With so many social media marketing available, you’d think that creating a strategy for your small business would be easy. Finding the right social media marketing strategy for small business ventures can be much more challenging.
Without a doubt, social media influence on society has become much more evident over the past decade. However, all brands are jumping on the bandwagon, given its wide reach. That means there’s so much noise out there, making it tricky to decide which strategies will work best. Here are seven social media marketing strategies that you should avoid if you want to succeed with your small business:
1. Relying on ROI to make your decision
When you’re creating a social media marketing strategy for small business ventures, there’s one thing that you shouldn’t be looking out for the amount of revenue you stand to make as a result of that strategy.
Unfortunately, people often base their decisions on whether or not they’ll generate a profit. This is a huge mistake because it often leads to shortsighted marketing strategies. Instead, you should base your decisions on what benefits your brand the most, regardless of whether it drives sales. If a particular strategy increases awareness of your business and reaches the right audience, then it has done its job. This will ultimately lead to more sales in the long run.
2. Posting for the sake of posting every day
Many people make the mistake of thinking they need to post on social media at least once daily. The result is that they post for the sake of posting instead of posting content that their audience will appreciate. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t post daily. You should be posting several times a week on the days your target audience is likely to be online. You just need to be sure that each post is valuable so that people read them.
That said, finding the most creative ways to promote your business on social media is best. For instance, what are your audience’s other interests besides your product? How can you make your brand relevant to their lifestyle? Work these into your brand identity guide to ensure that your social media posts are on point.
3. Using automation too much
While automation can be an excellent social media marketing strategy for small business ventures, don’t rely too much on them. The thing is, automated posts don’t allow your audience to engage with your brand. Instead, they appear as standard posts that don’t encourage comments or shares.
As a result, they don’t help you build a relationship with your customers, and they don’t drive engagement. They also make you look like a spammer, which can lose followers in the long run. If you’re going to use automation, you need to be very selective about what content is published on autopilot. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time.
4. Being overly reliant on tools
As you’re building your social media marketing strategy, you’ll probably come across many tools that promise to make your life easier. The thing is, though, you should be very careful about using these tools. After all, some of them are useful, but many of them are just gimmicky and won’t add any real value to your business.
In short, only use the ones that will actually benefit your business. Also, ensure that you’ll know how to make the taste manually if those tools don’t work out for you.
5. Focusing on just one platform
Many people mistake focusing all of their attention on one social media platform and then ignoring the rest. However, you can’t expect to get the same amount of attention on each platform.
Instead of focusing on one, diversify and spread your effort among several different platforms. That way, you can build a relationship with an even larger audience and increase the engagement you receive as a result.
6. Posting the same thing on platforms
One popular social media marketing strategy for small business ventures is using a management app to post across all platforms. This step assumes that the strategy on one platform will also work on the others.
However, this move could lead to posts that don’t resonate with your audience. As a result, you don’t see results and look like an amateur. For instance, social media marketing strategies on Instagram or Facebook may not work on LinkedIn or Twitter. You need to understand what works and what doesn’t in each platform.
7. Treating social media posts as ads
Many people looking for how to promote business on social media for free often turn to posts as a way to advertise. They pepper their feeds with “buy now!” and “click here!” posts that don’t add any value to their audience.
As a result, people start to ignore these posts, which means they don’t work. In fact, these types of posts have the opposite effect and can put your audience off from buying from your business. That said, it’s best to put the value at the forefront of your social media posts. Then, reserve the sales spiel for creating effective Facebook ads.
Why Social Media for Small Businesses Important
Social media marketing creates a positive opportunity to grow your business. That said, here are the advantages that small businesses can see from developing a solid social media presence:
Promote your products
Social media is a prime place to showcase products, from testimonials to tutorials and beyond. Use the opportunity to highlight what makes your product great and how it can add value to your customers.
Create meaningful connections
Social media is a powerful tool for answering queries, handling customer service concerns, and gathering feedback from customers. Furthermore, when implemented effectively, your social media presence can help you build a more meaningful connection with your audience.
Increase your brand’s visibility
Social media drives product discovery, as highlighted in the latest social media statistics. Many potential customers will see your brand’s TikTok or Instagram before they see your website. They may learn about your brand when they come across your posts in their Explore or For You pages. Or they may even find you through a friend’s or influencer’s post. So, having an established social presence is crucial to boost your visibility and reach.
Gather real-time insights
Learn more about your audience’s pain points and interests from their conversations. Discover the latest trends in your industry and the most popular types of content. From your audience to competitors, there’s no better place to conduct market research.
How to Craft a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Small Business
After understanding the benefits of social media and the common mistakes in social media marketing, what’s next? It’s time to learn how to build a successful social marketing strategy.
1. Coordinate with relevant teams
Work with each department to identify how social media can deliver the most value for them. Ask each team what they want to learn from social media. This will help you develop a plan covering all the sides of the business. Your sales team, for instance, may want to find and nurture leads through social media, so your strategy may involve identifying key purchase conversations on social media.
2. Identify key platforms
As mentioned earlier, many people mistakenly focus all of their attention on one social media platform. Explore other platforms and see which of them will significantly benefit your business. Do some audience research to understand which social platforms your audience spends the most time on. Understand the various platforms your audience uses and how each caters to their specific interests.
This will make it easier to streamline your social media efforts, as you can develop a suitable strategy that covers each platform in a relevant, targeted way.
3. Build a social media team
Now, the biggest question is: Who will execute your social media strategy? Many businesses use social media mainly for marketing. So, the marketing team handles most social media tasks. But what if you want to use social media for customer support? Or what if your marketing team doesn’t know how to handle sales queries?
Having a dedicated team to handle key social media tasks relevant to each department is essential. You may set up a team that handles all things social media. Alternatively, you may embed social media experts into various internal teams. The exact social media team structure depends on what works for your business.
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The Best Social Media Management Tools for Your Small Business
Below are the top social media planning tools to help you achieve your goals faster.
Vista Social
Vista Social is the best social media management tool for small teams. Vista Social is a solid social media scheduler and also includes messaging, social listening, a link-in-bio service, and even basic task management, so your team can keep track of who has to do what. It supports Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, Threads, Snapchat, Reddit, Bluesky, and even Tumblr. All the features you need from a good social media management app are there, including the now obligatory AI assistant.
Buffer
Buffer is an intuitive social media management app preferred by many businesses. It offers a proprietary “link in bio” service called Start Page. It’s not a new idea, but having it included as part of your social media management app is handy. Similarly, the included Ideas Kanban board isn’t revolutionary, but keeping your in-progress social media posts in your social media scheduling app makes sense.
Hootsuite
If you’re looking for a complete solution to all of your social media management needs, Hootsuite will cover all your bases. Analytics are a particular stand out. In addition, Hootsuite also pulls in statistics from other businesses within your industry so you can see how you stack up to the competition.
The Bottom line
Looking at the approaches mentioned above, one can see how well social media marketing strategy for small business ventures can quickly take a wrong turn. In the end, remember these simple tips to make social media work for you:
- Know the audience of each social media platform and tailor your posts accordingly.
- Don’t think of social media as an instant highway to sales. Instead, treat it as a two-way road between you and your audience.
- Social media posts are all about value. Hard-selling your products day in and day out can be the fastest way to lose followers.
Given the nature of social media, new trends will come and go. But by taking these core concepts to heart, you can take advantage of any platform and not waste time and money while growing your business.
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