Social Media for Small Business: A Beginner’s Guide Part 1

Are you ready to get in touch with a broader audience?

Do you want to be acquainted with the best ways to control social media for your small business?

If your answer is YES to both of these questions, then thoroughly browse this article as it will show you the first two steps on how to make social media marketing work for your small business.

Why Use Social Media?

As an owner of a startup or small business, you know by now that there’s a lot of stuff that need to be done with only limited resources.

Although conventional marketing still works today, it will absolutely drain your monetary funds.

On the other hand, social media marketing is reasonably low-cost, and provides you a straight and easy access to your existing and prospective customers. Though, there’s a trade-off because what you save in money, you will invest in time.

Needless to say, you need to be extra smart in handling these resources if you truly want to obtain the results you desire given your limited resources.

This step-by-step guide is for new and small business owners with a handful of resources, but who want to start and work up their brand using social media.

1: Do Your Assignment

Always keep in mind that behind every successful social media campaign, there’s a prudent strategy.

Social media is about connecting with your audience on a more personal level. In order to do this, you have to understand your existing and prospective customers very well.

You can start by clearly defining your target audience. Categorize and profile your customers by gender, age, profession, interests, etc. Write down all these details and attach the most suitable images that represent them.

Next, straighten out your message. Determine the “pain points” that each of your customer profile is experiencing. After this, create your message based on their concerns and key problems, and then position your business as the one that can provide solutions.

Now that you’ve determined your audience and crafted your brand message to them, the next thing you should do is to discover which social networks they prefer.

All social networking platforms are not created equal. Each of them has their own primary audience, pace, and emphasis. It is very important to understand these differences so you could spend your resources on the right platforms.

2: Organize Your Social Media Channels

Your success will be limited if you regard social media channels as not connected with each other. Therefore, all your chosen network should work closely together to facilitate goal achievement.

Because of the fact that your website is the home base of your brand, it would be heady to organize all your social media efforts to push people into your website where they browse your offered service or product.

Apart from different social networks, you could also utilize your blog to share industry-related information using your brand’s voice. Blogs are also a great means to engage with your website visitors, and subsequently lead them into your sales funnel.

You can optimize your blog and your website for social media by adding few design elements such as social media icons. Just make sure that they are visible enough and are working properly. Surely, you don’t want your visitors get irritated just because they aren’t redirected to your social media profiles after clicking the icons.

Moreover, include call-to-actions (CTAs) in your blog posts and don’t forget to ask your readers to follow, subscribe, or like your social media profiles if they’ve found your content valuable and worthy of reading. In addition, make certain that all your content are share-friendly so your readers can easily spread the good word about your business. 

Check out the steps three to five on how to make social media marketing work for your small business: a beginners guide part 2.