Social Media Marketing: Top Tips For Small Businesses

 

You should have an idea of the type of person you want to purchase your products, and you need to really focus in on their characteristics and traits – especially if you’re planning on running ads. Things to think about the gender of your audience, their age, income, location and their hobbies and interests. When you have all of this information, you should be able to build up a picture of your audience, which will then help you to create your content according to their wants and needs. You can pair your information on your audience with your branding, ensuring you have a cohesive style across your platforms which also attracts the specific audience that you are marketing to. 

It’s imperative that you select the right platforms to market your business on. There’s a plethora of choice out there, but platforms hold audiences that may better or worse for your business to post on, and you shouldn’t have to spend time on the ones that are less likely to perform and fail to hit your goals. Focus your attention and content onto the platforms where your audience is already spending the most time: 

 

 

One thing to consider is the age group of your target audience, as this can help point you towards the right platform for your business. If your audience are Gen Z then TikTok, Reels or Instagram generally are the best to leverage. Millennials are also on TikTok, but they also form the most popular audience on a number of different platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and X. Gen X and Boomers are most likely to be found on Facebook, but also do crossover with YouTube. If you’re selling, then Sprout Social found Facebook, TikTok and Instagram to be the top 3 platforms for making direct purchases. 

Success isn’t something that’ll come instantly, and requires you to show up regularly. Content calendars and scheduling tools can help for peace of mind and ease if you aren’t able to take time out of your day to post on your account. Posting consistently allows your audience to begin to become familiar with your business and your content, keeping you at the forefront of their minds and feeds when they open up their social media. If you haven’t been posting already, then you may have to test different strategies with your consistency including frequency of posts and timing of posts until you find the one that brings you the most audience engagement. 

That being said, you should prioritise quality over quantity. Having a lot of posts may sound like a good idea, but they also must provide value to your audience. If you’re aimlessly posting lots of content with no clear direction or strategy, you may have populated your pages with little engagement to show for it. Instead, focus on creating high-quality graphics, copy and videos that allow you to really show your how your business is an answer to a problem that your audience is having, give them more information about what your products or services do, and make them want to find out more. Your posts should be branded, and working alongside the goals and campaigns you mapped out before you started your social media marketing. 

Social media is exactly what it says – social. It’s not a place for you to sell, sell, sell – even if that is the end goal to your campaigns and posts. When advertising products, you’re not just telling people to buy something, but you need to show or explain to them why they should be investing in your product/service. You need to build rapport with your audience, show them that you can be a trusted brand that delivers on your promises and that you’re happy to answer any questions in a prompt and professional manner. You have to warm up cold audiences, and by interacting with them, building a relationship and providing excellent customer service you can help to guide them in direction of a purchase after your post has already sparked interest. 

Social media may seem like a big task when you first start out, but hopefully these tips will help you to create a winning strategy that allows you to establish your business as a new force within your industry that knows exactly how to use digital marketing to its advantage.