By Karen Joyal
Social media management is much more than just posting pictures. It involves a carefully crafted and well thought out plan of attack. Done right, social media marketing can help your business grow exponentially and decrease your costs tremendously.
Small business owners can use social media as an additional channel to reach both current and prospective customers. However, managing your business and social media page can be daunting. Here are seven social media management tips for small business owners.
1. Consider a Social Media Manager
Managing your social media can be an exhausting job in itself. Between overseeing multiple accounts at once, setting up, scheduling and managing posts can be overwhelming. That’s where a social media manager comes in.
A social media manager will help you use your time wisely. This not only saves you time, effort and energy, but also you’ll be able to increase your chances of your campaign actually being successful. You can get these social media managers from websites like Freelancer, iWriter, Upwork, and Fiverr.
2. Create Compelling Calls to Action
A social media call to action (CTA) is what creates interaction, engagement, and clicks to your posts. Without these, your posts would be useless. Is it so that they can buy shoes from your ecommerce site? Then include a link to the page. Is it for them to try a new dish on your restaurant? Then include a reservation number.
Generally, calls to action are used for:
- Promoting an event
- Retaining your audience
- Closing sales
- Lead nurturing
- Sharing on social media
- Generating leads
To make solid calls to action:
- Use words that cause impact, such as, “Free”, “Do you need…?”, “Do you want…?”
- Opt for an attractive design
- Create a sense of urgency
- Give them reasons to say, “Yes, I do.”
- Make it easy and tempting
- Keep your target public in mind
3. Run Social Media Ads
Don’t be afraid of clicking that “Boost Post” button. Running social media ads can be a great way to drive engagement. Compared to traditional advertising, the cost of running a social media advertising campaign is very cost-effective.
You can also determine exactly what type of user you want to target and place your content directly in their news feed. According to LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions Blog:
- Over 41% of small and medium businesses use social media ads to drive revenue.
- More than 44% of small and medium businesses use social ads for brand awareness.
- About 80% of U.S companies agree that social media advertising is cost effective and provides a high ROI.
4. Update Often
Updating regularly on social media for your business helps in boosting your website’s SEO. This helps increase your brand awareness, among other things. But how often should you update? According to Coschedule, a review of 14 studies say that 1-2 times per day is perfect for most social networks, except for Twitter (recommendation is 15) and Pinterest (aim for 11).
5. Understand that Content is King
Content is king because it produces a huge ROI. Content improves search engine rankings and SEO results. Content gives your customer something that helps them solve some of their pain points. It informs your customers about what they need to know about your business. It’s for these and other reasons that make content king.
How you present yourself in your social media pages says a lot about your brand, and relies heavily on your content marketing know-how. For your business to be successful in this digital realm, you need to understand what language your target market uses. Should you inject young and hip words for your Millennial audience? Should you use Filipino instead of English?
6. Invest in a Social Media Management Tool
Running an active, engaging profile on several social media channels can be extremely daunting for business owners. Social media management tools help make this process simpler. A social media management tool helps to streamline and consolidate your social media efforts.
Here are a couple of these tools: Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer,Crowd Booster, EveryPost, Social Oomph and Agora Pulse.
7. Pay Attention to Audience Behavior
Learn more about audience behavior and use that information to guide your social media content creation and distribution. To do this, use Facebook insights, Twitter insights, Google Analytics, surveys and personal interactions. The more you understand your audience, the better you’ll be able to target them.
Clearly, the right use of social media management can help small businesses grow. Use these tips to survive, maximize, and capitalize on your digital presence.
Photo credit: Wall with social media sketch from ImageFlow/Shutterstock
