How do I market my small business on social media?
As a business owner you constantly need to wear many different hats, especially when you’re just getting started. You know that social media is important in business, but do you understand how important it is? In this blog we’ll uncover some of the positives that effective social media can provide to your business as well as how to best use it to market your small business.
When you’re trying to market your business on social media, it helps to have a good idea of how different social networks stack up against each other. That’s why we want to share some of the stats and the metrics to give you a good idea of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to your social media marketing.
- There are over two million businesses using Facebook advertisements. [Source]
- Engagement on Facebook videos is 109% higher than engagement on YouTube videos. [Source]
- 72% of internet users with an income of over $75k are active on Facebook. [Source]
- There are over 40 million small businesses with active Facebook pages. [Source]
- Facebook takes on half a million new users every day, which works out as six new profiles every second. [Source]
- Almost a third of internet users are active on Instagram. [Source]
- 80% of Instagram users are from outside the United States. [Source]
- 200 million Instagram users visit the profile of a business every day. [Source]
- 94% of B2B organizations use LinkedIn for content marketing and distribution. [Source]
- LinkedIn drives over half of all social traffic to B2B blogs and websites. [Source]
- More than a million members have published content on LinkedIn. [Source]
- Over three million companies have LinkedIn profiles, but only 17% of American small businesses are using the platform. [Source]
- Pinterest has 175 million monthly active users. [Source]
- 81% of Pinterest users are female. [Source]
- 93% of Pinterest users are using the site to plan purchases while 87% say they’ve made a purchase because of the network. [Source]
Snapchat
- Approximately 70% of Snapchat users are female. [Source]
- 45% of Snapchat’s users are aged 18-24. [Source]
- Snapchat has over 180 million daily active users. [Source]
- The average user spends 25 minutes per day on Snapchat. [Source]
- 47% of American teens think that Snapchat is better than Facebook, and 24% think that it’s better than Instagram. [Source]
- Tweets with images are 150% more likely to get retweets than text-only updates. [Source]
- 79% of Twitter accounts are based outside of the US. [Source]
- Over 500 million tweets are posted every single day at a rate of 6,000 tweets per second. [Source]
- 45% of Americans use Twitter. [Source]
- 77% of Twitter users say they feel more positive about brands after their tweets are replied to. [Source]
YouTube
- YouTube’s 1.6 billion users watch 5 billion videos on the site every single day. [Source]
- The two fastest growing demographics for YouTube users are 35+ and 55+. [Source]
- Millennials are two times more likely to prefer watching YouTube than to prefer traditional television. [Source]
- YouTube is available in 76 languages across 88 countries, covering 95% of all internet users. [Source]
- More than half of YouTube views take place on a mobile device. [Source]
After looking through some of these stats I’m sure you’re starting to think about the best social platforms to use for your business.
Are you looking to reach a younger crowd? Then, Snapchat and YouTube might be your best platforms. When targeting women, Pinterest and Snapchat would be your go to. If your products or services are for higher incomes, Facebook would be home. Once you’ve figured out the social platforms that your customers are on, you’ll need a great marketing strategy to successfully reach them.
How do I market my small business on social media?
Choose the Right Platforms
As you can see from the stats above, there are a lot of social media platforms out there (many more we didn’t include). You need to find which ones your audience is on and make sure you’re there. In general, you want to make sure you have Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts to start. Visit each of these sites and create a profile. Use a consistent username so your company is easy to find (If you need help, we can get all of your accounts set up and branded). The purpose of social media is to drive word of mouth about your business.
Create a Calendar
Once you have your social profiles created and branded you’ll need to figure out what content you’ll be posting and when. Keeping in mind the purpose of having your business on social media is to drive word of mouth, you’ll need to strategically plan ahead and be creative with what content you’ll be sharing. To keep all of this organized across multiple profiles you’ll need a good calendar. A calendar will keep you organized, help guarantee you’re posting high-quality content, avoid mistakes and errors as well as help you create goals and track progress.
Don’t Over-Promote
I know it’s been mentioned multiple times already, but it’s really important to bring it home that social media is for driving word of mouth. Time and time again businesses get on social media and use their profiles as a place to only push their business/services and offers. Posting offers and highlighting services is a great strategy, but in moderation. Think about it like this; someone is calling your business everyday to sell you something, but never takes the time to learn about your business and needs… would you ever buy from them? Neither will your prospects. Build those relationships with people. Show them your business has character and there’s something special about you compared to your competitors. Don’t let your business fall into the trap of treating social media like regular advertising. No one wants to be sold, they want to be helped into the right decision.
Address Problems Quickly
It would be a true blessing if we received nothing but 5 stars and great comments, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Occasionally you may encounter someone who is upset, argumentative or has something negative to say about your company.
You should monitor mentions and comments about your company whether on social media or online review sites. The quicker you respond the better. You can catch it before it escalates into something bad. If you spot a problem, engage with the person by publicly apologizing if necessary and offering to solve the problem over a direct message exchange.
Build a Community
Instead of trying to get as many followers as possible, focus on finding customers who are interested, loyal and engaged. These people are more likely to repost your content, like your posts and become customers.
When you build a community around your brand, the people within that community will engage with each other and help to promote your content. You could even try reaching out to exceptionally influential social media users and asking them to help you by reviewing a product or mentioning you in a post.
Provide Value
Perhaps the most important thing you can do on social media is provide value to your followers. Create something that your audience will find useful. It could be something that tells them something they didn’t know before, makes them laugh, entertains them or anything else that’s beneficial in some way.
This aspect of social media is what attracts the right customers to your business, makes people want to follow you and helps content spread.
At Conglomerate Marketing, our goal is not to just manage your marketing, but to build and collaborate with your business. We take a more consultative approach to your business and help create systems, processes, and automation to empower your marketing team or build an internal team. This is the approach we have taken as corporate consultants and provide the same method to our small businesses.
To learn more about our collaboration process, contact us at 856.302.4007 or visit our website for a free consultation: