2021 saw around 60% of the world
on social media. Businesses understand the importance of such a statistic. Organizations have been making social media marketing a focal point of digital marketing strategies, greatly increasing the popularity and momentum of the marketing channel. Social media platforms, on the other hand, have been rolling out business-specific features to let brands market and grow their space with ease. However, a common misperception believes social media to only be effective for large businesses. Here are a few statistics from Fundera:
- Out of the internet users aged 16 to 24, nearly 75% say they turn to social media to find details about brands and products.
- Consumers who interact with a business on social media stay 40% longer with them compared to those who do not.
- One small business in five does not use digital marketing.
If you are from among the businesses that have not begun using digital marketing, read on to find out why and how you should be leveraging social media for your small business.
Why Social Media Is an Effective Marketing Channel
The effectiveness of social media for businesses is rooted in a number of reasons:
1. It Facilitates Engagement
One of the most notable aspects of social media is the ease with which it allows communication. This is particularly helpful for businesses. Consumers can send messages for instant communication anytime and leave comments on products. Business owners, on the other hand, can see how their products are performing through quickly receiving reviews and suggestions and viewing analytics. Polls can be created on many social media platforms for easy collection of feedback as well. Making efforts to engage with your followers further shows them that you care for their opinions. This empowers both brands and consumers and helps businesses create loyal customer bases.
2. It Lets You Tell Your Story
Social media lets users engage with the human behind the business. By putting a human face to brands, especially small ones, social media turns shopping into a personal experience. Companies can tell their unique stories through social media channels; their evolution and growth become apparent to customers through timelines and feeds as well. Showing commitment to work and brand values can win you loyal customers. As consumers connect with people behind the businesses, they become more likely to support them.
In addition to sharing their development stories, brands can also highlight the experiences of past customers with their products and services. Doing so will enable viewers to understand your brand’s performance and see its growth.
3. It Helps in Finding a Like-Minded Community
Shopping has long since evolved from the impersonal experience it used to be. The algorithms of social media platforms use activity patterns to drive users of similar tastes towards each other, collecting like-minded individuals. This lets small, specialized businesses become a part of communities rather than loom onto communities from external space. Not only has this made finding a target audience and reaching out to prospects easier than ever before, but it has also facilitated connection-building, enhancing experiences for both business owners and consumers.
4. It Lets You Interact in Real-Time
Numerous social media platforms allow users to go Live. Such features are extremely convenient to relay real-time information and receive instant reactions and feedback. For example, businesses can host live sessions to show new product launches and see the viewers’ reactions in real-time. Events like surprise giveaways or behind the scene videos of promotional campaigns with influencers, etc., can be shown live to consumers to capture their interest and engage with you.
5. It Allows Easy Collaboration With Influencers
The words of friends and family, along with reviews, have a huge impact on consumer decisions. If you manage to successfully start conversations about your products or company values, you can grow awareness about your brand and set it up for more sales. One of the most renowned ways to do so on social media is to partner up with influencers. As influencers have a decent number of engaged audiences, they can effectively direct the attention of a large number of people towards your brand. Be sure to invest in developing mutually profitable relationships with relevant influencers and let them use their creative freedom to express what they genuinely feel about your brand.
How to Make the Most Out of Social Media
The usefulness of social media platforms for small businesses is undeniable. Below are a few things you need to be mindful of if you aim to make the most out of social media:
1. Tailor Your Content to Your Target Audience
You can only harness the power of social media to let you target audiences and communities if you tailor your content to your audience. This begins by ensuring your brand voice reflects the age group or generation you are targeting. Visuals, captions, can be and marketing campaigns can be adjusted to do so. Choosing a mood or a theme for your posts and color palette can further let you build your brand around your and your audience’s preferences.
2. Prompt Engagement
You actively need to use the engagement-specific features of social media platforms to ace it. To do so, you will have to periodically dedicate a few posts specifically to engage with your customers. Keep replying to comments and messages whenever appropriate and feasible. Asking for opinions through polls, arranging giveaways, and collecting feedback on certain products are great ways to improve your engagement statistics and ensure that you stay knowledgeable regarding your consumers’ tastes. You can set targets and reminders for yourself to make sure you do not stay behind on engaging with your customers. For example, you could arrange a giveaway once or twice a year, or post a poll once a month.
3. Focus On Quality Over Quantity
Keep in mind that the frequency of posts, though vital, is less important than their quality. Your audience may not prefer it if you dominate their feed with four posts a day. Stay relevant and focus on working carefully on posts before you make them public. You can use platform-specific tools like Instagram and Facebook stories that appear separately and disappear after 24 hours to maintain the frequency rather than making every post a permanent part of your timeline or feed.
4. Use the Right Tools
A number of third-party services are available for individuals and businesses aiming to expand their social media presence. These range from platforms that provide analytics to enable you to gain insights from graphic designing tools to platforms that help you grow your social media presence organically. Such services can be a great way to benefit from specialized third-party expertise, and they can quickly generate substantial returns on investment. However, you need to make sure that you do not purchase services that increase your followers through bots as such tactics can be damaging to your reputation in the long run. Social platforms are also aiming to eliminate bots as well.
Endnote
As small businesses have smaller customer bases, they have an advantage over large businesses in how they can engage with those consumers more to turn them into long-term customers. Therefore, they should invest more of their time, effort, and capital in maintaining and growing their presence on social media. If you own a business and are looking for service providers to help you grow, head over to famoid.com to get a hold of the best social media services out there.
