Social Media For Small Business

Picture this. You meet someone for the first time, and they launch into a monologue about what they do for a living, how well their company is doing, and how great they are at running a business. At the end of the conversation, you realise that they didn't ask a single question about you and obviously couldn't care less about your interests. It tends to leave you with both a bad taste and feeling that, should you encounter them again, you would rather go hide in the loo than get stuck with them. 

Well, an overly promotional Social Media channel will do exactly the same! If all you are posting are thinly veiled sales pitches, your audience will get bored of you pretty quickly. 

Using Buyer Personas To Boost Social Media 

Instead, think about your buyer personas - sit down and really work out what is of interest to your audience?

For example, you run a shop that sells accessories for dogs. You've got a pretty good idea that your target audience will be dog owners, or at least friends of a dog owner - don't forget your secondary market if you offer something that can be sold as a gift!

Rather than just constantly posting pictures of dogs looking cute in your products, offer other content. Guides to grooming certain breeds, great news stories about dogs doing wonderful things, funny videos of pooches behaving badly - whatever is going to encourage your audience to visit your page! 

And while I have picked a fun topic (well I am a dog person), this does still apply if you sell, say, accountancy services. Think about what your audience are interested in, and provide them with content to match. 

Is it something I said? 

If you loose a lot of followers or likes in a short space of time, it's worth delving into exactly what you are posting. If you have posted something either controversial or in some cases, just voiced your opinion on a thorny matter. 

If this is the case, do think about how you want to tackle this in future. For example, if you mentioned a topic that people feel uncomfortable with - does it matter to you that they support your cause. If so, those who unfollowed or unliked are actually unlikely to ever be your target audience. 

However, if it's a case that it was something thoughtless and off topic take it as a lesson learnt. 

Make Sure That Your Social Media Drives Traffic To Your Site

However, having a great fan base on your Social channels is great - but you do need to sell your stuff right? The key is to host at least some of the above content on your website. Blog or news pages are a great way to encourage visits to your site, without constantly posting links to product pages. Think about your content strategy in advance, what type of articles you are going to post, and when. 

The key to getting this right is again knowing your audience. But using what's going on in the wider world will help. Things like awareness days, holidays and newsworthy events should all shape the content that you are putting out. If you run a B2B service is there a change to legislation that your customers want more information about (am looking at you GDPR)? 

When all is said and done, while your social Media channels are there to drive awareness of your brand, they are also there to help you to sell your product or service, so make sure that you are posting relevant, engaging content with the aim of making sure your customers know who you are and where to find you.