to create awareness about your small business? These are important questions you must answer as you are setting up your social media goals.
Similarly, you should make your social media goals SMART.
S – Specific: streamline your goals in a way that you can plan towards achieving them.
M – Measurable: determine the metrics you can use to decide whether your small business is making progress towards achieving the social media goals or not.
A – Attainable: be certain the goals you have set can be accomplished within a particular timeframe.
R – Relevant: make sure your social media goals are in line with the long-term targets of your small business.
T – Time-based: create a realistic deadline that can motivate you to work towards achieving the goals.
Besides, setting a social media goal helps you outline the values that you can provide to your customers. With this, you can focus on the vital things that can promote your social media presence.
- Select the right social media channels based on your audience
When trying to improve your online presence, your target should be to form a good relationship with your target audience. Hence, your choice of social media outlets should be based on where most of your audiences are found.
Therefore, before selecting a social media channel, you should conduct due diligence to know where your audiences are based. Generally, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat are some of the most commonly used social media platforms in the world today. Therefore, you should consider pitching your social media tents in one of these channels.
Apart from getting easy access to your target audience, selecting a few channels also reduces the stress that comes with posting on different channels. Typically, it is suggested that you select about 2 or 3 of the most popular social media platforms that have the majority of your customers.
- Make your social media presence personable
Generally, traditional marketing allows you to provide a one-size-fits-all message to everyone without considering their particular needs or preferences. However, social media doesn’t fall under such traditional marketing techniques. Hence, you must personalize your offers. Let your social media presence show that people are behind the posts, not robots.
To show your human part, you should make your social media message direct, personable, and understandable. This assists your audience to see you as a genuine, relatable human brand that they can relate with. Make sure that you talk to them in a language they can understand. Also, you can get the attention of several customers by being humorous. While doing all these, don’t lose the touch of professionalism.
All these efforts will go a long way in drawing more potential clients to you and also boost your social media presence.
- Always be consistent
Any small business can take a few steps to create a social media presence; however, only a few ones can continue for a long time until they have achieved their goals. You need to be one of those special small businesses that are consistent. Social media users want to associate with small businesses that they see and relate with from time to time. So, if you only post once in while or go off your social media pages for a long time, your target audience will not take cognizance of your online presence.
Although being consistent can be difficult, there are tons of tools that can always remind you to post and engage your customers. Get an editorial calendar for this particular purpose.
It should be noted that your consistency should not be limited to how often you post on social media platforms, extend it to what you post. Ensure that you have consistent branding and message. If you prefer using a professional tone, stick to it, and make your customers identify you with such a tone. Also, be consistent in discussing only things related to your business. Don’t get too involved in politics, religion, sports, and other topics that can drive some customers away from your brand.
- Hire a social media manager
Do you want to get the most out of your social media presence? Hire a social media manager. The truth is that managing 2 or more social media pages can be challenging for any small business owner. It could consume the valuable time that you could have spent on taking care of your business. Consequently, it is always advisable for you to hire a social media manager to handle your social media pages.
To save money on this, visit one of the popular online marketplaces and hire an expert who can get the job done for you at a relatively affordable cost.
If you are serious about improving the social media presence of your small businesses, you now know the right things you can do.