Social Media Tips For Small Businesses

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING• Why social media is often neglected

• Why every business should have a great social media strategy

• How to create viable social media goals

• Social Media tips to engage your audience

COMMON REASONS BUSINESSES NEGLECT SOCIAL MEDIA• Too busy concentrating on orders, deliveries,

managing staff and other obvious “profit making” areas.

• Time consuming, 25% of business owners need to spend at least 10-15 hours a week on social media.

• Difficult to “start” the wheels turning. Many businesses get dampened by poor interaction levels.

WHY SOCIAL MEDIA SHOULD BE AT THE FOREFRONT OF YOUR BUSINESS• Market yourself to hundreds or thousands

of people by building brand awareness.

• A signal of trust and credibility.

• Gives competitive edge.

• Tackle customer service issues.

• Damage limitation.

• Get impartial feedback about your business.

• Be the first to hear about growth opportunities.

TOP 4 SOCIAL NETWORKS: TWITTER

• Our recommended starting point for any social media marketing.

• Extremely social - connect with people that you don’t need to “know.”

• Easy to gain targeted followers based of their interests.

• Simple to join in on relevant conversations.

• Can monitor social mentions and respond to complaints quickly.

• Update multiple times a day without “annoying” followers.

Top Twitter Tip: If your business is relatively unknown then create a profile with a person rather than a faceless business logo. IE.

TOP 4 SOCIAL NETWORKS: FACEBOOK

• Much harder to gain likes without inviting “friends to page.”

• Difficult to promote your page to people outside your network without paid adverts.

• If successful it is one of the most converting social networks. Customers are more likely to buy via Facebook.

• Posts remain visible for a longer time than Twitter.

• Successful posts get more visibility which helps posts become viral.

• Great fan page analytics so you can “see” which posts were successful ad change your strategy

TOP 4 SOCIAL NETWORKS: INSTAGRAM

• Very hard to gain traction unless you have visually based products (though not impossible with the right strategy!)

• Easy to create content and promote it with relative tags.

• Gives a great visual showcase to your business or brand.

• Difficult to link to website content or product pages.

• Easy to build up interaction by “hearting” other user’s posts.

• Easy to target users that will be interested in your products.

CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Think about your target audience, where are they looking daily online?

Define which social channels work well for your business and why. TIP: Double glazing sales aren’t great for Instagram!

State what type of content you are looking to post, what this is going to say about your brand and what you hope to achieve by posting it.

Decide how often and what times you are going to post. If you sell products targeted at new parents they probably won’t be checking their Twitter at 9pm! Business people won’t be checking at 11am so think carefully.

CONTENT SINNERS

• Selling your products and services on every single post. Yawn!

• No post consistency. A user should be able to go down the page and get a personalised feel for your company.

• Posting for the sake of posting.

• Spelling mistakes and bad grammar

• Nothing originally created by your company. Recycling and rehashing is good to an extent -but original content is more impressive and likely to get shared.

CONTENT WINNERS

• Pos

• Useful art

• Posting for the sake of posting.

• Spelling mistakes and bad grammar

• Nothing originally created by your company. Recycling and rehashing is good to an extent -but original content is more impressive and likely to get shared.

TOP 4 SOCIAL NETWORKS: INSTAGRAM

• Very hard to gain traction unless you have visually based products (though not impossible with the right strategy!)

• Easy to create content and promote it with relative tags.

• Gives a great visual showcase to your business or brand.

• Difficult to link to website content or product pages.

• Easy to build up interaction by “hearting” other user’s posts.

• Easy to target users that will be interested in your products.