Power Up Your Social Media Marketing

One of the least expensive ways to improve your marketing is to ensure that your social media game is on point. In fact, according to a recent study from Clutch, Social Media is the second-highest priority for Small Businesses (second to a business website) and three out of five small businesses use basic social media outreach to market their brand. As an added benefit, using social media marketing can also cultivate brand loyalty!

We can hear you all now, saying “I don’t have time for social media marketing” or “I don’t know how to do it”…well we’re here to help! If you don’t have time, reach out to us and we can manage your social media for you; if you don’t know how (or just want some great tips), here are some easy ways to use social media marketing for your business.

Content creation 101

The most important part of any social media marketing plan is content creation. You need to have something to post and you’ll need to have a lot of it! Here are some of the best places to find content relevant to your business:

1. The first place to look for content is things you’ve already created. You can repurpose content from a blog, a past newsletter or any other marketing collateral. If you sell products, you could do a weekly product spotlight with just the product image and catalog description (plus a link to the product on your website, of course!)
2. Spotlight upcoming events.
3. Offer freebies or discounts for your social media followers.
4. Live stream a video of something your target audience would be interested in. You can also add some “hype” posts prior to going live to increase viewership. Here are some ideas for live videos (these can be good topics for traditional text/image posts too!)
   • Share details about your business. This can be anything from how the business started to how you got to where you are now.
   • Give an insider’s look at what you do. For example, if you manufacture something, do a sneak peek at the manufacturing process.
   • Share what makes you different from your competitors – why should potential clients choose you?
   • Do happy customer/client interviews so they can share what makes your business the best.
5. Solve some problems. Think about the problems that your target audience faces and post ideas or solutions to those problems.

Share content from other sources

You don’t have to write everything you share on social media. Instead, you can share posts that include links to other information or articles that you find interesting, or that you think your target audience would find interesting. Make sure to add some text to the post, discussing why you like the resource you’re sharing, and don’t forget to include a link! Also, be sure that you don’t imply that you’re the author of the content.

Make it nice to look at

Whenever you’re doing a social media post – especially for Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest – it’s essential that you include an image (it’s actually a requirement on Instagram). The only exception to this would be if you’re doing a live video on Facebook. Coming up with images for every post you do might seem like a daunting challenge, but we’re here to tell you that it can actually be relatively easy!

Unless you have a graphic designer on staff, we recommend that you use Canva. It’s a service that lets you create high-quality graphics and ads with an easy drag-and-drop interface. It includes access to stock images, text, icons, graphics, and more! There’s even a free option that works wonderfully for basic designs.

Automate, automate, automate

When coming up with any kind of new strategy (marketing or otherwise), scalability is essential. We recommend that you post at least once a day to your business social media platforms, but to do that, you’ll need some serious automation. Automation is one of the best ways to ensure that your social media presence is consistently active. Basically all we’re talking about when we say “automation” is a service that will allow you to schedule posts in advance. There are multiple options available to schedule posts in advance, but we recommend Buffer as the best all-around option. All you do is set it and forget it!

There is obviously a lot more that we could go into for setting up a stellar social media marketing plan, but this is enough to get you started on your marketing journey!

Drop us a line if you have any questions or would like us to help you set up a marketing plan!

What other ideas do you have for social media marketing for small businesses?

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