Getting started with social media marketing can feel overwhelming for start-ups and small businesses. You don’t have to have millions of followers or a slick campaign to make effective use of these friendly tools.
Social media is one of the best ways to connect with your people. If you don’t have a presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or other networks, you are missing out customers that are ready to connect with you.
Using social media doesn’t have to be time-consuming, expensive or complicated. Using these simple marketing tips of social media, small businesses and start-ups can reach new customers, build awareness, and boost sales.
#1: Have a Plan
Every good strategy starts with a plan. Social media marketing is no different.
Without a plan, you don’t know what you are trying to accomplish with your blog posts and no way to measure your efforts. Taking the time to create a plan right up front will make sure your social efforts support your goals.
When creating your social media marketing plan, you need to set social media goals and objectives, research the competition, Conduct a social media audit, find inspiration, and create a social media calendar.
#2: Know the Customer Journey
We all know about what is best at driving engagement, leads, and sales. This may be a specific campaign, marketing channel or a category of content.
The problem is that companies don’t have a customer journey that results in a sale.
The customer journey can be a little complicated to get a complete picture of, however, there are ways to look at what type of content resonates with your followers before they convert into customers and you can talk with them to see what they find attractive in making their final purchasing decision.
There are great reporting platforms that can be used, but first, it is best to get some visibility into the steps that customers go through as they research before purchasing.
#3: Expand Your Audience
Once you have dominated your niche, you can use social networks to reach out to new potential customers.
GoSupps is a nutritional supplements company based in the United Arab Emirates. Its target audience is made up of bodybuilders. They decided to grow their business and expand the audience to a more general fitness demographic.
Using Facebook targeting options, GoSupps reached out to new customers who were interested in fitness and health. The campaign resulted in 4x return on ad spend and the company has grown its Facebook page.
You can use social media to drive new potential customers to your business and build relationships with other businesses in your local area.
#4: Learn from Your Competition
When asked how often a company should be posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. and what types of content to post, there is no right answer.
The best answer you will get is “it depends”. There is no special number of times to post per day, week or month. It is relative to the audience or the industry.
Competitors are a great place to look for help but please don’t assume that any of your competitors are doing it right.
You can look at their pages and see how often they post, how large their follower base is, What days of the week they post, what specific types of organic or sponsored content they post, and which posts get the most attention.
By analysing your competition, you can learn what is working and what isn’t.
#5: Focus on Quality over Quantity
The sheer number of marketing tips and social media options for small businesses might seem a bit overwhelming. The good thing is that you don’t have to do it all. It is more important to create quality content on two platforms than create boring and unreliable content just to share on all social media platforms.
You need to make sure your posts are valuable. If all you do is pitch, offer, and sell, there is little or no motivation for people to follow you. Social media marketing is all about communicating and building relationships. So, be honest, be human, and provide great content.
You can’t do it all, it is simply impossible and there is no reason to try. Reach out to people in the places where they are already spending time. Focus on using one or two platforms, at least in the beginning. Once you’ve got those platforms mastered, you can build from what you have learned and expand your strategies.
There are so many tips for social media marketing success, however, these five are the simplest and most effective ones for small businesses. As long as you follow these social media marketing tips for startups you will have no trouble scaling your business and attracting new customers.