5 Ways to Grow your Small Business Using Social Media
Social media is one of the most potent tools in the hands of small businesses today. These platforms are among the most formidable allies to grow your small business. How is that even possible?
Well, do you know that there are over 2 billion social media users worldwide? This means that the customers you are searching for are most likely on one or more of these platforms. Let’s show you how to grow your small business using these platforms in this post.
Ways to Grow your Small Business Using Social Media
In recent times, many small businesses are switching to social media instead of regular publicity methods. You can use these platforms to create brand awareness, drive sales, and reach customers. Here are five ways to grow your small business using social media:
Choose the right platform
The first step is to choose the right platform for your content. To do this, you need to figure out who needs your content. After this, you should find out which social media platforms your target audience uses the most.
You should note that the different social media platforms have different purposes and types of content. However, most businesses stick to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Learn the best practices
Choosing the right platforms is not enough, you also need to learn and implement the best practices. Each platform has its strategies and implementing these strategies with result in outstanding success.
We must tell you at this point that growing your small business using social media doesn’t happen overnight. You must put in a lot of effort to ensure that you achieve the best results. Find out what will work for you and the platforms you choose. Draw up a plan and implement these strategies. You might need to make adjustments along the way.
Set goals
Now that you have the right platform and the best practices, it is time to set social media goals for your brand. Let’s be factual, setting social media marketing goals can be quite tricky. You have to figure out what is realistic and what is only a dream that wouldn’t come true.
Some people just set goals for their businesses and in the end, these goals are too ambiguous to achieve. You need to create a balance and be specific with your goals. The best thing to do is to set SMART goals for your online campaigns. Here are some examples of social media goals you can set:
- Generate new leads.
- Improve engagement.
- Deliver customer service.
- Increase brand awareness.
- Increase website traffic.
- Boost sales or conversions.
- Gain market insights.
- Manage brand reputation.
These goals will give you an idea of what you want to achieve through your online campaigns. Usually, the goals align with broader objectives. Finally, don’t make the mistake of thinking your social media strategy is the same as your goals.
Track progress
How do you measure the success of your campaigns? The only way to do this is to track progress. However, you need to understand that the method of tracking progress is dependent on the kind of goals that you set.
Kindly note that growing your small business using social media is an individual process. You cannot measure your progress using another brand’s analytics. The good news is that different social media platforms have provided access to analytics. You can use these analytics to track your progress over a specific period.
Here are a few metrics you should consider tracking:
- Direct messages.
- Comments.
- Retweets and shares.
- Clicks
- Impressions.
- Views.
- Likes.
- Mentions.
Always check these metrics regularly to find out your position. If you are not achieving your goals, you will know through these metrics. This way, you can make adjustments to your strategy.
Create quality content
This is probably the most stressful of all the processes mentioned in this post. Without quality content, nothing that we have discussed so far is worth investing in. Creating quality content is time-consuming as you have to research, write, edit, design, share, and promote the content.
According to Demand Metric, you generate three times more leads with content marketing than with traditional marketing. Interestingly, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing. When posting content on social media, we suggest that you follow the 80/20 rule. The idea is that your content is impactful and insightful while promoting your business.
Conclusion
There you have it for how to grow your small business using social media. Do you have any other methods? Kindly share them with us in the comments section. Meanwhile, please spend some time perusing the posts on SME360 to learn more about growing your brand.
