If you, too, think that social media is a game for heavy industries with hundreds of dollars to drain, maybe you’re shooting the chances of your business growth in the foot.
On the very opposite, social media platforms allow small businesses to expand and connect with a close-knit community of consumers- both present and future prospects.
Let’s share an interesting fact that will give a hint about Why social media marketing is important for small businesses.
An average person globally spends nearly 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media daily.
If you try to calculate an average projected over 16 to 70 years of age, a person will spend nearly 5.7 years of his life on social media!
The US has the third-largest number of social media users worldwide in 2022.
Whether you’re a corporate giant or running a local business with a small power-packed team, you have the same opportunity to proudly showcase your business.
The reach and impact of social media are impossible to neglect, especially for small businesses.
Here’s why you should be leveraging the best social media marketing techniques if you run a small business:
Why does your small business need social media marketing?
Here are some benefits that will help you understand Why social media marketing is important for small businesses and how social media marketing can help your business grow.
1. Drive traffic to your site
Small companies that have just one or two physical locations may use social media channels to attract visitors to their websites.
If we consider Instagram, for example, you may include the URL to your website in your profile bio and lead viewers to reach your website via a post in your feed or story encouraging the visitors.
Giving your social media audience a taste of what your company has to offer through postings on your feed will pique their interest and make them want to learn more about what your brand is about.
If you are running a website where you sell your merchandise and services, you can easily send people to your website using social media channels. This can boost the number and quality of your incoming traffic. You won’t have to rely exclusively on SEO to get seen on Google Search if you tap into the opportunities that social media channels offer.
2. Increase your brand awareness with social media
Social media is not only intended for friends and family to interact and socialize, but it’s used intensively for business purposes.
According to SCORE research, 77% of small companies utilize social media to promote brand recognition, improve customer service, and generate income.
According to Meta, the owner of Instagram, 83% of Instagram users believe they find new companies while using the network. These users may then share posts with their friends if they find them useful or interesting, raising the brand visibility of the company even more.
One of the social media benefits for small businesses is that social media has the edge over traditional media channels such as television, radio, magazines, and newspapers.
With social media streams, you can quickly and cheaply distribute information about your company and reach millions of the user base with the message you seek to convey.
Your social media efforts will result in more followers for your company, more sign-ups for your services and goods, and improved conversion rates than ever before on your overall marketing initiatives.
3. Quick and smooth communication between consumers and brands
You might know that traditional advertising and promotional approaches rely on corporations’ one-way conversations to win over a customer.
While social media promotes discussion and provides consumers with unique options to connect and engage for future possibilities.
At least two out of every five customers say they interact with a business or brand by “liking” what their post on social media or following those brands on social media.
Furthermore, users consider social media as the quickest way to give feedback, where they may report product concerns, submit a review, or privately communicate with a brand if they want some issue addressed.
According to data by Sprout Social, 68% of the customers are of the belief that social media helps them to engage with their favorite brands.
4. Keep ahead of your competitors
No business is suggested to mimic every action their competitors take, whether it be in the field of their core industry or marketing.
They should be aware of the position of their competitors and what they are doing. If your market competitor actively contacts its clients on social media, they are most likely to have loyal customers, and they can brag about it, and rightly so.
Just creating your social media presence and actively posting on your social media accounts benefits your business by raising its presence on search results pages. But it does not mean that you need to promote your company on every social site – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Quora, and YouTube – to demonstrate that you are active.
You have to do market research and come up with those social media channels where your brand’s voice can reach strongly and to a lot of people.
Look out for the other platforms as well where your competitors haven’t yet reached out, and fill in the gap by reaching out to your audience on those platforms as well.
Embed your YouTube tutorials and product guides in blog posts so that your audience finds it easier and more interesting to consume information.
5. Inform consumers about new products
When the Covid outbreak reduced movements, and people holed down at home, practically everything transferred to the online world. The usage of social media by consumers to discover or understand new offerings and innovations surged by 43%, a trend that is likely to continue over the coming years.
More than 30% of the customers now follow and interact with companies more than they did a year back, and they expect this trend to continue.
More and more individuals are adopting a social-first customer journey, and that is why organizations must develop forward-thinking tactics that put their products and services in the spotlight.
Another business initiative that business leaders are willing to engage in is social commerce.
It achieves the same end while making it easy for customers to transition from discovery mode to buy mode in a single stop.
6. Easily approachable by consumers
When we talk about small enterprises, or any firm, having too many channels of connecting with your client base is preferable to having too few.
Mailing addresses, phone numbers, and contact forms on websites are all useful, but if a consumer has a quick query or wants to spread the news that their product arrived earlier than expected, they will be most likely to do so via social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
Because of the real-time benefits that these social media networks provide, you can easily connect with your prospects.
Again, we’re not telling you to be running after every social media platform, but having an active presence where your audience spends time will be beneficial for your brand.
We hope that you have some clarity on why is social media important for business. Let’s dive into knowing some social media platforms.
4 Social media platforms important for every small business
Social media importance in business is very well understood if the social media platform is clear to you. Here is a list of 4 social media platforms that are very important for your business.
1. LinkedIn
LinkedIn, popular as a business connectivity platform, is the world’s largest professional networking site.
This platform enables businesses to immediately promote their products and services on their LinkedIn business page, providing users with an instant overview of the services your company provides. You may demonstrate your brand voice by using the detailed About section of the platform.
As a free promotion, your company may even publish previous customer reviews of your products or services on your LinkedIn account.
LinkedIn has a powerful base of 250 million active users, and when B2B ( business-to-business) marketers need to put out content, it is their favorite social media platform.
If you want to connect with professionals working at other companies and network online, LinkedIn is just the place.
If someone follows your firm, it means they are likely interested in the information and views you can provide them, as well as business-related updates useful for them.
Whether you know it or not, LinkedIn is also an excellent video platform. Your engagement rates will see a great rise if you can make a product video or an informative video related to your industry.
2. Facebook marketing for small business
If you’re the owner of a small business, you should take full use of many Facebook features.
You can easily further information by sharing pieces on your Facebook posts and in the stories. Firms may form Facebook groups that attract like-minded individuals and other enterprises as well.
You can also ask your marketer to run Facebook advertisements to promote your brand and reach out to people who may be interested in your offering.
One of the most distinctive tools offered by the platform is Facebook Messenger, which your business can use to communicate with, assist, and deliver updates quickly to clients.
With a big active monthly user base of 2 billion, Facebook is a must for every type of business if you want to target a large audience on social media.
You may find it interesting to learn that based on the people who connect with your posts on Facebook, you can build a target audience for running paid social ads.
Content to create on Facebook
Facebook is primarily a social networking site. If a person is following your Facebook page, they are most likely seeking your company updates: they are interested to know about future deals and promotions, learn about new products of your company, or hear about planned launches or activities.
You must engage with your followers and provide them with relevant material that will keep them in the loop. Try publishing a variety of content in text and visual formats to evaluate what connects most with your audience in terms of impressions, interactions, and social shares.
Continue sharing information and customer reviews in this manner until you’ve discovered what sorts of information and updates your audience reacts to.
3. Twitter marketing for small business
The microblogging site popular for its unique ‘tweets,’ Twitter has a character limit that demands users to put crisp and brief information about something on their minds.
Tweets may help smaller firms to establish a consistent brand voice that resonates with their ideas, engages potential customers, and targets the most befitting audience.
Posting industry-relevant and engaging tweets to your feed allow you to communicate with clients who referred to your business on their profile, whether good or bad feedback. Twitter can also help you track your success metrics, allowing your firm to know what works and what simply does not.
Content to create on Twitter
With an increase in the character limit for Twitter posts, you get more freedom as to the posts you want to create.
Businesses use Twitter as a feedback and customer service platform as the customers can reach out to the brand with a single post tagging the brand, and that too in no time.
Twitter facilitates sharing of over 500 million tweets every day, and it has a massive user base of 320 million.
When it comes to relaying national and international news, Twitter is the most trusted social channel for users.
4. Instagram
Let me make a confident guess, you have a personal profile on Instagram, and you opened it at least once today.
Of course, you should be a part of a 500 million user base (active), and so should your business.
With the short-lived story format, you can connect with your audience at any time, and share your industry news, photos, or maybe just an interesting meme.
Since Instagram is connected to Facebook, you can directly set up paid ads within Facebook, and there is no need to set up the ads on an additional platform.
With the latest trend of short videos or reels catching up the fire, you can share real-time ‘after, ‘before’ videos of service towards a client and more content pieces like this.
Need a complete social media strategy for your business?
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