Social media marketing is a great tool for small businesses and one that you just cannot ignore. The number of people engaging in social media networks every single minute is so big and if your business is not participating in this mega digital party, you are missing out on opportunities.<\/p>\n
Obviously, the next question is how can business owners take advantage of social media and whether it is something that can generate business results (i.e. more traffic, sales, leads, signups) or if it is just another myth?<\/p>\n
The first step is to actually move from theory to practice and get started with social media. This means 4 things:<\/p>\n
Some things to consider:<\/p>\n
Facebook<\/strong> \u2013 Everybody is on Facebook so you don\u2019t actually have a choice here. Read this to get inspired: How to get your first 10,000 fans on Facebook<\/a><\/strong>. Note: Since that article was written, the page has now more than 45,000 fans.<\/p>\n Google+<\/strong> – Google plus is for businesses<\/a><\/strong> and it\u2019s also owned by Google so this is your second choice.<\/p>\n Pinterest<\/strong> \u2013 It\u2019s growing rapidly and can send a lot of traffic to a website so this is your next choice provided that you have something visual related to the business that you can share on Pinterest.<\/p>\n Twitter<\/strong> \u2013 millions of users, easy to maintain, and a good way to engage with your customers. Together with the previous 3, this is your priority list.<\/p>\n LinkedIn<\/strong> \u2013 Mainly for business professionals, more difficult to use, advertising is expensive. You can create your presence on LinkedIn but if you are short of time, I suggest you start using LinkedIn for your personal profile, and then when you grow your business profiles on the other networks, you can utilize LinkedIn for your business as well.<\/p>\n When you are ready to get started do not rush into following hundreds of people, posting many times per day, and checking your statistics every minute. Start small and have in mind that:<\/p>\n While there are millions of people in social media channels, in order to start getting traffic, making sales, or have any influence at all, you need to have a LOT of followers in your networks. And by a LOT, I mean a LOT, and let me explain why.<\/p>\n When you publish a new post on your business page on Facebook that post will be seen by a small percentage of your followers (FB tells you how many people saw your posts so have a closer look to understand what I mean).<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say that you have 400 fans on your page, when you post something only 30-40 people will see it and this is because FB does not show the posts to all your fans.<\/p>\n The other networks may show your posts to all your followers but if a person is following a lot of other people\/pages, there are limited chances that they will see and interact with your posts.<\/p>\n So, the more followers you have, the greater are your chances of start getting anything out of social media. From my experience and without this being a definite guide, you need at least 10,000 on FB, 1000 on G+, 1000 on Twitter, and 2000 on Pinterest before seeing any visitors to your website or shop. Of course, as I said this is not a rule but an empirical figure.<\/p>\n Unless you are a known brand, in order to grow your followers you need to follow other people and some of them will follow you back. When choosing who to follow be selective by applying these simple techniques:<\/p>\n Social media marketing is relatively easy to do but it is a very time-consuming task. \u00a0Before starting make sure that you have the time to do this consistently and on a daily basis. I would say that a couple of hours per day is enough to get you started.<\/p>\n If this sounds a lot then you can either consider outsourcing\u00a0social media<\/a><\/strong> to professionals or start with fewer networks (for example Facebook only) and then when you find time to jump into the rest.<\/p>\n Have in mind though that if you don\u2019t spend the necessary time working your business pages, you will be disappointed by the results and start believing that social media does not work for business (an assumption that is totally wrong).<\/p>\n As I mentioned before, search engines and social media networks can only understand one thing<\/a><\/strong>, and this is content. This means that besides working on getting new followers, you also need content.<\/p>\n If you already have a content marketing strategy<\/a><\/strong> then your work on social media will be easier but if you don\u2019t, then you need to come up with a plan along these lines:<\/p>\n Have a look at one of social media pages we manage<\/a><\/strong> for one of our clients. Look at the variety of postings, frequency, tone, format, etc.<\/p>\n The time and date you post something on social media matter a lot. As mentioned above, people have a lot of posts in their timelines and if they don\u2019t see it \u2018live\u2019 then most probably they will never see it.<\/p>\n For example, if you post something on Twitter and your followers are sleeping at that time, by the time they will wake up they will have hundreds of messages in their timeline and so there is no chance of seeing your post.<\/p>\n To solve this problem, you can use tools like bufferapp<\/a><\/strong> to schedule your postings so that you reach your target audience at a time where you have more followers online. There are also other tools and statistics about the best time to post on the different social networks but as a rule of thumb, post either in the morning (08:00 – 9:00) or afternoon (17:00 \u2013 19:00). These are the times that work best for many niches.<\/p>\n Social media is about communication and this means that you need to monitor your social media pages for comments about your business and definitely respond to both good and bad comments. You need to show your audience that you are reading what they have to say and care about their opinion.<\/p>\n Besides monitoring your business pages, you should also monitor the mentions about your brand name<\/strong><\/a> across all social networks and take action where appropriate. A nice tool to do that is mention<\/a><\/strong> (it\u2019s not free).<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t measure the effectiveness of social media then you won\u2019t know if it worth\u2019s your time or not. What to measure?<\/p>\n How to measure?<\/p>\n Using Google Analytics reports<\/a><\/strong> and statistics provided for business pages by the various social networks.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> If you still at the beginning then most probably those numbers are close to zero but don\u2019t get disappointed, once you grow your followers you will notice that these numbers will start to increase as well.<\/p>\n Social media works for businesses and this is a fact<\/a><\/strong>. It is also true that every problem has a solution so if you don\u2019t have the time or knowledge to make social media work for your business then leave it to the pros; we have different social media packages<\/a><\/strong> for each budget and need and we guarantee minimum results.<\/p>\n Social media is a great tool for promoting your business online. It is the modern way to connect with your potential customers and if you want to stay in sync with the latest developments in marketing, you have to socialize your business.<\/p>\n Getting results is not hard but it is a time-consuming process that needs patience and a lot of work. The competition is high in all networks and you need to do something special to get the attention of users and establish your social presence.<\/p>\n#2 \u2013 Start Small<\/h2>\n
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#3 \u2013 It\u2019s a numbers game<\/h2>\n
#4 \u2013Follow people that matter<\/h2>\n
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#5 \u2013 It\u2019s time-consuming – make sure you have the time<\/h2>\n
#6 \u2013 Make your posts interesting<\/h2>\n
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#7 \u2013 Timing does matter<\/h2>\n
#8 \u2013 Follow up comments and mentions about your business<\/h2>\n
#9 \u2013 Measure the results and ROI<\/h2>\n
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#10 \u2013 If everything fails, leave it to the pros<\/h2>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n