- Small businesses need social media to reach modern consumers who prefer interactive and direct communication.
- Utilize free tools like animation makers to create engaging content for social media marketing.
- Develop social media goals, target audience, competitor analysis, content categories, and posting frequency for effective business promotion.
Does a small business need social media? Modern consumers often ignore traditional advertising. Their “awareness” makes it easy to bypass established channels of distribution of advertising messages. Social media has given people the opportunity to interact directly with society, share their opinions, and exchange information that is really useful.
The skyrocketing social media audience is supported by technological and interactive innovations. Consumers are looking at the modernity of brands. Even if we take a regular logo or product card for example, now the web is dominated by animated ones, because the other type has become boring for people.
Various tools are assistants here. Small business owners have a limited budget and therefore (dealing with logos and cards) the question arises “Is animation maker free?”. And the answer is yes. A lot of platforms are free, you don’t need huge budgets for logos, and for other things either while promoting your business. So now we’re going to reveal 10 simple tips on how to develop your business via social media and other useful resources.
Tip #1 Set the Top Goals for Social Media Marketing
What do you want to achieve through social media? How will you use them to promote? You need to determine what your business needs in terms of growth. For example, you can set the following goals:
- increase brand awareness
- drive traffic to your website
- distribute coupons and specials
- improve engagement with your audience
- bring a new product line to the market
Tip #2 Identify Your Target Audience
The more accurately you determine who your target audience is and what communication style they prefer, the more successful your interaction will be. If you don’t know who and what you’re selling, you will not be able to create a working content plan for social media.
Find out how old a typical client is, where he lives, how he speaks. Create a value proposition – understanding what customer problem your product or service solves. The business must have a clear understanding of:
- who is the target of messages
- what social media channels your consumers prefer
- what they read, what they share, and what topics they discuss
Tip #3 Conduct the Competitors Audit
How do your main competitors use social media? Without copying them, learning from what others do is a great way to reduce your analYzing time. The competitors’ analysis can help you learn what does work and what’s not appropriate for businesses like yours.
Tip #4 Decide on Categories and Types of Content
Your message must be relevant and timely. You need to focus on the interests of your customers, not the company. Remember, social media is about sharing, not just advertising. Educational marketing is usually more effective than direct sale pitches.
Content should be divided into categories and types. Categories are topics that you will cover on social media. At the same time, you need to decide on the format for presenting your topics: photos, videos, statuses, articles, links, polls, or quizzes.
Tip #5 Set the Frequency of Posting Content
You need to determine the frequency of their postings. This is the key point of the promotion strategy. If your followers and fans are growing regularly after two tutorials that are posted every week, then you shouldn’t change the frequency.
Content posting should take place on a regular schedule. This will help you stay on top of your followers’ interests. Publications are more noticeable if they are accompanied by pictures and videos. So decide if the designer will do it, or if you should invest in buying pictures from an external illustrator, or even create by yourselves.
Tip #6 Align the Level of Influence with Your Goals
Social media influences consumer decisions. Your followers and fans can make a big impact on your customers. When it comes to making decisions about the purchase, consumers ask their friends and family. A strong, professional, and engaging social media presence boosts your credibility. Your reach can expand beyond your fans and subscribers through connections.
Tip #7 Choose the Optimal Social Platforms and Schedule Their Coordination
There are dozens of social platforms you can use to connect with your current and potential clients. It might seem like a good idea to reach them all and have a presence everywhere, but it’s better to focus your resources on a few, carefully selected networks that fit your goals and audience. Each platform has its own unique characteristics, your content and audience may be appropriate for one network and not for another.
Tip #8 Select a Contractor for the Project
If you’re lucky enough to create vibrant and active social media profiles for your business, maintaining them can lead to full employment. You may need to hire an SMM manager. The manager’s job is to update accounts, add new posts and images, respond to user comments, including responding to complaints. This person must collect data and analyze results to figure out where to focus to increase the ROI (return on investment) in social media marketing.
Tip #9 Think How Much of the Budget & Time You Need to Spend?
If you have a small startup, you can make a minimal investment in SMM and pay only for the purchase of coverage, and create content with the whole team based on pure enthusiasm. In order to keep an account interesting, you don’t have to make a lot of expensive content right away.
Keep in mind that you don’t need to demand sales, leads, and conversions from your team if you haven’t invested in reaching. You will not promote the company’s communities by reposting to personal pages if you are not an opinion leader.
Tip #10 Analyze the Achieved Results
Tracking the bottom line of data is the best way to determine the effectiveness of your advertising campaign tactics. It makes it possible to evaluate which content works and which does not. Counting likes and audience growth is a casual part of SMM, but not the most important one.
With the help of existing analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Amplitude, you can track sales through social networks, registrations, mailing list subscriptions – in short – any conversions.
Conclusion
When using social media, it is important to remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to manage your time, efforts, and money that will bring success.
