A Complete Guide to Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

Jayme Washington • July 30, 2020

Your First Complete Guide to Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

When you are a small business with physical presence, you have the liberty and the time to connect with your customers face to face. Where are your products from? When did you start the business? How long have you been in the industry? How did you get the muse to commence? You can answer all these questions.

However, this is not just true in the case of stores that have a physical presence. It can be applied to social media as well.

Imagine you are an insanely rich person who does not always have a count of how many people serve in your house and who exactly these people are. Now apply that to big companies. When you are a huge corporation that caters to customers all over the world, or even pan country, you do not have the time to provide your customers with the customized attention that they need.

But, being a small business owner you can step beyond the robotic responses to your customers. Honest responses directly catering to the individual queries of your customers is what provides you with the competitive advantage over big companies.

The idea of social media marketing has turned from an idea into a reality. It is something that has become the part of the marketing world. Just as robots and AI have materialized in the real world. You must have heard about it by now, and so have your peers.

If you are in the world of B2B you may not be entirely sure of how to capitalize on the opportunity presented by social media marketing. Businesses belonging to the B2B sphere are traditional and unwavering on the notion that they cannot reach out to potential clients on social media. This is true for platforms such as Facebook which has a daily active user count of 1.13 billion and is only on a daily increasing trend.

If you are a small business and you are skeptical about the use of social media, this is the perfect article for you. Read on!

Small businesses are generally dubious about the ability that the business possesses to tap into the potential client base. In this article we will hand hold you through the process of making the most of your social media network.

Why small businesses need social media? How can you make social media marketing work for your small business? What is the role of content marketing in the world of social media marketing? Some people may tell you that there are stupid irrelevant questions, but what do they know, right?

All these questions will be addressed in this article which will become your first complete guide to social media marketing for small businesses.

Before we begin, take a look at this:

Every tool is best used to their maximum capacity. Like this toothpaste. Just when you think you have made the optimum use of social media, BHAM! We will hit you up with tricks and tips that will only help you make a better and greater use of the platform.

We are going to reveal exactly how social media marketing will prove to be beneficial for your small business and what you should be doing when speaking to and advertising to your potential customer base. The ideas presented in this article will not only help you in creating engagement and capturing leads by means of your social media channels but also assist you in sticking to the best practices when it comes to marketing on social media.

This will help you really scratch the end of the barrel and churn up results for your small business.

The spot we will hit by the time you are done reading this article is to not only help you understand and admire the magic of marketing on social media channels, but also get you to understand that it can work equally for all businesses, big or small.

So let us begin!

Why Does Your Small Business Need Social Media?

Today, there are 81% of small and medium businesses who have active social media accounts as per an email marketing software called YesMail.

Considering that you are a small business with no social media presence, one of the following must be true for you: you have either not been successful in your effort to market via social media, or you feel that it is too late to become a part of the race.

Marketing on social media is efficient. Once you get the hang of the “techy” Facebook Ads Manager you will get to know that marketing on social media is less complex than marketing via any of the traditional channels. In fact it can also prove to be more efficient as it allows for specific target niche audiences to be reached out with an allocated budget.

As a marketer you do not waste your money or ad spent showing your services and products to an audience whom you have not targeted and who may not be interested in your brand in the first place. In fact nobody likes to just throw money away and not get what they are looking for.

Social media marketing is also one of the most cost effective and economical ways to advertise. As per a report released by the Search Engine Journal, Facebook is actually 88% cheaper than Google AdWords.

Social media also allows for a deeper connection with the audience of your brand. We know that not everybody is on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram simultaneously, but most of them spend time on at least one of these social media platforms. This is the reason why 77% of the small businesses are harnessing the power of social media to advertise their brands.

To start off, you may want to put your focus towards one of these platforms and provide your users with infographics and engaging visuals to bu

ild a connection. This process will help you learn more about the kind of audience your brand is attracting online.

All in all, we know that social media marketing is here for the long haul. So you might as well get ahead of the competition and start capitalizing on the advantage that it provides.

Why Do You Have the Content Marketing Advantage?

When it comes to social media marketing, content marketing rules the world.

In the world of content marketing, video marketing has come about to be the leader in the world of content strategy formulation. Videos have become the single most popular source for customers to drive and receive information from.

We need to take the support of facts that may seem boring to you, to show how true this is. Let me prove that with the use of numbers:

Various online resources have been quoted to state the following:

Organic search results are 50 X times more likely to be driven by video content as compared to text-driven content according to Omnicore

Results from an organic search are improved by 157% when a video is included in the post as opposed to when it is not, according to Search Engine People

The percentage of companies making the use of video content have risen from 63% in 2017 to 87% in 2019 according to Wyzowl

Along with spending time on social media, video viewing is ranked as the top two activities performed by users on the internet according to Smart Insights

Videos based on products have a 144% increase on the sales of the said product as per Neil Patel

Video content influences around 64% of the viewers into purchasing a product according to Forbes

Retweets are 6 X higher when videos are included in it as opposed to when static images are used as per Wochit

As per Omnicore, around 9 in 10 companies have made video a part of their digital marketing strategy

So it goes without saying that videos are important; they have become important over time. Brands have grasped this concept and have incorporated the video marketing strategy left, right, and center, in the formulation of their marketing plans. What is even more important is how significant the role of videos have become on almost every social media and online platform that exists.

Videos rule the social media world. It’s not just “the world of YouTube.” Billions of people consume video content everyday and if you aren’t creating you are consuming. I would prefer you do both, consume to get ideas and then create a video on what you learned.

Moreover, there are millionaires being made just by making VIDEOS! Here’s a quick video on how millionaires are made on YouTube:

Research shows that the top six channels that customers use today to watch video content are all social media driven (Oberlo, 2019). This video below actually breaks down the types of YouTube viewers. Can you guess which type of viewer you are? Watch now and leave me a comment below to tell me which one:

This trend is not slowing down in the coming years. As per Facebook’s EMEA Vice President Nicola Mendelsohn, the mentioned social media platform is predicted to be ‘all video’ by 2021 (Fortune, 2016). This goes in parallel with the CISCO report stating that more than 82% of all website traffic will be driven by video content by 2021.New Paragraph

In one line, it has become integral for businesses today to make video marketing a part of their overall growth plan, otherwise they will be at a certain threat of being left behind.

The Complete Guide to Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

Now that you have all the facts and you have become aware of the benefits of social media marketing for small businesses, the question that arises is: How do you start social media marketing for your small business?

Let’s take a look at the outlook of social media for small businesses in 2020. We will provide you with the social media marketing strategy that your small business needs.

First and foremost you need to account for your competitors and develop your target audience in order to be able to choose the best social media platform for them. A few tools that can help you in the process include Ubersuggest, Mention, and BuzzSumo.

Second step is to carry out a social media discount or promotion campaign or an online competition for your fans and followers. This video will help you in running a profitable social media contest as a small business. This step is important as it is one of the top five reasons brands have social media followers.

Now that you have an audience, the next step is to start posting. Your content should be educational as well as entertaining at the same time. It should reflect the personality of your brand and communicate exactly who you are.

Next, considering you have a physical presence or a brick and mortar store, you should be motivating your in-store customers to convert into active social media followers. QR codes, digital displays, and signages are a few effective ways to do so. This is the last and most effective way to expand your social media reach

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we know that social media marketing is definitely not a waste of time or resources. The idea of social media marketing is not so much an idea in the current times, as a norm.

In fact it can also prove to be more efficient as it allows for specific target niche audience to be reached out with an allocated budget. Hence as a marketer you do not waste your money or ad spent showing your services and products to an audience whom you have not targeted and who may not be interested in your brand in the first place.

Social media marketing is also one of the most cost effective and economical ways to advertise and allows for a deeper connection with the audience of your brand. We know that not everybody is on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram simultaneously, but most of them spend time on at least one of these social media platforms.

To start off, you may want to put your focus towards one of these platforms and provide your users with infographics and engaging visuals to build a connection. This process will help you learn more about the kind of audience your brand is attracting online.

All in all, we know that social media marketing is here for the long haul. So you might as well get ahead of the competition and start capitalizing on the advantage that it provides.

Use the tips provided in this article to start your social media presence today. You may want to analyze your target audience and map out your buyer personas as a starting point. However, we know that this can be a highly intimidating process for beginners. Not sure of where to start? Reach out to us and we would be happy to assist you.

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