Social Media - The Heartbeat of Every Small Business
You go to a newly opened bakery in your city. Its swaggy interiors and to-die-for desserts sway you away. You share your satisfying experience on Instagram, Facebook and/or Snapchat. Your friends ask you about this place since the croissant you posted seemed too good to relish from afar. Moreover, that photo of chocolate muffin injected with liquid chocolate made some drool too much. Few days pass and you see some friends sharing their dose of deliciousness on social media. You ask them about the new stuff they tried there and whether they tried that amazing croissant. You got a positive feedback. Now friends of your friends witnessed the bakery’s exquisiteness which prompted them to make a visit soon. And the cycle goes on.
You must not have realized what you did just there. For you, it was posting a few pics here and there. But if you observe closely, you just participated in a small business’s content marketing strategy. Not only that, you helped widen their online reach, build strong user engagement, promote sales and also provide with strong feedback from you and your friends. Also, how did you reach that bakery in the first place? You read about it on your Facebook. All this was a social media marketing service performing its duty to a small business. And that is the power of social media in making a small business go huge.
So if you’ve got a business of your own or know someone running a small business and aspiring to make it big one day, then an exclusive content marketing strategy must already be present. If not, let me tell you why you should use social media right now:
- Branding and creating a buzz
- Due to word of mouth, products are marketed automatically
- You’re building relations with your customers which helps gain customer trust
- Widening the line of communication between business owner and millions of potential customers
- Right type of viral social media helps small businesses compete with the large companies
- Not only great traffic… but freakishly crazy amounts of traffic.
- Increases link-ability
- Direct conversation to a specific niche
- And ultimately, flaunt what you got
Let us go through an amazing Indian brand’s famous social media journey- Chumbak. The brand makes us witness everyday India in the form of travel and souvenir products such as fridge magnets, key chains, t-shirts, coffee mugs, notebooks, bags and a lot more. Founded by Vivek Prabhakar, Chumbak was started with an initial amount of Rs. 45 Lacs. It is said that the founders raised the amount by selling their house in 2010.
Prabhakar says, “The brand has grown considerably in the past two-three years. We have been very active on social media; we did a lot to build our brand there. In fact, we were one of the first brands in India to get a global Facebook case study. Also, we were one of the three global companies featured as part of Google’s global ‘The web is what you make of it’ campaign.”
Chumbak extensively uses its Facebook Page, which is at the center of all of its marketing efforts. The brand:
- Engages with customers
- Actively responds to queries, in short, great customer service
- Holds contests and crowd source ideas for new launches
- Gives ‘sneak peeks’ and information on product launches
The Result:
- Facebook generates 25% of its online revenue
- Very high degree of repeat purchases among Page fans
- Receives 5X ROI on total advertising spends with Facebook
- The brand is able to generate 30 to 40 percent of website traffic from Facebook
So ask yourself this, should you wait to jump in the water anymore? There are several social media marketing services for small business if you are too busy or confused to do it yourself. Social media marketing services not only take the load of promoting your brand in the best possible way, they help you stand out from the rest and develop a niche follower base of you own. So don’t shy away, hire an expert.