The Small Businesses Guide to getting started on Social Media

Social Media has quickly become an essential part of most businesses’ marketing strategies; it allows businesses to engage with their customer, increase brand awareness and drive traffic to their websites. Increasingly, people are using social channels to search for company news, content and promotions, which in turn drives traffic back to the company website.

5 benefits of using Social Media for business:

1. Increased Brand Recognition
2. Improved Customer Communications
3. Improved Brand Loyalty
4. Increased Site Traffic
5. Decreased Marketing Costs

Which Social Channel should you use for business?

With access to social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google +, LinkedIn and YouTube, being free it is easy for small businesses with limited resources to get involved. Many businesses’ which are eager to get started on social media run the risk of spreading themselves too thinly by creating accounts across all social channels. A social media account that is updated irregularly can have a negative effect on the businesses reputation.

Instead businesses need to be realistic about the time they are prepared to commit to social media and define what it is they want to achieve. This will help to decide which networks to concentrate on. Ultimately it is better to truly master one social channel than trying to establish a business across three or four at once.

Creating a Social strategy

A lot of businesses do not have a clear strategy for social media, instead using it purely as a way to promote and sell their products or services. However social media provides a lot more opportunities for brands to communicate with existing and new customers. For example, one opportunity is the use of content to relate to, entertain or educate a customer.

The main points to consider when creating your strategy are:

1. Identify your business’ goals – do you want to increase traffic to your website, boost brand awareness, drive sales etc.
2. Decide which social channel to use – which network is best placed to help you meet your goals.
3. Do a competitor audit – what are your competitors doing well, who are they engaging with. Look for opportunities to improve upon what your competitors are offering.
4. Define what you are going to post on social media – are you going to create content, are you going to link to other content that is relevant to your customers and industry or are you going to promote products?
5. Create a content calendar – this should include key events, subjects and releases that are relevant to your industry and readers.
6. Review and analyse your results – constantly review how your social campaigns are performing. Learn what works well and what hasn’t worked well. Then amend your strategy to fit in with this in the future. There’s a range of tools that you can use to analyse how well your social posts are performing and how users are engaging with your content.

A well thought out strategy will help you meet your goals and allow you to effectively manage your time to achieve these results.

If you are committed to making social media work for your business and would like to learn more about how to achieve your goals then please do not hesitate to get in contact with us by emailing aisling@honchosearch.com.

Aside from consultancy services we also offer a workshop aimed at businesses beginning their social media marketing. Find out more about our ‘Introduction to Social Media for Business’ workshop.