Many entrepreneurs are struggling to find the best marketing ideas for their small businesses.
Even if you haven’t found the most successful strategy by now, you’re looking at the right place.
Let’s take the help of these statistics to convince you of the power of using social media to promote your business.
- A rise of almost 12.5% in the number of active monthly social media users as compared to the past year, which amounts to nearly 30 million users.
- 4/5th of the US population is on social media with 270 million active users.
- People are spending 2 hours and 14 minutes on an average daily on social media.
- Instagram is the favorite digital destination for US teens with active monthly users of 163.95 million.
The hours people are spending on social media are, in fact, the business hours for your company to reach the people and present your brand in style.
Here are the best marketing ideas for your small business on social media. Look no further.
1. Choose the right platforms for your business
There is no need to decide your social channels based on assumptions.
You can use demographic data available online to know where your target audience is spending most of their time. A common conception is that Gen Z is spending most of their time on Instagram and TikTok. But according to the research data, nearly one-fourth of the Facebook users are from the age group of 18-24.
Source: Clutch
When you’re struggling with the challenge of how to promote your small business on social media, being present on multiple channels is your answer to maximize your reach.
But while doing so it’s important to have a basic idea about your target market as it will make it easier to focus on the right platforms.
For example, B2B brands see 80% of their lead generation from LinkedIn. Twitter is a great help for customer service.
Creating a YouTube channel gives an extra motivation to repurpose content on different channels, especially when you’re struggling with ideas for other platforms.
2. Create content
Creating content is one of the small business marketing tips without which it’s impossible to imagine the social marketing of your business.
Though creating content as a promotion idea for small businesses might sound time-consuming to you, it’s going to pay you off with more growth for your business. Creating good content always aligns with what your audience is looking for.
Creating content requires ample research, planning, writing, and sharing that content through marketing channels.
But at the same time, you have to keep in mind the relevancy of content. According to research, 74% of customers get annoyed by irrelevant content, while 56% of customers make purchases from brands motivated by their relevant content.
3. Post regularly
Let’s say you produced excellent content around your business but it’s been weeks since you posted a new copy.
People aren’t going to simply follow your brand that is not consistent with its content.
Even if we take into consideration only your existing followers, they are not going to visit your page. It’s you who has to feed the timelines and homepages of your audience with new content on a daily basis.
When you’re using social media to promote your business, consistency becomes a must for success.
Consistency with content is also a great way to stand out in the competition. By posting regularly, you’re making your brand the first choice of people as opposed to your competitors.
4. Experiment with content
One of the best marketing ideas for your small business is to try switching content formats with time.
If your preferred social post format by now has been images, try switching to video. Similarly, try the JPG format if you’ve already experimented with GIFs. Leverage the social post formats available on each social channel, for example, live video, reels, or stories.
Experimenting gives you a clear insight into what works best for which social channel. For example, tweets with plain texts can win over those having a GIF or an image.
Whatever content you are experimenting with, make sure to give full representation to your audience. It makes your content easily accessible, and inclusive for your consumers.
5. Quality of content
Focussing on quality of content rather than quantity goes along with promotion ideas for small businesses.
Though being present on multiple channels is an efficient way of using social media to promote your business, it can be overwhelming.
That’s why creating quality content on the core channels is preferred over spending resources on every other social network. One thing to remember here is that you are using social media primarily to build lasting relationships with your consumers. People aren’t motivated to follow if all your doing is pitching and selling all the time.
The content you produce should have human character rather than industry jargon, and this is important.
Once you’ve made a good hold over one or two core channels, it’ll be easier to spread your efforts to other channels as well.
6. Increase your social following
Posting quality content regularly and making efforts to add new people to your following list- these two things go hand-in-hand.
In order to execute the best marketing ideas for small businesses, you need to have a good social following. If you don’t have enough followers, your content is not going to get much reach.
Having a lot of followers makes it easier to drive conversions. It happens because people tend to buy from the brands they’re already following on their social media.
Now to get the people to follow you, the content you’re producing must be worth following. You have to also engage with people by answering their questions or replying in the comments sections.
It shows not only your expertise but also makes it easier for people to recall your brand.
7. Live video content
Live video streaming can boost your engagement metrics to considerable levels.
According to Nielsen’s US video report 2018, 42% of the US population have live-streamed online content- a significant rise from 25% in 2017.
Data figures by Interactive Advertising Bureau revealed that 44% of live streaming video viewers said they watched less TV as a result of live streaming.
Starting live streaming will not only boost your engagement metrics but also will offer you more positive and constructive interaction with your audience.
Your audience gets a chance to comment in real-time so they feel more connected to your brand.
Behind the scenes of work videos or introducing your staff is some best online streaming content, garnering you more views because it lets the audience feel that you are showing them something exclusive.
8. Establish your brand as a topical authority
Social media platforms have tremendous potential to demonstrate your small business as a subject matter expert. Demonstrate your brand as a topical authority, a trusted name for a source of information.
The hook is the way you do it, the way you let social media help you in building your brand as a trusted name.
When you regularly post content relevant to your subject matter, the search engines identify your authority in that niche thus helping your brand become a go-to place for any topic.
But keep in mind to use only high-quality tools and trusted sources for producing content.
9. Keep an eye on your competition
To have an edge over your rivals in the industry, you have to closely monitor them, what they are doing, and the areas they’re skipping. Since your business is a low-budget one and you cannot invest much, learning from your competitors and filling in the gaps can benefit your business tremendously.
And here social media comes in handy to keep an eye on your rivals. You can use different social media platforms to monitor and draw inspiration from their performances. Notice their content quality and how they’re interacting with their audiences.
10. Track your performance
While you are using social media to promote your business, it is important to keep an eye on what works for your business and what doesn’t.
Only by monitoring and tracking the performance of your social strategies can you adjust areas of effort and get better results.
Suppose that you’re posting images of your business and offers on Twitter but analytics show there are not many impressions and clicks. So this might be indicative of changing the type of content you have been producing. What might work for another platform doesn’t necessarily perform on the other as well.
You can leverage A/B testing to scale up your social marketing success graph over time.
One of the best advantages of using social media to promote your business is the flexibility of budget and scope for trying out various tools.
Now it’s your time to align social media with your overall marketing strategy.
Finally, remember that marketing experts at McElligott Digital Marketing are there to cater to the overall marketing needs of your business.
Try our free consultation now! https://calendly.com/mdmppc
