6 essential social media marketing tips for your small business ??

Are you in charge of your small business’ social media? It can be a very rewarding task to take on, but it takes persistence, patience and a lot of TLC. When done right, social media can be an invaluable tool to help grow your business, generate leads and build your online brand. We’ve listed some tips to help increase your chances of maintaining a successful social media presence, so that you can take your skills to the next level.

1. Create platform-specific posts

It’s crucial that you approach your social media efforts with a plan, rather than posting for posting’s sake. What’s more, you can’t simply post the same piece of content across all of your social channels - each post needs to be optimised for the channel it’s going to be on. One of my personal pet hates is finding a business that has auto crossposting turned on - especially when they tell us that it’s an agency who has set this feature up!

It’s very easy to tell when a post has been automatically pulled through from one channel to the next, and it simply reeks of a lack of knowledge. A post that’s perfect for Facebook won’t necessarily work on Twitter - it will need to be re-written to fit the character limit, with added hashtags etc. Take a little extra time and come up with a plan for each platform. If you don’t have the time create bespoke plans for each channel, at least modify each post for each platform, ensuring you change photo sizes and tweak the copy where necessary. 

Pro tip: Remember, links don’t work in Instagram posts, so take out any hyperlinks in your post copy. The only place you can have a link on Instagram is in your bio.

2. Be picky about what you post

Although it’s important to be consistent and post on a regular basis, quality always beats quantity. Consider each piece of content that you are thinking of sharing, and ensure that it’s ticking these three boxes:

• Relevant
• Helpful
• Engaging   

If you’re sharing an article, take the time to read it before you post it - sometimes an article will have a great headline but the content will be irrelevant and at worst, untrue. Fake news is still a thing! We’d advise you to stay away from any third-party tools that autopost on your page. These tend to work based on keywords, and a lot of the content that gets shared is of poor quality and irrelevant. 

Be creative when posting and try to maintain variety. Posting once a day, five days a week on Facebook is more than enough, so taking this into consideration, here’s a very basic weekly plan you could follow. Let’s take the example of an estate agent.

Monday: Local news story, relevant to your target audience of local homeowners.

Tuesday: A new property, posting in the form of a photo album.

Wednesday: A personal post, eg. a photo of an employee on the road.

Thursday: A post pushing one of your services, for example free home valuations.

Friday: Another new property, or a post about what local family events are taking place over the weekend.

All of these examples are relevant, helpful and engaging, and should do well to inspire and interest your target audience. 

Pro tip: Share posts from other sources, if they are relevant to your audience. Sharing posts directly on Facebook or LinkedIn, retweeting on Twitter or regramming on Insta is a great way to post content that’s likely to generate interact and engagement.

3. Use a social media management tool

Instead of simply posting directly to each social media channel, make use of a social media management tool to help save time and increase productivity. We use Buffer, which allows us to view a handy month-view calendar for each client, which is invaluable when it comes to planning out our monthly schedules. What’s more, the Buffer extension for Chrome allows you to share posts on the go, and amend the post for each social channel. 

Using a social media management tool also allows you to collaborate with your team, and helps you see all your social schedules in one place without logging in and out of each site. Most of these tools will also come with insightful analytics sections, allowing you to measure your success in real-time.

Pro tip: If you’re just using a social media management tool for one business, you can generally make use of a basic account, which tends to be free of charge. 

4. Spend money wisely

When it comes to social media, you can’t be afraid to spend money - but you need to be wise when doing so. Facebook and the other channels continue to tweak their algorithms in favour of paid content, making it harder to make an impact on an organic (unpaid) level. 

Advertising on social media can supercharge your social media efforts, and the costs involved tend to be lower than other platforms such as Google AdWords, or traditional marketing. What’s more, the advertising channels have great targeting options, allowing you to fine-tune your campaigns and put your content in front of the people that matter. It’s important to think about your buyer personas or put some consideration into which type of people are likely to be interested in your content, rather than simply clicking the ‘boost’ button and throwing money on without targeting correctly.

Pro tip: If you notice a post performing well on an organic level, putting some money into advertising it should make a positive impact. Don’t waste your money advertising something that people simply aren’t bothering with. 

5. Get your team on board

Social media is easier if it’s a team effort, so make sure that your staff members know the importance of social. First things first - make sure they actually know that you are active on social media! Invite them to like all of the pages if they have their own social accounts, and encourage them to share the pages with their friends. 

Once your team is invested in social media, it should make it easier for your business to maintain a successful social presence. Having that viewpoint from multiple team members allows you to humanise your brand and give your customers an insight into the different aspects of your business. 

Perhaps you could get your team members to write blog posts, or even simply ask them to send you photos that you can share onto your channels. Once your staff members are in that social mindset, they’ll also be more likely to promote your social channels to your customers, and this in turn should help grow your audience.

Pro tip: If you are giving different team members direct access to your social channels, ensure that you give them some basic training on how to use each platform, as well as giving them your brand guidelines. You should be maintaining a clear, consistent voice, so make sure they stick to this!

6. If in doubt, outsource

If running multiple social accounts is starting to affect your day-to-day role, you should consider outsourcing your social media management. If you have the budget to suit, enlisting the help of an agency can produce some fantastic results. You’ll save time and money, and you can guarantee that your content - and advertising - will be high quality and error-free.

When you use an agency, you’re getting the use of professional writers, designers and social strategists. These people do social media for a living, and they’re here to help you! Outsourcing your social can help generate new business, improve customer service, maintain your online reputation and grow brand awareness. Not bad, hey?

Pro tip: Digital Media Team offer social media management packages from as little as ￡399 per month plus VAT. This is far cheaper than traditional advertising techniques, so why not give it a shot today?

If you’d like to find out more about Digital Media Team and the social media management service we offer, give us a call on 0800 808 9980, or drop us a line at [email protected].