It’s no secret that social media has absolutely taken over the marketing world. With so much data out there on customer habits, brand preferences, and personal networks, marketers would be crazy not to take advantage of social media marketing.
Here are a few astonishing stats to consider if you’re not convinced just yet:
- According to a recent study, Americans spend an average of 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using their smartphone devices.
- Approximately 79% of the U.S. population uses some sort of social media.
- Over 70% of small business owners use social media.
If your brand has yet to adopt social media marketing, or you’re still trying to find a strategy that works for you, we’re here to help. In this post, you’ll learn why maintaining a social media presence is important and how you can capture your audience’s attention. You’ll also learn some tips and tricks to help you along the way.
Research your audience
In order to make an impact with your social media presence, you’ll want to be sure you’re connecting with the right audience…your customers. Before you even launch your social media accounts, you should do some preliminary research on your customers to see how they use social media. This will help you better develop your social media content and ultimately, help you turn your social media leads into customers.
Here are a few questions to consider as you perform your research:
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- Who is our target persona?
- Which social media platforms do they use?
- Do they follow mostly personal accounts, or do they follow businesses, too?
- How do they engage with businesses on social media?
Determine which platforms you want to use
Based on your customer research and your brand image, you’ll next want to determine which social media platforms your business will use. If your brand is more visual, such as a lifestyle brand or apparel store, you might consider using Instagram or Snapchat to engage your followers, and you might even consider influencer marketing. As for B2B companies, more professional networks like LinkedIn and Glassdoor might provide more value than other social media platforms.
This is not to say your business can’t use all of the platforms, but you might want to focus your attention on one or two that work really well for you, rather than having many accounts that stay inactive most of the time.
Keep a consistent schedule
As we mentioned, once you choose a social media platform (or a few), you’ll want to make sure your brand is really good at using the ones that you’re on. One of the most important things to keep in mind about managing social media accounts for your business is remembering to keep a consistent social media schedule.
How often should I be posting?
There’s no set number of posts you need to create each day or week, but one to two times per day during the week and once on the weekends is a good rule of thumb for businesses on social media.
What if I don’t have time to post often?
As a small business owner, your schedule is often consumed with meetings, day to day tasks, and brainstorming new ways to grow your business. But that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your social media presence. There are plenty of social media management tools out there that can help you:
- Schedule posts
- Organize content
- Monitor social media analytics
- Optimize engagement
- Respond to comments
Having these tools in an easy-to-use dashboard will save you time and money in your marketing budget. It will also help you figure out which posts are doing well with your followers, and where you could use some improvement.
Take your social media strategy to the next level
Once you’ve figured out what works for your small business’s social media presence, you may want to think about taking your strategy to the next level using paid social media. Paid social media uses the intel social media platforms have and combines it with sponsored content and advertisements.
Depending on the kind of business you run, it can be an extremely effective method because you have the ability to target such specific audiences. Some platforms make it easy for you to implement these strategies on your own, but you can also search for social media advertising services in your area to help you build a strong social media campaign for your business.
Takeaways
Social media has become an integral piece of modern marketing—use these tips to help you launch (and maintain) your brand’s social media presence.