Having a business and a basic business plan nowadays is not enough to be successful. You need to invest in marketing and building your brand. While there are many different kinds of marketing you can explore, digital marketing is becoming more and more important as technology grows.
A big part of digital marketing is your social media marketing plan. Using social media helps increase brand awareness and ensures that customers and potential customers know what you are selling. Additionally, the frequent communication social media offers can help build a confident and trusting relationship between you and your audience. Unfortunately, many small business owners don’t have much time to give to an intense social media campaign. However, there are still ways the busy business owner can build a strong presence for their business on social media.
Do Your Research
You can start out by finding out which platforms your target audience uses most. These can be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, or other platforms. You will likely find that your audience uses a combination of these. Because of that, it’s good to have accounts on multiple platforms, but don’t overload yourself. Only focus on the ones most likely to catch your audience’s attention. For example, if you sell a product used mainly by crafters, you might want to focus on Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram because these are very visual sites many crafters and hobbyists use for inspiration and instruction.
Plan Your Content
After this, you can then plan out your content. Think about how you will introduce your brand to your audience, how you will engage them and keep them interested in following your brand, and how you can generate sales from the interest.
Your content should not be like that for big businesses. You just need to get captivating and short messages that are straight to the point and that people can easily understand. This ensures you save time and that you also don’t overfeed your clients with information.
You don’t have to do the posting and interactions physically. You can also automate that process which is time and resource-consuming.
Schedule Content
Many small business owners worry that they’ll need to take time every day or two to post on social media and keep their customers engaged. This could end up taking up significant amounts of time each day, eating at your productivity and profits. Fortunately, you don’t have to physically post every day. Instead, you can automate your curated content. This way, you only need to take time once in a while to schedule posts, but your social media accounts stay active and effective while you focus on other things. There are several different tools you can use for scheduling and analyzing your social media content and users’ interaction with it.
Interact
One of the most important parts of effective social media marketing is interacting with your audience. If they ask questions about products, you should answer them. If they share feedback, try to respond quickly. If the feedback was positive, thank them for the great review. If the feedback was negative, reply professionally and take the constructive criticism into account as you move forward with your business.
Furthermore, you can set up questions to be posted automatically to your story or feed, which will then ensure your audience can engage with you. Contests are also a great way to spread the word about a product or service.
Best part is, you do not have to provide immediate responses. Block out some of your time to answer questions and reply to comments and your polls. Your audience will feel part of your brand without you having to be glued to your phone all day.
Use Social Media Management
Alternatively, if a few days focusing on social media every month is too much or if you need help creating engaging content, you can consult with a social media management company. They can help you figure out which platforms would be most effective for your business, when the best days and times to post would be, and what content is most engaging for your audience. Additionally, they can handle creating and posting your content so that you don’t have to worry about it. You can even ask them to take over replying to customers who comment on posts.
Social media marketing is becoming an integral part of many businesses’ marketing strategies. It is especially important for small businesses who need to build awareness for their brand, product, and services. However, that doesn’t mean that it should take up all of your time. Use these tips to build an effective and efficient social media marketing plan.