7 Easy Ways To Expand Your Small Business Marketing Efforts on Social Media - Why Not Give It A Go?
There’s no doubt social media has become a big part of our lives. It’s the first place people head to when they have a question, complaint or comment with a business or brand they’ve interacted with.
Does your small business marketing efforts include a social media presence? If not, you can’t be reaching anywhere near the number of prospects you could be. After all, almost 75% of adults online use social networking platforms.
7 Ways to Expand Your Social Reach
- Internal Campaigns and Experiments
Sometimes a lack of activity in between campaigns can cause your social platforms to lose steam. You can change things up by running internal campaigns and experimenting with ways to add spark to your social activities.
One experiment for your small business marketing efforts could include different post elements. For instance, you may want to change the length of your posts to test engagement rates.
Alternatively, try running mini internal campaigns over a 2-3 week period. Really stretch yourself to get creative and resourceful.
This can help you with posting consistently and staying on track with your social goals.
- Specials
Do your daily postings need a shake up? Specials are a great way to change the pace and add something new to your social strategy. Specials that are repeated either daily or weekly tend to receive high engagement and can keep users coming back.
- Guest Posts
Brands have been collaborating with outside companies for years, turning their social reigns over to thought leaders. Guest posts are fantastic – if they’re done right.
To create a guest posting opportunity that will benefit your business, start by determining who your guest poster will be. Then decide what they will be doing – a live tweet Q&A? Documenting a conference? Or even a “day in the life” piece?
- Countdowns
Countdowns are another fun way to add spark to your small business marketing endeavours. It’s an easy tactic if you have an event coming up or even an exciting launch. But what if you don’t have anything earmarked? That’s not a problem. One of the best ways to use a countdown is to promote your content before you even publish it.
Content is usually promoted once it is launched. Do you save those Twitter and Facebook posts until you’ve finished the content and are ready to go live? Why wait? Make use of countdowns to create awareness and build hype for the content before it hits the web.
- Snapchat
Snapchat has gone from a specialised social platform to a major contender with a massive user base. There’s no doubt your small business marketing plan could gain traction on this platform. In order to use the general search functionality, you need to know a user’s exact handle. It is difficult to simply search hashtags the way you would on Instagram and Twitter. But thanks to the roll out of Snapcodes, cross channel promotion has indeed become easier. Now you can promote and grow your account on the platform by posting your Snapcodes on your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
By doing this, you can introduce your existing users to exciting new ways to interact with you. You’ll also get to share additional content on your existing social platforms.
- Other Social Platforms
There’s been an increase in niche social channels. With the success of sites like Instagram and Snapchat, chances are new channels are going to keep popping up and there’s no shame in including these trendy platforms in your small business marketing plan.
However, you will need to be sure that your actions are strategic and intentional. So if you create a Beme account, your strategy could be to build a user base and leverage your current channels to do so. Meerkat is a cool platform that’s receiving a fair amount of attention on Twitter – use it to your advantage.
- Image Series
If users feel like there are key factors missing, social efforts go stale. They need to feel they’re getting value and relevance from their interactions with you and your content. Lose any of these factors and the others are likely to follow suite.
One way to keep your followers connected is with images. Imagery has seen an increase in engagement and adding a recurring element to your images is sure to evoke memory recall and a feeling of connectivity among followers.
There are a multitude of different topics you could build an image series around. Culture shares could include a series showing intentional elements of your business in individual image posts. Cause-based posts could include a series highlighting a cause that your business cares about. Employee highlights can highlight individual employees and show the world how much you value them.
There are endless opportunities with image series. But you do need to have clear direction and intention to the sequence. You will want your users to understand the context of the series, even if they haven’t been following the series. You also want to motivate them to stay tuned for the next instalment.
Social Media and Your Small Business Marketing Plan
Being tasked with social media management can feel like a never-ending, tedious process, regardless of whether you’re posting consistently or not posting often enough.
Either way, it can be a difficult task to conquer. Let Rosy Marketing help you. With the right strategy in place, we can help you employ different tactics to help shake things up and enhance your social efforts.
You simply cannot afford to stand still on social media. Book your free consult today to get your business soaring ahead.
About the Author
Meg Rose Russell is Director of Rosy Marketing, a marketing consultancy established to change the face of marketing in Australia. She aims to enable entrepreneurs and small businesses owners to realise their truths through strategic and systematic marketing. With over 10 years of marketing blood sweat and tears invested in growing a range of businesses including companies like IBM and SalesForce across a range of industries from Events and Charity to IT and Finance, she now uses her strategic insights to provide marketing tools, consulting and coaching to small businesses. She is also a proud member of the Duct Tape Marketing Consulting Network.
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