Around 66% of the UK population uses some form of social media, in terms of numbers, that equates to around 45 million active social media users, all ready and waiting to be engaged with. When it comes to social media for small businesses, preparation is key. Our guide to social media marketing for small businesses takes you through all of the key steps to creating a winning social media marketing strategy.
How Social Media Can Help Small Businesses?
When it comes to small business marketing, social media can be one of the most accessible tools out there to spread the word of your brand. Creating a social media profile for your company is free and advertising on social media platforms can be relatively low cost. Social media marketing can help build brand awareness for your business allowing more potential customers to hear about what you do and engage with your company on their terms. Social media can be a great way to listen to what is working, or not working for your small business and attract new customers to visit both your in-person store and online.
What Social Media Platforms Are Best for My Small Business?
If you are new to the world of social media, you may be wondering which social media platform is best for your small business. Some of the main social media platforms for the UK market include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin. Each of these has different characteristics and different audiences to market to through them.
Creating a Social Media Strategy for Small Businesses
When social media marketing for small businesses, one of the first things you should put in place is a social media strategy. This will help streamline your social media marketing efforts and help you manage social media for small businesses in a way that works for you.
What is a Social Media Strategy?
A social media strategy for small business is, simply put, a plan of how you will use social media to benefit your company. It will detail which social media platform you will be using, what you will be posting and any budget or resource considerations. It will also detail your social media marketing goals, what you would like to achieve through promoting your small business on social media.
How Do I Create a Small Business Media Strategy?
When it comes to creating your social media strategy, it is important to take everything we have mentioned so far in our social media guide for small businesses and use it to inform your social strategy.
Set Social Media Marketing Goals
The first step is to choose some social media goals that really align with your company aims. Remember that they should be SMART goals. So, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. For example, you may want to use social media to increase website visitors who click through from a specific platform by a certain percentage over the next quarter. Other goals include things such as customer retention through monitoring social media sentiment or growing your brand by increasing brand awareness on social media.
Do Your Research
When creating a small business social media strategy, take some time to create a detailed buyer persona for your target audience. Taking things such as age, interests, location, career, disposable income and other demographic features into account will allow you to better target your social media marketing towards those you actually want to hear your message and will be more likely to be interested in your brand or product. You should also include some research into how your target audience uses different social media platforms as this can affect how you map out your small business social media strategy.
Audit Your Existing Social Media Accounts
A social media audit is also key to laying the groundwork for a good social media marketing plan as it can help you work out what is already in place, what has been done before, how that performed and generate ideas for where to take your social media plan going forward. Whilst you are doing your social media audit, take a look at your closest competitors. How are they using social media to promote their business? Is it seeing engagement?
Create a Social Media Marketing Calendar
One of the biggest benefits for small businesses starting social media marketing for the first time is the creation of a social media marketing calendar. This is a brief outline of your posting schedule for any given social media platform. Your social media marketing calendar should include information on what you will be posting and when as well as variations for the different social platforms. You’ll want to create a mix of content for your social media marketing to ensure your customers are not just hit by a constant tirade of sales pitches. Try to include a mix of website traffic generators, shared posts, company culture updates and lead-generation goals such as sign-ups for a newsletter.
Review and Revise Accordingly
No small business social media marketing strategy will be completely flawless first time and a number of economical and topical changes can take place throughout the year that may affect your social media marketing, It is important that you are able to react to this and notice when your social media marketing is seeing an impact. Depending on your resources, you may want to set up monthly or quarterly reviews of your social media marketing performance, perhaps more regularly if you are approaching social media marketing for the first time and still seeing what works for you.
Where Can I Find More Information on My Social Media Strategy?
If you would like to find out how social media can really work for your small business, contact our specialist social media team online or by calling 0121 552 6550. Alternatively, take a look at our social media services page to find out more about our social media for small businesses services.