SO finally you’ve decided to be your own BOSS and started your business. You must have a shiny new website created for your brand. What Next? Let’s show it off and grab attention from masses! After all, it’s being your ultimate goal of starting the business. You want people to visit your site, but not just any people. You want the right audience for your brand. Creating content as per your buyer’s persona & then effectively distributing that content will go to get that new website to work for you.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) for small businesses is a hot topic of discussion these days. It’s indeed a powerful weapon in your marketing war chest in today’s competitive world. But, unlike anything you must need a game plan behind it. Without an effective Social Media strategy, you are not able to attract more eyeballs to your brand.

Before discussing the importance of Social Media Marketing for small businesses, let’s take a look at the concept of social media marketing:

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing (SMM) is internet marketing technique, which makes the best practice of social media channels via creating and sharing content over it to increase the online presence of a brand. It involves posting text & image updates, videos, visuals, links & other content which interests your target audience. It also includes paid social media advertisement to drive audience engagement.

Role of Social Media Marketing in Small Businesses

As a small business owner, you are continually struggling for new ways to get your brand on the radar of potential customer. Social media marketing is an excellent way for small businesses to engage with their current customers and attract new ones. Interacting with your audience over social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. proves to be an effective marketing strategy for small businesses. Applying social media marketing to your business help, you build your brand awareness and increase your customer base. Excellent marketing strategy on social media can bring exceptional success to your business, driving better leads & sales.

According to a survey, 73% of small businesses use social media as their marketing tools for branding. Are you one of them?

Here are a few reasons why Social Media Marketing for small businesses is essential, have a look over it:

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

Social media marketing has result oriented advantage for small businesses over the big one. Why? As the social media success doesn’t depend upon the number of followers a company has, it relies upon the percentage of engagement the brand has with its target audience.

(The image shows the importance of online presence for small businesses)

Below are some of the benefits of social media marketing for small business:

    Increasing website traffic

In today’s tech-savvy world, it becomes mandatory for companies to build their websites to market their products and services. But just creating a website does not ensure users visit. The site has to be promoted to increase its traffic, and there is no better way than social media to do so. Social media help small businesses to boost its website, thus raising more visits and eventually increasing the number of customers.

    Collect customer insight

The success of any business depends on how they respond to their customers likes and dislikes. And it’s just not an easy task to personally meet every customer to know their preference. Posting daily updates on social media via the tweets of your customers, talking about your brand, running virtual reports can help you keep connecting to the customer’s preferences.

    Generate a buzz

There are multiple ways of advertising & promoting your business. You can post daily updates about any happenings in your brand via business blogs, which could relate to the introduction of any new product, information about product features, etc. You can create a buzz among people by sharing the launch date of your new product with photos or video to make an atmosphere of anticipation for your customers. It helps you build potential customers for your brand.

    Breaking geological boundaries

Social media holds power to promote even a small business by far to the farthest locations. If your business is tech savvy, you can turn up to an online store to virtually help your products & services. It will give your customers the ease to buy a product from the comfort of their homes. You can make the use of location-based apps, to know your followers and the area they come from which will help you to understand where to concentrate more.

    Faster content sharing

Advertising is all about to share the relevant information with your clients & customers. The faster the advertisement reaches to them, the better it will be. Here, social media plays a vital role in small business to immediately share and broadcast essential updates & news about their company. All you need to do is publish relevant content over company’s social network account and spread it to millions in a single click.

You must be thinking of how you can take advantage of social media for marketing your business? Here you get the answer as well… To help you plan better online presence across social networks, here are some social media marketing tips to help you engage and grow your business in a better way. Read and follow the tips for success:

Social Media Marketing TIPS for Small Businesses

• Gain Control of Your Online Image

An image is essential Online. It’s just like meeting someone for the first time; you usually decided in the first minute whether you like them or not. Same goes for brands, as much quicker. Make your social pages looks more exciting & professional; it must have your brand logo, link to your website, bio & other information related to your business and are active. There’s nothing worse than been to a Facebook or Twitter page which is not having any profile or cover photo or hasn’t been updated timely.

• Interaction

Social media marketing is not just about posting content on your business pages; it’s about people. It’s about being human and giving a voice to your brand. People use social media to connect with people, to get entertained & to find information. They use the platforms to ask questions, share content & talk about their interests. Are you there to respond to their problems? Well, you have to. Social media marketing demand you to consistently engage with your audience, reply to their queries & comments and build long-lasting relationships with your customers.

• Cost Effective

Social media marketing is a cost-effective marketing technique. Admittedly, it’s free to post any photos on Facebook, taking part in industry Tweet chat or uploading video over YouTube, but costs is calculated in your valuable time. Time costs money. Invest your time wisely and be there where your target audience is present. Don’t waste your time being on every social media network out there; it won’t work. Target on few social networks that give you the most bang for your buck, it may vary depending on your audience. Know your audience & their presence.

• Monitor Competitor Activity

Online tools like Hub Spot and Hootsuite help you to keep an eye on your market competition. You can open up the continuous stream which targets the name of your business competitors or keyword phrases. You can check what people are talking about in conversations that are important to your business.

• Impacts Organic Search Results – SEO

Google is smart, actually brilliant! They continuously work to give the user the most relevant search result. Social media signals have become one of the crucial factors in ranking websites in search results. Creating engaging & shareable content on social media platforms signals to search engines like Google that user likes your content and thus giving you domain authority over sites which are not active on social media.

Conclusion

Remember, the bigger and more engaged your audience is on your social networks, the easier it will be for you to tick on every other marketing goal on your list!

Social media is an essential technique for your brand marketing. It gives your business a voice & a competitive edge. Keep in mind, even the best of efforts can fail without a road-map setup. Strategize your marketing techniques, determine your goal & find out the kind of content your audience likes to consume & share, and be consistent.

Want to learn Social Media Marketing for upgrading your business? Skillzlearn can always help. Join our classroom training or online courses today. Visit www.skillzlearn.com or call on 8800226570.