Social media and digital marketing

Social media allows small businesses to connect with their customers online and easily build connections with communities and individuals. Current and potential customers will have more respect and be more likely to use your services if you have good social media practice and respond to questions in a timely manner.

Another benefit of using social media, is that it allows small businesses to advertise in a costly manner. Although their is options to pay for advertising on all social media channels, the platform itself is free and by simply making a ‘post’ you are reaching your audience and facilitating growth and awareness. If you choose to pay for advertising you can set your own budget and can turn the advertising off at any point.

When used correctly, social media can help you increase awareness of your products/services, demonstrate the value of doing business with you, attract new customers, create a loyal online community and help you create a ‘voice’ for your business.

Small businesses should implement the following tips to use social media correctly.

1. Decide which platforms are right for your business
   Consider the type of content you’d like to share and the audience you’d like to reach as well as the advertising options you’d like to trial. Facebook has quite advanced advertising options which allows you to target certain areas as well as narrow down audiences based on their interests, location and more. As Facebook owns Instagram, their targeted advertising is also available on this platform.
2. Set social media goals and objectives
   When creating goals its important to remember the SMART framework:
   – Specific: Be clear. Does “increase engagement” mean you want 100 new followers or 1,000? Making your social media goals specific helps you track progress and measure success.
   – Measurable: Every goal needs some kind of metric. “Improve customer service” is a great concept, but it’s not a goal unless you have a way to measure that improvement.
   – Attainable: Your social media goals should absolutely require you to stretch, but they should be within reach if you put in the required work.
   – Relevant: This is the piece that ties your goal-setting back to larger business objectives. If your goal involves increasing Facebook likes, for example, make sure you understand how that will benefit the business.
   – Timely: Deadlines keep everyone accountable. Include a timeframe for completion of your goal so you know when to check in on your success. You might also want to include some milestones along the way for incremental check-ins.
3. Research your competition
   Researching your competition is a fantastic idea and can give you an overview of what to do and what not to do for your social media. While you don’t want to copy them, learning from what others have done is a great way to reduce your learning curve.
4. Learn more about your audience/target market
   One reason using social media is so effective for business is that you can micro-target your audience if paying for paid advertising. However to do this you need to understand the audience you currently have, and the audience you want to reach. Consider things like location, demographic, age and behaviours.
5. Work on building relationships
   Social media is great for building a community, but its also a fantastic tool to build new relationships and expand your audience. Work on having engaging, quality content. Quantity is also a big thing. It’s important not to post too little or too often as both will likely lose you followers.
6. Create a social media content calendar
   Creating a content calendar for your social media accounts will keep you accountable whilst ensuring you post the right content to the right social channels at the right time.
7. Share unique and compelling content
   Try starting with the 80-20 rule. Use 80% of your content to inform, educate or entertain and only 20% to promote your brand and sell your products.
8. Focus on quality over quantity
   Social media content is available for everybody to see, therefore it’s crucial to share quality content that is delivered in a timely and consistent manner and not oversaturate your customers feed.
9. Monitor and respond to social media questions in a timely manner
   Social media allows for people to interact with you through a multitude of ways including ‘commenting’, ‘liking’, ‘messaging’, ‘reviewing/rating’ and sharing. When people message, comment or contact you asking a question, its crucial that you respond to these queries in a timely and professional manner. Its also very good practice to engage with people interacting you and respond to general comments as well as reviews regardless of whether they are positive or negative.
10. Consider scheduling your posts
    Once you have established a content schedule you may want to consider scheduling your posts, which can be done on Facebook and Twitter. By scheduling your post you will be able to dedicate a block of time per day or per week to create your social content. This is much more effective than letting social posting take you away from your other daily tasks.