Social Media Strategies for Small Businesses
If you’re a small business owner, there’s a high probability you’re familiar with social media strategies. At the very least, you’re somewhat familiar with social media. In this post, we break down the various steps required to creating a social media strategy for small businesses.
Steps to Create Social Media Strategies
1. Choose social media marketing goals that align to your business' objectives
Set SMART goals
SMART goals, or S.M.A.R.T. goals, are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Given these points, an example of some social media strategies are:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Improving your ROI (return on investment)
- Driving people to increase in-store sales
- Grow your fan base
- Achieving a set higher quantity of sales
Track meaningful metrics
Metrics like number of likes and followers are easy to track, but how much value do they provide? Well, the truth is, it’s hard to measure. Other metrics like customer engagement, click-through, and conversion rates. If you can’t measure it, it’s hard to see just how meaningful the metric is.
2. Learn about your audience
Create audience personas
If you’ve been following our posts, we reviewed buyer personas and how they can help increase your conversion rates. In short, these personas represent three different target customers and their basic information like age, job title or industry, and interests.
Gather data
One key point to make here is – don’t make assumptions. For instance, your may think that Facebook is better for reaching Baby Boomers than Millennials. Well, survey says that Millennials still outnumber their predecessors. Think the majority of your customers are 30-year-old men? Analytics may prove otherwise. Be sure to take time reviewing your customer data to get the best picture of your target customer.
3. Know your competition
Complete a competitive analysis
If your competitors are already using social media, it’s probably a good sign you should as well. Further, performing a competitive analysis provides valuable insight into what and why they’re doing what they’re doing and how well. Additionally, this can help you spot opportunities for improvement.
Use social media listening
Surprisingly, social media isn’t all about posting and sharing content. For example, you can use social listening – or searches of competitors’ and other relevant keywords – to keep an eye on what they’re up to. This will help to inform you as to what campaigns may be more successful.
4. Complete a social media audit
Next, if you’re already using social media, it’s a good idea to take stock of your efforts. Let’s dive into the following questions:
- What’s working, what isn’t?
- Who is engaging with you?
- Which networks does your target audience use?
- How does your social media presence compare to your competitors?
It’s also imperative that you think about if accounts are worth keeping and maintaining or not. If your audience isn’t using a certain platform, it might be better to stick to the basics. Use this audit as an opportunity to keep your business’ social strategy in check.
Look for impostor accounts
During your audit, you may discover fake accounts that use your business name or the names of your products. These impostors can be harmful to your brand – and can lead to a reduced following on your own accounts. The best action to take in this case is to report them. Lastly, you can request your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts be verified so that your fans know which “you” is actually you.
5. Set up accounts and improve profiles
Decide which social networks to use
Despite your best efforts to advertise your business on a social network, sometimes they fail to gain enough recognition to be worth the investment. Of course, if you do have engagement on that platform, it might be worth keeping around. To help plan your strategy by network, write a mission statement or a SMART goal. If you cannot come up with one, it might be time to hang up the gloves.
Set up your profiles
After you have performed your social media audit, it’s time to create accounts for your business. For the best results, use high-quality images at the correct sizes for each platform. Next, use clear, consistent branding (logos, images, etc.) across your profiles so that customers can easily recognize your business. Lastly, remember, it’s better to use fewer channels than to commit to than stretching yourself thin across multiples.
6. Find inspiration
Social media success stories
Social media success stories, or case studies, can highlight valuable insights that can be applied to your strategy.
Award-winning accounts and campaigns
If you are just starting out, you might not have awards or award-winning accounts, but that doesn’t mean you can’t browse others.Â
Our favorite brands on social media
Here are some of our favorite brands on social media:
What are your favorite brands?
Do you have a favorite brand or product? Do they use social media marketing or targeted ads? Let us know!
7. Create a social media content calendar
Set your posting schedule
Creating a posting schedule involves setting the dates and times that you plan on publishing content. While you’re estimating the effort needed to craft and publish content, be sure to bake in time for engagement. If you don’t respond to questions or comments, customers may think you’re no longer in business.
Determine the right content mix
As we mentioned earlier, making assumptions is not a great idea. When coming up with content, keep your business’ mission statement in mind. If you’re starting from scratch, you can try the 80-20 rule, where 80% of your posts are informative, educational, or entertaining, and 20% of them directly promote your brand.
Once you’ve determined your schedule, use a scheduling tool to prepare the posts in advance rather than posting them throughout the day.
8. Evaluate and adjust your strategy
Generally speaking, your social media strategy is a hugely important document for your business, and you shouldn’t expect to get it perfectly right on your first try. As you start to implement your plan, you may notice strategies aren’t working well, or are working better than you anticipated.
Look at performance metrics
It is important to check the analytics within each social network you’re using to track visitors as they move through your website. Consider adding a heatmap generation tool like Hotjar to observe traffic.
Re-evaluate, test, and repeat
Luckily, once you start to get data, you can re-evaluate your social media strategy regularly. You can test different posts, images, campaigns, and strategies. Furthermore, you can pinpoint what works and what doesn’t. Updating your social strategy and keeping everyone informed helps your business make the most of its social media.
In Conclusion
Ultimately, no matter what strategy you use to market your business, it’ll take routine analysis of customer and user interaction data to know which direction to pivot next. Do you have a different way of marketing your company? Let us know or comment below.
Resources & Further Reading
15 step social media marketing strategy for businesses in 2021. (2021, January 19). Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://influencermarketinghub.com/social-media-marketing-strategy/
Lua, A. (2021, January 06). Social media marketing strategy: The Complete guide for marketers. Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://buffer.com/library/social-media-marketing-strategy/
Newberry, C. (2020, November 09). How to create a social media strategy in 8 easy Steps (free Template). Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-marketing-plan/