Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Strategic social media content marketing is the key to success for small businesses. Small businesses need to be agile, nimble, and creative, unlike enterprises with dedicated resources and time. However, to better approach this topic, let’s take a step back and address the main question: “What is the importance of social media for small businesses?”

Today, there are over 4.2 billion active social media users across the globe. More businesses go online to increase brand awareness and build a following. 93% of marketers worldwide are using social media to promote their initiatives. Besides helping companies to reach potential customers, social media platforms are also ideal for understanding their competitors better. Plus, the channels make connecting with the target audience easier and more cost-effective. For this reason, not having a social media content marketing plan is a huge missed opportunity.

Now that you know the importance of social media marketing for small businesses, follow our top three tips to give your social media presence a strong start.

1. Create a content calendar

Many small businesses make the mistake of creating posts on the fly, giving little to no thought to the content. Posting quality content requires planning, and you can only get results if you maintain a consistent posting schedule – both of which demand time investment.

Due to the lack of staffing and budget, many small businesses find maintaining their social media presence challenging and costly. Virtually Social aims to solve this issue by offering social media management packages at affordable prices. We’re an Australia-based social media marketing agency with services catered to helping small businesses grow their presence on social networks. We offer what most social media freelancers don’t: stability in delivering services and a team of digital marketing experts at your services.

1. Pay attention to current trends

To create an engaging post, you need to know your target audience's needs and wants. You can do so by conducting target audience research and identifying industry trends.

Virtually Social offers content curation for all kinds of business sectors. We can curate just the right content that your audience will find interesting, valuable, and fun. All content that we post to your social media will match your tone and voice, so customers immediately know it’s you. In short, we can make social media content marketing easier for you!

1. Create great visuals

Even if you’re not marketing your brand on Instagram, having interesting visuals on your posts can leave an impression on potential customers and drive engagement. Many tools are available to help you create different kinds of visuals. Find the right type of visual that fits your target audience by creating a customer persona and conducting a competitive analysis.

Virtually Social fulfills both needs by including custom-made visuals in our content curation service. We will make sure your posts turn heads!

Social media for small businesses has taken the global eCommerce market by storm, and it’s up to you to keep up with it. Schedule a call with our team if you need expert assistance.

 Don't Believe These 6 Social Media Marketing Myths

If you are new to the social media marketing world, you will quickly learn that there is no exact formula for creating a successful marketing campaign. That said, there are plenty of misconceptions about this particular topic that can do more damage to your brand than good.

To keep the facts straight, we will go through the ten most fatal misconceptions about social media for small businesses.

1. The more social media platform you join, the better.

When it comes to social media, you should prioritise quality over quantity. While being active on many platforms can bring a lot of eyes to your brand, producing quality content consistently will be hard if you have multiple accounts to attend to. So, unless you have the time and energy needed to create unique posts for different platforms, we recommend focusing on only one or two social networks where your target audience is most active.

1. In social media content marketing, posting time does not matter.

Each social media platform has its own golden time to post. Therefore, publishing your social media content marketing campaign around this timeframe will get you more views. It is best to identify your chosen platform’s golden time and adjust your schedule based on your audience’s behaviour for optimal results.

1. You do not need to engage with your followers.

Social media marketing strives to provide an authentic connection with the target audience. You can only achieve optimal returns from this marketing method if your posts stimulate conversations and encourage engagement.

In addition to producing high-quality content, try to encourage your followers to like, comment, and share your posts. The more people see your brand, the higher the conversion rates you will have.

1. Social media is for creating customers only.

Getting new customers is just a fracture of the big picture in social media marketing. As social media has a global penetration of 45%, there is a chance that a good portion of your followers are already customers. In this case, your social media marketing goals should include customer retention and brand loyalty.

1. Social media content marketing is not measurable.

You can definitely measure social media with the right metrics. Some of the most common metrics include brand awareness or engagement (comments, likes, and mentions), audience growth rate (followers), post reach (views), and amplification rate (shares by followers).

In every small business social media strategy, the key to measuring your social media performance is to pick metrics that align with your social media goals. It allows you to keep track of the campaign’s progress and whether it works.

1. Social media marketing services are expensive.

Plenty of Social Media Marketing Agency offer their services at different prices. At Virtually Social, we specifically design our social media management packages to accommodate small businesses. If you are looking for a social media virtual assistant but do not want to hire multiple social media management freelancers, consider partnering with us as a better solution.