The 7 Top Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners

Digital Marketing Strategies

Bill Gates once said, “Content is king.” He’s got a point when you look out how people now interact with the internet for a huge amount of their needs in recent times. Gone are the days of opening up a large physical directory or product catalog and flicking through the pages to find a service or product.

Nowadays, using social media as a way to advertise your business is in full swing! But how do you go about advertising your products or services on these platforms?

Well, in this guide we’ll run you through seven social media marketing tips to create an effective marketing campaign. These tips will be especially useful for small business owners that want to start making waves.

Read on to learn more!

Set Relevant Business Goals

To create the best social media marketing for business, you first must identify business goals that are relevant to your business. Ask yourself, do you want to increase your brand awareness? Or, maybe you want to get people talking more about your products or services (community engagement).

You may want to achieve several goals, but you have to prioritize one. This way, you maximize the effectiveness of your social media marketing strategy.

It’s also crucial to be realistic about your goals. For small business social media marketing, try to set small achievable incremental goals.

For instance, you might have a goal of achieving 1000 likes on Instagram to start off. Then, the next goal could be 10,000 likes, and so on. And just so you know, there are websites for buying Instagram likes that can be really helpful to give you an initial boost.

Three of the main goals that businesses focus on tend to be:

  • Increasing their brand awareness
  • Growing their brand’s audience
  • Generating leads and sales
  • Developing community engagement
  • Driving traffic to your website

As we mentioned, it’s best to pick one to start with and focus your marketing campaign around that goal. Then as time goes by you can look to achieve other goals alongside your primary goal or even switch focus.

Research Your Target Audience

Once you have your primary and secondary goals in mind, the phase in your planning is to properly research your target audience. Social data is a powerful resource that many businesses don’t make the best use of.

And we should point out that each social media platform has different types of audiences that regularly them. One way to explain this is through social media demographics.

For example, younger generations tend to use YouTube and Instagram more than Facebook. Plus, on Pinterest, there are proportionally more women users than men. Then if you’re looking to appeal to a well-educated audience, LinkedIn is a good place to advertise your products or services.

The point is, be aware that some social media platforms will likely be much better for your needs than others when looking to develop your business. So do your research! And that also means researching the social data you already have available to you on platforms you currently use.

KPIs and Metrics

So you should have your goals in place and a good understanding of your target audience. Now, it’s time to get more into the details of your marketing campaign.

You need to set key performance indicators (KPIs) so that you’ll have metrics to measure your progress. Some common metrics you’ll look at in social media marketing are:

  • The number of clicks you get
  • Each post’s reach
  • Your posts’ engagement levels
  • Your hashtag performance

You can use these metrics to understand whether your posts’ are effective or not. These will be the guiding factors that either keep your advertising on the same path or force you to change your strategy.

Have Engaging Content

For any social media advertising to work, you need to have engaging content. Even if your adverts reach thousands of people if the content you provide them is poor quality, why would they click on it to learn more?

A good idea is to choose a content theme and then stay with it. This creates consistency with your brand’s message.

Post Content Regularly

If you want to make an impact with your marketing campaigns, you need to post your content often. If not, you are going to get drowned out by the competition.

Try to research the best times in the day, week, and month when your content will be most effective for your target audience. For instance, stay-at-home mothers may browse social media at different times to a factory worker. And if you are looking to appeal abroad, make sure you consider different time zones.

Keep Assessing Your Performance

It’s no good setting up all your marketing, launching it, and then leaving it for a few weeks to see how it’s doing. Instead, you need to keep a close eye on all your marketing elements and their performance.

To do this well, try to set up a timetable where you check key metrics during the week. Then, if things aren’t right, have time allocated to consider the changes you need to make.

Be Open-Minded

Sometimes, it’s too easy to think you know the best course of action when it comes to marketing. But if things aren’t going well, it can leave you scratching your head thinking what’s gone wrong?

A good way to get around this sort of dilemma is to let other departments take a look at your marketing and see if they have any suggestions. By doing this, you’re opening yourself up to new perspectives which could help your business grow.

Social Media Marketing Tips Explained

You’ve now got a full range of social media marketing tips to consider. The crux of it all is, though, to research well and then measure your performance with all the information you have to hand.

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