If you have a small business you may be wondering whether social media marketing is right for your business. In fact, most small businesses don’t get it. They think that social media marketing is about posting your company updates but the whole goal is to promote sales and boost revenue.
Social media marketing is a powerful tool and a key component in most modern marketing plans. As a small business owner, it is time for you to learn how you can make the most of your content this year and drive customers through to sale.
Be consistent
Social media marketing is all about consistency. As a marketing professional, you should ensure that you have a plan to keep your content consistent in tone of voice, style, and timing. If you currently post 3 times a week on your social platforms, ensure that you stick to this schedule and make sure you are able to create content that shows off your brand and keeps people aware of you as they live their daily lives.
Plan ahead
When creating a content plan for social media it is important for you to plan ahead and give yourself a few weeks of content at least. Planning ahead makes your life so much easier because you will always have content ready to go should you have a lapse of creativity or a quiet week. Make sure that you schedule using a tool such as Buffer and this will allow you to focus on your other work and come back to planning content when you are ready to.
Create a calendar
The best tool you can have as a social media marketer is a social calendar. This will allow you to plan out your posts throughout the year ensuring consistency as well as quality.
A calendar can be made in sheets or on excel and is simply a place for you to brainstorm, come up with ideas and write down your drafts.
Create different types of content
When writing content for social media it is important not to stick to only 1 type. There are so many different types of content you can share such as articles, images, carousels, videos, reels, stories, pins, infographics, and more.
Consider the different types of content you could bring to your feed and ensure you start creating some clever content that grabs the attention of the audience. Keep it fresh and make sure to use multiple media to create an interesting feed that people will want to follow and engage with.
Run ads
Ad campaigns are the easiest way to get results on social media. As with any form of marketing, spending money to put your brand in front of others is important and it can be incredibly useful to do.
Make sure that you utilize the creation of social media campaigns and target your audience to pull them in. Once you identify who your target audience is you can create audiences for your social media platforms, and ads will either generate conversation, likes on your page, or leads to your website.
Integrate with HubSpot
Using a marketing tool such as HubSpot is a useful way to help you understand your social media posts as well as track them as they funnel through to sales. Once you start gathering information of customers, you can build contacts, generate leads, and funnel through to sales.
Engage with your followers
The main reason why social media is so useful for companies is accessibility. When you are trying to engage and sell to your customers, it is important to be accessible to them and social media allows this.
Use social media to talk to your customers and address concerns. This will be a great way for you to bring together your audience and build a foundation of trust and rapport.
If you are chatty and friendly with your audience, they will trust you more and be more likely to choose you over a competitor.
Use UTM tagging
If you haven’t tried UTM tagging before – this is something you should input into your social media presence. The aim of social media is to drive customers back to your website and to a sale. But how will you know if your social campaigns have led to a sale?
Using UTM codes on the end of your URL links will allow Google Analytics to track where visits to your website came from, and as a result you will start to see the true impact of social media for your brand.
