By Taylor Shillam
Creating authentic connections through social media marketing is essential to every small business. Social media marketing and engagement alone can provide an unmatched level of opportunity to connect with new people within your community. Here are a few small business-specific strategies for making the most out of your social media marketing:
Develop a marketing strategy. Invest the time early on to set your goals and create a social media marketing plan. Get specific, down to identifying your target audience, metrics and desired time frames, focusing on the specific social media metrics that will best assess the growth of your business and audience.
Identify the best metrics to track. Social media metrics provide a lot of easily accessed information about the success of your marketing strategy. When boosting awareness for your business, focus first on likes, shares and mentions. Then look at your audience growth rate, the speed at which your audience grows. Metrics are readily available through each social media platform, as well as most content calendars or sharing tools. This information is vital to helping you navigate and evaluate your marketing strategy.
Get inspired. Take a look at the businesses that inspire you, and identify what they’re doing well in terms of social media marketing. Identifying success in your peers or competitors can help you gather ideas and better reflect on your own strategy.
It can be a simple assessment of the business’ social media profiles, or you can take a deeper dive into proven success stories by finding case studies online. Many social media networks will provide such case studies on their websites, providing opportunities for an in-depth look at what truly works.
Create a content calendar. There are many easily accessed social media tools and apps that can help store, organize and schedule your content. You can apply your planning and strategizing here, taking into account upcoming specials, events and holidays to maximize the interest and timeliness of your posts.
Be authentic. Real people are at the heart of every small business, and it’s important to reflect that concept in your content. Show the humanity that sets your unique small business apart, with authentic posts that reflect who you are and what your brand is. This allows your audience to get to know you, relate to you, and continue to engage with you.
Small businesses rely on social media to generate real connections with their target audience, their ideal customers, and their community. If you need support in sharing your business’ unique story with the world, Like Media and Rocket Fish Digital can help. We highlight the qualities that make your small business stand out, using top-quality content that is always specially crafted for you.
No matter what your goals are for your small business, contact us to help you share your story!