33 Simple Social Media Tips for Small Businesses

As a small business, social media must be on your radar! With the amount of coverage social media gets, it’s almost impossible to avoid.

You can’t go anywhere or do anything without the importance of social media being rammed down your throat. You must be sick to death of hearing about it and I’m sure many of you are now terrified by some of the things you’re reading.

“Ignore social media and your business will die” is pretty much the gist of it all.

Whilst I believe these claims are somewhat exaggerated, I do think that social media is not only extremely important for small businesses, but also provides an amazing opportunity.

Here are 33 simple social media tips I've used in the past to great effect.

1. Choose the Right Platforms for Your Business

With so many social media platforms out there, it’s tempting to throw yourself at all of them. Whilst I admire your enthusiasm, this isn’t a good approach.

Harnessing social media is a big commitment and will take a great deal of time and energy. Therefore, a better approach is to pick 2 or 3 social media platforms that best suit your business and your brand. Choose social networks where you know your target audience are spending their time. There is no point concentrating your efforts on a platform that your customers never use.

2. Cut the Sales Bulls**t!

The clue is in the name. Social media is meant to be sociable!

The last thing people want is the web’s equivalent of a door-to-door salesman or a cold caller on their social network. If you attempt to use social media purely as a sales platform, you will almost certainly fail. If you have a special offer or promotion you’re running, by all means post it. But if all you do on your profile is sell, you won’t generate much interest.

3. Make Your Website Content Easily Shareable

Whether it’s a blog post, an ebook, a photograph, a video, or even a product page, make sure it’s easy for your website visitors to share your content. Adding social sharing buttons to your website is extremely easy to do these days. I’m sure you’ve seen them all over the web and have probably even used them yourself. This will vastly increase web traffic to your site and also help you rank higher on Google.

4. Run Competitions

Competitions are a great way to attract new followers and generate interest on your social profile. I’ve had a great deal of success in the past, particularly on Facebook, where with low value prizes I’ve been able to attract thousands of new followers.

The trick to competitions is to choose a prize that your target market would appreciate. It’s very tempting to pick a generic prize like an iPhone, the trouble is with a prize like that, you’ll certainly gain a load of new followers, but the majority of them won’t be interested in your product or service.  They’ll be there purely for the prize.

Be sure to check the network’s terms and conditions regarding competitions. Some networks have some pretty strict guidelines and the last thing you want is for your profile to be removed.

5. Promote Your Social Profiles in Your Email Newsletters

If you’re sending out an email newsletter to your subscribers, a great way to gain new followers is to put links to your social profiles in them. This is great for a number of reasons. You can gain new insights into your email subscriber base, it opens up another communication channel with your subscriber base, it encourages newsletter recipients to share the email with their own social networks, and it also gives your newsletter subscribers the opportunity to give you feedback.

6. Make the Most of #Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to join or start a conversation outside of your social networks. Platforms such as Twitter, Google+ and Facebook allow the use of hashtags and they can be a great way of making new connections and expanding your brand’s reach.

An example might be that there is a small business conference that you’re at and you want to tweet about something you’ve seen. To associate the tweet with the conference you would use the hashtag that they’re promoting, lets say #SmallBizConf. By doing that you’ll be joining a conversation with everyone that has done the same thing and people using the hashtag will be able to find you and converse with you. Powerful stuff!

7. Post Interesting Content from Your Website

Social media can be a great way of driving traffic to your website. If you’ve just created a new piece of content on your website that you think your followers will be interested in, post it on your networks. Whilst this is a great way to drive traffic, it is also a great way to start a conversation. If people like what they see, the chances are they’ll leave some feedback and also share it with their networks.

8. Always Respond to Comments

If people take the time to leave you some feedback or a comment, try and respond. This is a great way of building a vibrant social community around your brand. You’re far more likely to stick in the memory of your users if you respond to their questions and feedback. After all, that’s what social is all about right, socialising!

9. Use Social Media for Customer Services

Most companies hate receiving complaints. And now that every man and his dog is using social media, complaints are more public now than in any other time in history.

As a marketer, I absolutely love it when people complain through social media. Don’t get me wrong, I would never want to be bombarded with complaints. But the odd complaint can be a big asset for 2 very good reasons.

A complaint is a great piece of honest and constructive feedback. It may highlight a problem in the business that needs your attention.

When a complaint is made in public, you can respond publicly. When people see that you’re doing your best to resolve a customer issue, you build a level of trust with that customer and all those that see your efforts to resolve the situation. You may find that by responding to a complaint, you pick up additional customers.

10. Answer Questions

On all of these social networks, people are asking millions of questions. When people are asking questions, it often means they have a problem they’re trying to find a solution for. Many of those questions will be something you can help with whether it be through your product or service, or simply your expertise. With many social platforms offering advanced search facilities, it isn’t hard to find potential customers that are asking questions that you can answer. Go and find them.

11. Don’t Ignore Google+

Google+ has gone off the boil somewhat since it first entered the social arena. However, I still believe it's a strong and powerful platform. Whilst Google may have decided to let it go a little there are still communities on Google+ with hundreds of thousands of active participants.

12. Use Images and Video

The use of images and video really brings your social profiles to life. Instead of just posting text or links, try producing some video or images to add to your feed. Your posts will have a much greater impact on your audience if there is something visual there for them to consume.  Remember to keep it relevant and interesting. In a study carried out by HubSpot in 2012, it was discovered that posts that used images accounted for 93% of the most engaging content on Facebook. You can’t argue with stats like that!

13. Take Advantage of Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising has only recently become a viable option for small businesses. Now that many of the social networks offer an easy to use and affordable social advertising platform, small businesses could greatly benefit from it. Social advertising is extremely powerful for a number of reasons.

• You can target geographically.
• You can target specific demographics.
• You can target interests.
• You can target occupations.
• You can include images and video.
• It’s relatively cheap.

There are many other reasons why you may wish to run a social advertising campaign and this list is merely scratching the surface. Overall it’s a great way to get in front of your target market in an affordable way.

14. Shorten Your Links

This point is particularly important if you decide to use Twitter as a platform. Twitter is a microblogging social platform that restricts your posts to 140 characters to ensure you only include the most important information. Links can be pretty long so a good solution is to use a link shortening service such as Bitly. Bitly is a free service that will shorten your link and free up precious characters for you to get your message across.

15. Add Social Links to Your Email Signature

We all send countless emails every day. We email our accountants, our suppliers, our friends, our colleagues, our customers, and just about anyone else you can think of. The great thing about all these people we email is that we’re communicating with them for a reason. They have an interest of some description in you and your business. Adding your social profile links to your email signature is a quick and easy way of picking up a few extra followers.

16. Be Creative With Your Profile and Cover Images

Small businesses often put little effort into their profile and cover images. This is a real shame because most of the time the images used are of low quality and give an amateurish look to the page. With a little more effort you can really make your page stand out whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any other network. Choose or produce imagery that will really help bring your page to life and help get your company’s message across.

I particularly like the way Firebox do their profile and cover photos. They simply photograph some typical products from their gift range in the cover photo and use their logo as their profile pic. Simple, effective, easy to implement, and looks good.

17. Measure Social Metrics on Your Site

With the huge amounts of data now being collected on just about everything, social media is a goldmine of information. Google Analytics now has a section devoted to social media so you can measure the effect your social media efforts are having on driving traffic and generating sales and leads. It’s important to justify the time, effort and money you spend on social media so make sure you know how it’s performing and where you can improve.

You should also make the most of the analytics platforms provided by the social networks themselves. Facebook Insights for example will give you an excellent snapshot of your audience and will give you a good idea of what content you’re posting is having the greatest effect.

18. Post Regularly

If you set up some social profiles and only post once or twice a fortnight it’s unlikely that you’ll gain much traction with social media. I know how difficult it can be to continuously post quality content on your social networks, but that’s what it takes to get the most out of social media.

As I highlighted earlier, social media is a big commitment and requires a large investment in terms of time and effort. I would suggest that you at least post daily but see what works best for yourself. Your audience is unique so find the best formula.

19. Reward Your Followers

Why not give your followers an exclusive discount or special freebie as a reward for simply following your brand. This should throw some extra business your way whilst also reminding your followers that following you provides great value to them.

20. Ask for Input

If you’re looking for some ideas or feedback for a new product or service you’re launching why not use your social network. Reach out to your audience because they’ll be happy to tell you what they want to see from you in the future. This can help you in developing your business whilst at the same time engaging your target market and growing your social channels.

21. Ask Your Followers to Invite Their Friends

Followers in your social networks are there for a reason. It’s likely that people in their networks will have similar needs and tastes and will therefore find your product or service offering useful. Why not simply ask your existing followers to invite their friends, family and colleagues. You could even offer incentives for them to do this such as discounts, vouchers or freebies. If you’ve provided value to your audience in the past and they find your social media content relevant and interesting, you may find this could be a good source for additional followers.

22. Get Your Employees Involved

Finding constant inspiration for your social channels is really difficult. Many businesses fail to make the most of social media because they simply run out of ideas and soon lose interest. A really good way to maintain a high level of interest and ensure that you’ll get regular creative content being posted on your social channels is by involving your employees.

Ask your employees for ideas, get them to post on the channels (after setting out some carefully thought out social media guidelines), and get them to respond to your audience online. Try and integrate social media into your company culture so it becomes habit.

23. Tell a Joke

Similar to an earlier point I made about cutting out all the sales talk on your social channels, entertain your followers with a joke or a funny story. It can be related to your business or not, it’s up to you. If you can raise a laugh or entertain your audience in some way, they’re more likely to share your content and look upon future posts far more favourably.

24. Share Good/Interesting Customer Feedback

If you’ve received some excellent or interesting feedback why not share it with your social network. By taking pride in the feedback you receive from your customers will show your network that they’re opinion really matters to you. Similarly, interesting feedback regarding a bizarre situation that has occurred or some remarkable effort on your part to deliver your product or service could be equally well received whilst also entertaining your audience at the same time.

25. Run a Caption Contest

I love caption contests! It’s a great way to engage with your audience and provide them an opportunity to interact with your content. All you need to do is simply find or take an amusing picture that could be translated in any number of ways, and then encourage your audience to provide the narrative. Your audience will no doubt come up with some witty nuggets of comedy genius that could potentially attract new followers.

Just search for caption contests on Google and you’ll be sure to find some hilarious examples. Whether you offer a prize or not is up to you, usually I find that people just want to take part. Have some fun with it and be creative.

26. Put a Newsletter Subscribe Form on Your Social Pages

As a small business, building an email list is one of the smartest moves you can make. The trouble is, building an email list can be a difficult thing to do. People are wary of handing over their contact details these days over fear of privacy and spam.

However, if you’ve built up a level of trust with your networks through social media, these concerns are likely to be considerably lessened. Therefore it makes sense to make it as easy as possible for your audience to be able to subscribe to your newsletter on your social pages. Facebook make this particularly easy by offering apps that allow you to integrate a subscriber form right there on your profile.

27. Teach Your Followers

As you’re probably beginning to realise, there are an infinite number of ways you can provide value to your audience using social media. One of the best ways you can attract and retain followers is through teaching. If you’ve established yourself as an authority on any given subject, it is likely that your followers will look to you for advice, tips, and tutorials in your field of expertise.

The best way to do this is to link to blog posts you’ve written, blog posts you’ve personally found useful written by others, offer regular tips on your page, and also link to any ebooks or tutorials you’ve created. This is usually a social tactic used by B2B companies but there is absolutely no reason why B2C businesses couldn’t also adopt this as part of their social strategy.

28. Use Facebook Insights to Learn About Your Audience

Although I lightly touched upon Facebook Insights earlier in this article, I feel that it needs to be given as a tip by itself. Facebook Insights are largely overlooked by many marketers as they don’t believe there’s a great deal of useful information there. As you can see, I couldn’t disagree more with that sentiment.

Facebook Insights offer you a great look into your followers, customers, and potential customers. It gives you demographic information such as age, gender, location and language, whilst also showing which types of content have had the best impact. As well as this, you can see the size of your extended network (how many friends/followers your followers have). Facebook Insights not only gives you useful information on social media, it gives you useful insights that should be used when making decisions right the way throughout your business.

29. Promote Your Social Profiles on Your Other Networks

This may seem like an obvious tip but I’ll give it to you anyway. Promoting your social pages on your other networks can be a quick and easy way to gain more followers. By having your followers on multiple networks it’s far more likely that they’ll be exposed to your social media message.

30. Fully Complete Your Social Profiles

I know how boring this can be. You’ve just signed up for a new social network and you want to begin posting content straight away. The trouble is, the social setup wizard wants you to give a load of information on your business. Whilst it’s extremely easy to hit the skip button, I recommend taking the time to fill in your details. Often people will want to learn more about your business and if it’s right there on your profile page, it makes it far easier for them to find and digest this information.

31. Play to Your Strengths

Some of us are great copywriters, some of us are great photographers, others are great designers. My suggestion to you is play to your strengths. If you’ve got a great photographer and videographer in your business, post more photos and videos. Don’t ignore other forms of content, but also don’t be afraid to post more of what you’re already really good at. It’ll be higher quality and will likely be far more engaging.

32. Use Infographics

Sometimes there is content we want to share that is relatively complex and complicated. This kind of content usually contains facts and figures and would usually require a blog post, ebook or video to convey the information. A great way to present this information through social media is by converting the information into an infographic. This is the perfect way to visually represent a piece of information that would usually be very dry and tedious to explain in a blog post.

For those of you unfamiliar with infographics, they are simply a graphical representation of data or information.

33. Join the Conversation

The great thing about social media is that it allows global conversations to take place. You will find that there are often news stories or sudden trends taking place that will be related to your business. If this is happening you can be sure that it’s being talked about on social media, especially Twitter. By using hashtags and joining the conversation you can play a valuable part in the conversation. This not only helps to build you up as an authority on the subject, it will also help you gain more social followers. Keep your ear to the ground and when something does come up related to your product or service, be ready to offer your opinion.

Here are 33 tips I’ve certainly found useful so far in my career. I have hundreds of other tips I could give you here but for now I think these will certainly give you a lot to think about when developing your social media strategy.

I hope you’ve found this article useful. If there are any tips you’d like to add, any you disagree with or you’d simply like to offer some feedback on the article, please leave a comment in the comment box below. Also, please don’t forget to share this article with your social networks. Thanks.