How Social Media Marketing Can Help Small Businesses

How Social Media Marketing Can Help Small Businesses
Online Business Startup

In this day and age with SME’s thriving Social Media Marketing is no longer optional… Its VITAL!

Businesses make the mistake of having the “it won’t work for me” mentality. -Which can really harm a business.

“Our customers know who and where we are” is another that can harm a business.

Do these statements sound familiar to you?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you’ve established a steady client base without the use of social media.

But…

using it can help you gain more from your existing customers and the means to expand your client base. While you may think that your business’s lack of social media presence is not affecting you now, trust me it will do a few months down the line.

Other than being a place where we can share cute kitten photographs, Social media is a great way to keep on top of current trends within your sector and a way to establish your brand identity.

Social Media- A Breakdown

Social media is a group of websites or applications that allows its user to create and share content or participate in social networking.

The ability to share photos, opinions, events, etc in real-time has transformed the way we live and, also, the way we do business. In the early days of social marketing, there was little competition for the dollar—not so today. For example, you can spend thousands on a Facebook ad campaign and, sometimes, get no real return on your investment.

By its very nature, social media is a short attention span media—it is much harder to get someone's attention with a Tweet then it was to get someone's attention with a newspaper ad.

So here are a few tips on how to become a success on Social Media:

You Must Be Active

One of THE biggest mistakes a business can make is creating an account on social media with no real intent on posting, just because everyone else is doing it. Just because there is an account there doesn’t mean you’re going to get traffic, much like owning a tennis racket turns you into Andy Murray.

One of the biggest of puts for a potential client is when doing their research an old social media account pops up with no recent posts on it, engage with your audience, post regular updates otherwise you will become lost in the constant stream of posts.

Really what I’m saying here is if you don’t want to be active, don’t make one… SIMPLE!

Don’t Make It All About You

The other big mistake businesses make is to use social media to talk about what is important to them rather than talking about what is important to the customer.

Your goal should be to provide content that is relevant to your customer and engage with them to the point that they want to share your post with others.

If you use social media you NEED to engage with your consumers, involve them in the dialogue, ask for their opinions, their input, their views matter, most don’t they?

Creating dialogue leads to shares which leads to engaged followers which then leads to potentially a wider audience.

Images Are VITAL

How many times have you scrolled through your social media and saw an image that made you want to know more?

All the time, huh?

That’s because the most commonly shared content on social media is an image, so you kinda have to make them stand out.

This will dramatically increase your chances that one of your followers will share the post with their network. While building up a large network of followers is great, ultimately what you want is to have your followers—no matter how many you have—share what you're posting with their network, and those people will share your post with their followers, and so on.

This is the new form of "word of mouth" and it's what people mean when they say a post went "viral."

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