How Small Businesses Can Improve Their Social Media Presence

Social media doesn’t just impress people. It impacts them as well. These days there is no question or choice on whether we indulge in social media. It just depends on how well we do it. Companies can build and nurture relationships with their clients over social media. Engaging the audience and making the businesses approachable to them is simple over social media when compared to the other forums. Some of the advantages of social media marketing are Brand awareness, cost-effective, market place awareness, increased traffic, and higher SEO rankings.

Here are some crucial and effective tips for small businesses to improve their presence on social media platforms

Use the right metrics to monitor the progress

Usage of social media is growing leaps and bounds and every month there are more active users than the previous one especially on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snap chat. According to your goals, picking the appropriate site and locating the target audience is the main strategy and it is not always necessary to be present on all the sites at once. Social media relationship building has several benefits. If you want to take advantage of all the benefits, then spend ample time for showing an impact by interacting with your audience on social media.

Be consistent

Social media is ideal for brand building and recognition. Every post should align with your brand and image.  Everybody will bring their personality to their posts if multiple people are assigned the same task.  Limiting the number of people responsible for posting will help on the point that everybody is on the same page and similar thoughts. This will help in streamlining the entire process.

Practice the virtue of patience

Social media isn't a one and done process.  It takes time and patience to develop a reliable presence. Spending at least 15 minutes a day to monitor your channels and respond to questions and conversations will help by using the correct tools of automation.  In terms of posting on various sites, the right number matters, and schedule seasonal posts. For LinkedIn and Facebook, it is advisable to limit posts to five times a week. Twitter changes so quickly that the more you post, the better. With Pinterest, 11 pins a day is the magic number, according to the data experts.

Draw a line between promotions and engagement

Even though the practice of social selling is popular among salespeople and marketers, the actual process of using social networks to drive growth is much different. It’s best to use social media as a tool for engagement and communication than for active promotions. Businesses need to keep their promotional content to 20% and the rest should meet the needs of your audience.

Be relevant in engagement

As we have already discussed, social media is about connection and engagement and we need to build and gain the trust of your audience. There are many ways you can engage with your audiences like the following;

•  Appreciating customers
•  Conducting Q and A sessions
•  Addressing their grievances
•  Sharing useful and knowledgeable content
•  Commenting on their posts
•  Starting and participating in user-related conversations
•  Know your competition

Using the right automation tools

There are plenty of automation tools available to automatically publish posts and schedule posts according to your requirement. Tools like Sprout Social, Meet Edgar, and BuzzSumo, can save your time by allowing you to plan and schedule batches of posts at once.  They can also be used to monitor your networks and promptly respond to messages.

Understand your audiences

The type of content you should be sharing and the way you engage your followers depends on the interest and needs of the audience. Success lies in understanding your audience perfectly in social media marketing for small businesses. Factors like age, location, gender, goals, likes, needs, behaviors, challenges, and pain points play a major role in assessing the audience. The content you share should always be of high quality and relevant. Using videos, images, and other types of visual content is recommended as they are popular among all demographics and audiences.

Work towards perfecting your strategy

Designating the person or people who will be part of the social media team is an important step and their roles and responsibilities are to be explained clearly so everybody knows what's expected from them. Posting frequency and content calendars are a big part of your strategy. Research competitors and differentiate yourself on the aspects like:

•  Type of audience
•  Topics and subjects of interest
•  The usable content already prepared
•  What kind of content has to be created?
•  When and on what platforms content has to be posted

Setting attainable and realistic goals

Customer service, engaging customers, generating leads, expanding your audience, driving sales, increasing web traffic, gaining valuable insights and feedback can be achieved by a strong social media presence. Techniques for driving sales will be different from the approach to improve your customer service. So, it’s important to know what you want to accomplish and work towards that specific goal by conducting local search marketing.

Choose the right platforms

The advice from many experts is to join four of the most popular social media sites. Here's some information on those sites to pick the right channel to target:

•  Facebook is the largest platform with 2 billion-plus active monthly users. This site is ideal to generate leads and build relationships.
•  LinkedIn is the platform for business networking and can be used by both B2B and B2C businesses to build authority and engage the audience.
•  Twitter is perfect for businesses providing sensitive information like breaking news, announcements, and trending topics.
• Pinterest is a fantastic platform for businesses with visual appeal and it’s great for driving sales as many users explore the site for purchases.
•  Snapchat is one of the fastest-growing social networking sites and businesses can flourish by offering promotions, providing personalized content, and building relationships with influencers to improve brand recognition.
•  Instagram and twitter strategy for small businesses will emerge victorious as their popularity is undwindled.

EIS incorporates all the tools and technologies needed to meet the challenges of tomorrow with our professional services like messaging services, E-commerce, and Social media marketing. We ensure that your business is on the right track with our incomparable and innovative metrics!