Social media isn’t just a great way to find and connect with new customers. It’s also a cost-effective marketing method for getting more eyes on your product or service, as well as boosting your sales. With over 2.5 billion social media users worldwide, it’s vital that your business takes advantage of social media, but it’s simply not enough to just sign up. In order to achieve social media success, an effective plan needs to be put in place.
To help you boost your business, we’ve included our top 30 social media tips for small business owners below. We’ve even broken them down into tips for 5 of the most popular platforms. Get ready to take your venture to a whole new level!
Facebook‘s dedicated business pages are perfect for advertising and marketing your business for free. The following advice will help you boost your likes, fans, and engagement in no time.
Fill out all sections of your business page
All of the sections of your Facebook business page prove to be important real estate, as they allow you to give your audience vital information such as who you are, what you do, and how people can purchase your products or services. Some parts (such as your profile image and cover photo) also allow you to upload imagery, further reinforcing your branding.
A complete Facebook business page will always look more professional than a half-empty one, helping to boost your reputation and trustworthiness.
Always respond to comments and messages
When a customer (or potential customer) takes the time to engage with your page, you should always give them the courtesy of replying, especially while your page is still in its infancy. Not only can it establish customer loyalty, but it also reinforces that you’re there on the other end, ready to respond when they need you to.
Engage with other pages in your niche
While some businesses might believe that it’s a good idea to ignore their competition altogether, we disagree. Following the pages of your competitors lets you see what marketing and promotion methods they’re using, plus who knows what collaborations may be forged between the two of you in the future. When their fans see the competitor engaging with you, there’s also a chance you can gain a few of their followers too.
Make sure your branding is on-point
Having cohesive branding is important for your business, as it helps fans to instantly distinguish your company from others. Branding extends to the language, as well as the imagery you use, so you’ll want to ensure these are in-line with your website, blog and other social profiles.
Use a call-to-action on your page
Facebook’s business pages also allow you to include a call-to-action, letting customers click through to your website, sign up for your email newsletter, or more. Be sure to explore these options available to you, as it’s not an opportunity you’ll want to pass up.
Track your page’s insights
Facebook also allows you to check your analytics and statistics using their in-built Insights feature. This is vital for discovering the demographics of your fan base, as well as what time of the day / week you should be posting to increase your engagement. These insights also show you what kinds of content your audience like the most, helping you to build a reliable Facebook marketing strategy.
Despite the rise in Instagram and Facebook’s popularity over Twitter, it’s still a great platform for small businesses to use. Here’s how you can get the most out of your Twitter efforts.
Utilise SEO on your profile
If you’re not already familiar with search engine optimisation (more commonly known as SEO), we suggest you have a read of this article. SEO utilises keywords to help your content appear in search engine results, helping to put it in front of your target customer’s eyes. When filling out your business’ Twitter profile, you should definitely take SEO into account.
Keep your posts short
Did you know tweets with less than 100 characters have a 17% higher engagement rate? This is why it’s important to keep your content short and sweet when posting to Twitter. Keep in mind that you don’t always have to share text too. This leads us to our next point…
Share images too
Just like other social media platforms, you can share media such as images and videos on Twitter. In fact, we recommend you share visual content from time to time to offer your followers more varied content. Plus, posts with images garner over six times more engagement than text-only content.
Use hashtags correctly
We’ve spoken about hashtags a bit before, but these really came into popularity with the invention of Twitter. If you want to push your content onto other people’s screens, then hashtags are the way to go. It also allows the platform (and users) to group related content together, making it a lot easier to follow a particular topic.
Engage followers of your competition
Want to increase your fan base? Find the Twitter profiles of your competitors, then begin engaging with some of their followers, whether it’s through following, retweeting, or commenting on their content.
Don’t be afraid to schedule content
Did you know that you can also schedule social media content to be posted in advance at your peak times? While most platforms allow you to do this (especially through third-party sites such as Buffer and HootSuite), we think it’s particularly helpful for Twitter, where tweeting multiple times a day is often encouraged. This lets you get on with other, more important tasks.
Instagram‘s huge success lies in the fact that it’s a visual platform, however this can often leave small business owners confused about what to post. The following tips will help:
Post high-quality content that appeals to your target audience
Your Instagram followers want to see polished, high-quality photos – not blurry or dark images. When posting your content, first ask yourself: “is this a photo I would love to see in someone else’s feed?” Branding is super important on Instagram, as the cohesive nature of your feed is what will get more people hitting that ‘Follow’ button.
Use your bio strategically
Unlike some social media platforms, you have a very limited amount of space on your Instagram profile to discuss your business. Keep your intro short, before providing strategic links. You might simply link to your website, but keep in mind that you can also link to a popular product, your services page, or even your email newsletter sign up form. It just depends on the major goal of your social media marketing.
Use relevant hashtags (but don’t overdo it)
Using hashtags on Instagram allows your content to reach a wider audience, or more specifically, those who are searching for those particular hashtags. This not only gets more eyes on your photos, but also increases the potential number of new followers (and customers) you might gain. Here’s the thing though: you don’t want to overdo the hashtags. We recommend keeping it to a limit of the 5 most relevant.
Create excitement with discounts
While all social media platforms are great for advertising sales or discounts, Instagram is perhaps one of the best. You can highlight the discount not just in your feed, but also in your profile’s bio and stories.
Find and engage with your ideal customers
Instagram is great for searching hashtags that are relevant to your company and then finding ideal customers based on those findings. Perhaps you’re a small fashion retailer wishing to put your products in front of young females. Searching for the hashtag #fashionblogger and then engaging with these accounts will introduce your company to them, plus it might open up promotional collaborations down the track.
Keep on top of analytics
Like Facebook, Instagram also has an in-built analytics tool which helps you gauge how well your posts perform, what times the majority of your followers are online, and more. We recommend checking these analytics regularly to keep on top of your Instagram marketing game.
When Pinterest first emerged, a lot of business owners weren’t using it, but now all that has changed. Over one million businesses are already using Pinterest to reach their customers, with 73% of Pinners saying that content from brands makes Pinterest more useful.
Share your content as vertical images
Due to the layout of Pinterest’s home feed, vertical images tend to work best, as they’re displayed larger than horizontal pins. This makes them more eye-catching to users, increasing your chances of them re-pinning the image to their following or clicking-through to view your content. You can easily create these yourself using one of the many free-to-use design platforms.
Follow similar brands or companies
When you follow the accounts of similar brands or companies, it allows you to see what they’re pinning, potentially giving you ideas for your own Pinterest marketing strategy. They might even return the favour and follow you too, resulting in another follower.
Have a board dedicated to your products / services
On Pinterest, you’ll likely have several boards dedicated to different (but relevant) topics, so we recommend that at least one of these is for the promotion of your own content, products, or services. You should also make this the first board on your profile to try and increase its views and follows. The more your own content is re-pinned, the more views you can expect it to gain.
Re-pin relevant content
Just like other platforms, you’ll also want to only pin content that is relevant to your ideal customer or target audience. After all, this is the best way you’ll attract them to your profile. If you offer business coaching services, for example, you might re-pin content related to entrepreneurship, small business, and time management, as these are the topics your target customer is most interested in.
Utilise SEO practices
Pinterest differs from the majority of other social media platforms, as it operates more like a search engine. Similarly to Google, users use keywords to search for the content they’re interested in seeing. This is why you’ll want to optimise your pin descriptions for relevant keywords, as well as the descriptions on your profile and boards.
Learn your best-performing pins
Pinterest also has an in-built analytics tool for business accounts, letting you see which pins are performing the best, as well as other engagement rates. These are great to keep track of, helping you to see how well your marketing efforts are playing out.
Request recommendations from customers
LinkedIn also allows users to write Recommendations for companies. These are basically a testimonial, telling others how they had a positive experience with your business. It’s not often that a customer will go out of their way to hunt down your LinkedIn page and write a recommendation, so we advise you to prompt people to do this yourself. Just hit ‘Request a Recommendation’, fill out the information and send the request to your customer.
Post updates from your company
Your LinkedIn company page is a great place to post updates about your company, particularly as the platform is very business-focused. You can share new products or services with them, along with any other milestones you have reached.
Keep it visual
Our brains process images faster than text, and as we mentioned before, they also increase your engagement by up to 6 times. Therefore, it’s vital that you also share images, along with textual content.
Use LinkedIn analytics
You can use the Marketing tab on your company’s page to keep track of your analytics. These will let you know what is and isn’t working when it comes to your LinkedIn strategy. Using these insights, you’ll also gain a clearer understanding of your audience and their wants.
Don’t auto-post from other social platforms
Some business owners fall into the trap of setting up auto-posts across their social media accounts, meaning that anything they share on one platform is also posted on all of their platforms. While this might save time, we would recommend against it. You see, followers tune into each social media platform expecting to see varied content from that brand. You don’t want your content to become predictable, or worst, for people to stop following you altogether.
Make sure your profile is complete
When your profile is complete, it increases your chance of showing up in search results. This is why it’s important to fill out every section necessary, such as industry, location, current position, past positions, education, skills, and imagery (such as profile photo).
There you have it – our top 30 social media tips for small business owners. Which of these will you be adding to your social media strategy? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.
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