Blog Layout
Jayme Washington • Jun 23, 2020
10 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small businesses in 2020
10 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small businesses in 2020
For small business growth, social media is no longer optional in 2020.
As I meet with business owners, I see this issue far too often. Many have this mentality that their businesses do not necessarily profit from social media because they already have a strong brand and customers know where to find them already.
Sounds familiar to you? Don't get me wrong: It's nice you set up a loyal customer base. However, using social media doesn't only get you new clients it also maintains your existing ones by reinforcing social proof and making sure your business remains fresh in the minds of your customers.
Here is a list of 10 Awesome Tips to Help Market Your Small Business on Social Media in 2020... You’re welcome :)
1. Know where your customers hang out (And stay there)
Many times small business owners create profiles to all the social media accounts then they post content (and hope for the best). I know it seems good in theory, however, it’s like casting a broad net in an ocean -- you might catch the wrong fish. Instead, it’s better to know where your ideal customer spends most of his/her time. For example, if you’re selling to a generation Z customer, you’d be better off concentrating your social media efforts on Snapchat, TikTok or Instagram. We purposely left out social profiles like Facebook and Linkedin because these are suited to millennials and business owners.
2. Be relatable to your audience
Your audience is diverse when it comes to certain things, but they have some things in common. Like the way they talk, terminologies they use, and events they hold sacred. Your brand’s voice must resonate with your audience because the first step to acquiring a customer is to get their attention and once you’re relatable, it’s easier for them to listen.
3. Create a Posting Schedule
Planning is critical. Random or sporadic posting is not a feature of a successful social media strategy. Of course, it's okay to post sometimes when you have something very interesting or time-bound to share. But such random posts should be an addition to a daily schedule. Consistency will increase the anticipation for your content, your brand interest and overall organic growth.
4. Reverse Engineer your Competitors
Well, it’s a no-brainer that you should occasionally check on our competition, especially those that share a similar customer base to yours. This can help you know what tactics will successfully reel in your target audience.
Bear in mind when researching your competitors you need to analyze the businesses that are like yours, struggling as well as the big players that are doing stuff right. This way you learn from their mistakes and see what works without having to reinvent the wheel. No that’s smart social media practise :) … And it certainly will help your small business in 2020.
5. Balance Human and Promotional Posts
Of course, one of your end goals is to gain customers. Yet, that doesn’t mean that every post needs a sales pitch in the caption or even a link to your online store. That kind of pushy self-promotion gets old quick. While promotion is appropriate in some cases, the majority of your posts should be more human than anything. Show personality, encourage people to engage with you, allow people to get to know the amazing people behind what you offer. That genuine emotional connection will actually drive sales harder than 24/7 advertising will.
6. Choose and Use Visuals Wisely
Vision is one of the most powerful senses and it’s not hard to see why. Using sight, we collect information, adopt opinions, develop feelings, and decide on the appropriate action to take in response to what we’ve seen. By using high-quality imagery and videos, you can leverage the power of sight for a better result. You can provide information about your business, products or services. You can encourage a positive opinion of your brand. You can cause people to form a strong emotional bond with you, your story or your mission. You can move people to action!
7. Engage With Your Audience
People appreciate brands that are accessible and appreciative of their supporters.
Be that kind of brand by engaging at every opportunity with your followers. Show personal interest by asking them to share their opinions, likes, dislikes, preferences, and so forth. Like and respond to comments. Make use of more interactive features such as Facebook and Instagram Live. Invite enthusiastic promoters to submit content and then share it with your audience. There are plenty of ways that you can engage, so make sure that you block off time to do just that. Your followers will thank you for it.
8. Always Be Learning
If you’re just getting started with social media marketing, remember: you don’t need to be a guru in every area of social media to accomplish your marketing objectives. Start small and most importantly, take on a mindset of learning. Spend some time each day on social media, focused on familiarizing with the ins and outs of the platforms and trying new things. You’ll find that you accomplish more than if you rush through, trying to force outcomes. Use these 10 tips and you’ll be able to develop a solid social presence that will attract more of the right people to your small business.
9. Define your marketing goals
You can’t just blindly start posting content on social media without some sort of rhyme or reason. Before you do anything else, you need to identify your marketing goals.
While lead generation, brand awareness, and customer engagement are all good reasons to use social media, it doesn’t mean these should be yours.
You may be using social media to provide better customer service or directly drive sales.
Whatever your reasons, make sure they are clearly defined. Think of it as you would of any other marketing strategy for your company.
You wouldn’t run an ad on the radio or a print advertisement without establishing a goal first, so you need to treat your social media strategy the same way.
Once you decide the purpose of your social media campaigns, it will be much easier for you to come up with content to post. As we’ll discuss soon, it can be tough to think of ideas for new posts.
But if you can establish what you want to accomplish with your content, you’ll know what to post to achieve those goals.
10. Post content on a daily basis
This is your opportunity to stand out from your competitors. If your competition is only posting once a week or just a handful of times per month, it will be easier for you to make a lasting impression on your followers by posting daily.
Each time you post new content, you remind your followers that your brand exists.
When they need or want whatever you’re offering, they’ll think of your company as opposed to another small business in the area.
One of the reasons why small businesses aren’t posting content daily is because they simply don’t know what to post. If you fall into this category, refer back to your marketing goals.
For example, if your goal is to promote new products for sale on your ecommerce site, then post a promotional offer for those products.
Repurpose previously published content. I briefly mentioned this earlier when we discussed why you should create a YouTube channel.
Let’s say you have an instructional guide or tutorial on how to use a product that you published to your YouTube page. You can post that same video or snippets of that video to your other distribution channels.
Share new content from your website. Post links to your most recently published posts.
In addition to posting content daily, it’s also important for you to respond to your customers. I’m referring to direct messages as well as comments.
48% of consumers say that when a company is responsive on social media, it will prompt them to make a purchase.
Written By
Jayme Washington
Recommended for you
Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri certainly dropped something on everyone during his speech right at the beginning. He said, “I want to start by saying we’re no longer a photo-sharing app.” Hmmm. Many of us figured as much when a normal photo post gets 14 likes and a Instagram Reel gets 922 likes with NO AD SPEND. Yes, I tried this on my own posts. With this breaking news, what does this mean for business owners today? Were you slowly haunted by the fear of what will happen and how to adapt to the seemingly huge changes about to take place? This statement made by Mosseri undeniably had people all over social media flustered. Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app, but will it completely stop the sharing of photos feature? Certainly not. But Instagram will become an entertainment app. Now we need to understand what that means, and maybe consider a few different perspectives on this matter that’s upsetting so many users. The New Experiences in Four Areas Let’s hear Instagram’s side, once again: The first part of Adam’s video announcement, the app will be focusing on four primary areas - creators, videos, shopping, and messaging. Instagram is working to shift power from institutions to individual creators. That's a good thing...Yay!! You may want to consider that now for it surely has huge impacts, whether you’re an individual content creator or a business owner making the most of the platform. Videos are to prevail too. But will it be like Tiktok? We could discuss this later separately and in a broader sense. Shopping and messaging triumphed greatly when the pandemic happened. So introducing a new shopping and messaging experience for the users is no surprise although this has been happening for the last 10 months. Many start-ups and small businesses thrive on the platform, and it will be more of a benefit for them than a disadvantage which makes me happy. For example, for an individual or small business, online commerce will take a major role in the next “normal” on the platform. Wouldn't you think Instagram will let go of the promising opportunity that they already have with the shopping and messaging features? Instagram is a business. Simply put, they want profit. Why Videos? Whether we accept it or not, Instagram does not exist to serve us. They are here to earn profit and they will continue to do so as long as they want it. Today, videos immensely bring revenue to social media platforms. The numbers don’t lie. No matter how much users react to an upcoming change, facts are still facts. Video is here to stay. From a business perspective, a company will not simply sit around and wait for its customers to change their preferences. The usual and sane thing to do is to adapt to changes which means we all need to bring more video content into our overall media strategy. That is what Instagram is doing. YouTube is a GIANT force to be reckoned with and it Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook owns Instagram) wants some of that cash, he has to dip into sharing more videos to keep users on Instagram instead of YouTube. In the beginning, the creators of Instagram only wanted to produce Polaroid-like photos on mobile phones. Instagram only evolved into becoming a photo-sharing app upon positive reception from users. When you think about it, videos are motion pictures, right? We all love a GOOD movie, right? Nevertheless, we don’t watch the same show every single time we turn on the TV or go to the movies, or scroll through Netflix. We evolve and watch other things that interest us. As the planet evolves, we as humans also do. Our needs and wants change, and before we know it, the shift that we’re not yet aware of is already changing the narrative. So who’s ready for more videos on another social media feed? Will there be dancing videos of all sorts in our feeds for the coming months? We still can't answer that now but it’s time to get ready for it. Don’t Be Afraid of Experimenting We might be stuck but don't know it yet. It might be the users’ boredom that made Instagram's revenue go lower than other social media competitors. If users really enjoy pictures alone, why is Tiktok’s revenue double of Instagram’s and Instagram has been around much longer? That’s why this CEO of a billion-dollar company fearlessly announced that they will be experimenting in the coming months. Accused of not wanting to listen to their users, Adam Mosseri openly shared the company’s desire to experiment on what to do next. It isn't, after all, a giant and solid move they wanted to take. They are still trying to consider how users will react. No one is still certain if Tiktok entertainment will flood Instagram as well. Are You Ready for the Challenge? What shall we do if we can’t transition to videos? How about photographers and artists niching on the platform for a long time already? How do we upgrade our content to keep up with Instagram? These may be some questions most of us are asking now. And together with the leaders and creators of Instagram, we will discover the answers in the coming months. This is today, and this is happening now. All we really have to do is to adapt and embrace the challenge! This may be the opportunity to finally discover why our number of followers is not increasing significantly. Like Tiktok, maybe we need to engage our accounts publicly. Maybe we need to entertain those recommendations and dive into the trend so we can produce better content. Maybe it’s the change that we never know we need. So whether you’re an individual creator or a business/institution, just do what you do. Then add extra work on keeping up and creating your future video content, as soon as you can. Change is uncomfortable, but focus can be an antidote to it. So keep your eyes on the goal and continue shooting for the stars! You may also want to start shooting videos, too. To help you get started, I have created a video content ideas cheatsheet. It’s 77 of the most engaging topics for video right now. You can grab yours at www.thebrandsystem.org Til next time…… Jayme
Your Instagram Bio is super important. It’s your first impression and that impression has only a few seconds to land you a new follower. When someone opts to click on your name and check out your page, they’re curious. They want to see who you are and what you’re all about. This is your chance to hook them with your smarkling smile, personality and essence of your brand. Your Instagram bio is your best opportunity to turn a random Instagram user into a loyal follower, client and friend. That’s a lot of pressure for only 150 characters, isn’t it? Don’t worry, with these tips, you’ll be able to write the best bio for Instagram to impress anyone who lands on your page. Plus, if you need in-depth help to see real growth on Instagram, you should pick up my comprehensive Instagram Growth Hack PDF which is 59 pages of pure IG goodies just waiting for you.
Instagram is a great platform to build a brand and a loyal following. This social media platform allows you to build valuable connections and invite potential and existing customers to become a part of your community. It really is a special place, giving everyone the opportunity to grow a business online. If you’re having trouble growing on Instagram, this exhaustive list of Instagram growth hacks is the perfect place to start. Choose a few that resonate with you and your plans for your business and leave what doesn’t fit. Before you dive into Instagram growth, it’s important to nail your strategy. Why are you on Instagram anyway? What are you hoping to achieve and who are you hoping to connect with? It’s important to have the answers to these questions set because it would be a disaster for your engagement if you were to build an audience that’s simply not interested in what you’re offering. Once you have your Instagram marketing strategy set, use these tips to help you grow on the platform and reach the right people.
Here are 10 awesome Social Media Marketing Tips for Small businesses in 2020 to help increase customer acquisition and skyrocket your sales.
JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER
Subscribe
Site Built, Hosted, and Managed By WashTone Media, LLC @Copyright 2022 All rights Reserved