In today’s online marketplace, you will rarely find a business that doesn’t have a well planned social media marketing strategy. Over the past few years, it has become evident that social media is by far the most effective channel when it comes to creating customer engagement. However, social media has not been kind to every business that has tried to leverage it.
Small businesses and novices have found it difficult to garner the necessary engagement from their social media operations. To get customers, consumers, and other viewers actively engaged with a business’ social media posts, it must have a strong brand identity or brand image.
This is something that small and new companies inherently lack. They need to adapt their strategies to make up for their lack of brand equity.
Let’s talk about three such social media strategies that every small scale business should adapt:
1. Post content on a daily basis
If you have a small business, your social media posting should be consistent and regular. If it is not, you will be wasting your and your company’s time.
This is primarily due to three reasons:
Reason 1
Firstly, if a potential lead stumbles upon your social media pages and discovers that your last post was from two weeks ago, they will immediately view your webpage and brand in a negative light.
Leaving aside the idea of visiting your website, the potential lead won’t find a compelling reason to follow a brand that doesn’t post content regularly.
Reason 2
Secondly, you need to think about the people who are already following you. Your current followers won’t just navigate to your website on their own to see what you are up to. You need to post regularly to keep them updated on your new activities.
Reason 3
Finally, most small businesses do not have a strong brand, i.e., one that can drive traffic to their page or website, even when they are not posting content on a regular basis. This is why 52% of small businesses are resorting to posting on social media on a daily basis.
Let’s look at some of the benefits that posting content regularly can offer. Posting interesting content is no easy task. It requires effort, imagination, and a strong commitment. This is why the majority of businesses only manage to post items on social media platforms from once a week to just a few times a month.
If you manage to post interesting and engaging content three to four times a week, you will definitely have an edge over your competitors.
A proper Marketing automation software program can help you smoothly automate the posting part of your social media content. Every time you post a new piece, you remind your followers about the existence of your brand. In this manner, the brand recall factor for your firm increases multiple times.
There will be a greater chance of a consumer recalling your brand first in a sea of competitors and rivals when they want to purchase a certain product.
Here are a few tips that can help you manage your posting strategy:
- Whenever you feel you’re reaching a dead-end regarding content, refer back to your marketing goals. For example, if your goal is to promote new products for sale on your ecommerce site, consider placing a promotional offer.
- Repurposing content is a lifesaver when it comes to regular social media posting. You can always turn your old and new content pieces, especially blogs, into shorter and more intuitive forms of social media content like videos and infographics. Repurposing content makes it less likely that you will run out of interesting material to place online.
- You can also seek the help of a professional digital marketing agency who will be able to not only help with crafting content for your local audience, but for an international audience, too. Creating content for a Spanish-speaking audience is highly recommended as Spanish is spoken by over 437 million worldwide. Opening up your content offering to a larger pool of people only builds your brand reputation and authority. Speak to an agency specialising in Spain SEO to get started.
2. Influencer marketing
If there is one thing that beats a highly consistent social media posting strategy, its influencer marketing. Influencers are sought after by marketing professionals because their followers trust what they say.
If you want to improve your lead conversion rates, consider using influencer marketing as part of your campaign. However, social influencers, many of whom are celebrities in their own right, can be very expensive.
For many small scale businesses, these people are beyond the reach of their digital marketing budget: So how can small businesses leverage influencer marketing?
Heard of Micro-Influencers?
Micro-influencers can replicate every benefit a famous social influencer offers at a relatively smaller scale. They don’t have as many followers as their powerful counterparts, which means that they charge considerably less.
You can easily get micro-influencers to post content about your brand for a few hundred dollars, or in some cases, offer them free products instead of a social media post.
Micro-influencers specialize in having strong engagement metrics with their followers. This is because they rarely hold celebrity status and are just regular people most of the time. Hence, average consumers can relate to them well.
Always try to collaborate with influencers who live within the area or region of your business. Their followers are more likely to be actively interested in supporting your brand.
3. Broadcast live video streams
If customer engagement is your primary goal, you have to leverage video content extensively. Small businesses always tend to focus on creating engagement that can enhance their brand identity as well.
This kind of engagement demands strong interaction from the consumer’s side as well. Video adverts, for example, are not ideal because there is no input from the customer, prospect, or consumer. A prospect is somebody that you think could turn into a paying customer.
Live streaming videos are the most suitable choice when it comes to creating a more authentic level of interaction with your customers and other targeted consumers.
The best way for small businesses to leverage live streams is with a ‘Behind the scenes look.’ You can always give your customers a peek of what happens behind closed doors in your workplace. You could also give them a tour of your office, warehouse, cafeteria, production facility, etc. It gives the viewer the feeling of experiencing something exclusive, which will ultimately bring them closer to your brand.
Interaction must include both of you, i.e., your company and your audience. Make sure that you reply promptly to individuals who comment on your live videos.
Wrapping up
What small scale businesses need to understand is that their brand image hugely influences the manner in which a social media user might react to their strategies. Therefore, it’s highly likely that advanced strategies like social media contests, story-based video ads etc. won’t work initially.
If you want to see results, you must be willing to apply these advanced strategies for a long time. Perserverance and a long-term commitment really do pay off. However, you must be patient.
Author Bio
Hi There, I am Shaun Williams, a content writer with Goodfirms, a research platform for Blockchain Technology and Bot Development companies, among many others. I enjoy communicating ideas and knowledge creatively and also ensure that the readers never suffer from boredom while reading my posts.