Having a social media presence is no is no longer optional for small businesses, it's a prerequisite for success. Your customers rely on social media to recommend your business and address customer service needs, and you'll need it to build a strong brand. Let's go over some best practices and recommended resources.
First, we'd like to point you to a list of 103 compelling social media statistics that Business 2 Community, an outlet focused on marketing strategy, put out in November. If you don't have a chance to look at the whole list, here are a few that are particularly relevant to small businesses:
- 97% of all consumer search for local businesses online
- 72% of adult Internet users in the US are active on at least on social network
- 68% of consumers check out companies on social networking sites before buying
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We're quickly moving away from the attention economy, where businesses try to find out what customers are thinking by flooding them with advertisements, and into the intention economy. In the intention economy, where customers tell businesses what they want and let them compete, social media is the most important tool for listening to what they'''re saying.
If you're not familiar with the different social networks, here is a fun bacon chart that will help you understand them.
Best Practices
Pick Your Voice
To ensure a consistent brand voice, it's best to pick one person or a small team to handle all social media responsibilities. Then decide what kind of voice is best for your business. If you're a personal trainer, maybe you want to position yourself as a motivator and create a profile full of inspirational materials.
Create a Schedule
And stick to it! Inactive accounts show a lack of commitment and are far too common. Make sure you're posting at least 2-3 times a week. If you really want to get organized, consider using this free social media publishing schedule template from HubSpot.
Interact With Followers
They followed you because they like your product or service. Show them that you care too by taking time to thoughtfully interact with them. In addition to simply responding to questions and comments, be proactive and find out what they're interested in!
Don't Be Overly Self-serving
Remember the attention and intention economies we talked about earlier? You'll gain a larger and more loyal audience by helping your followers better themselves rather than perpetually promoting your brand to them. For every post about your company, share three non-promotional posts.
Shareable Content is Key
One of the goals of social media, regardless of the platform you're on, is having the content you share be shared by others. Lists ("Top Ten Best...", "8 Ways to...", etc.) and other forms of easily digestible information are much more likely to be shared.
Use Images
According to a HubSpot post last year, updates that include an image on Facebook get 53% more likes. The same goes for Twitter, and Pinterest is by nature a visual platform.
Best Social Networks for Small Businesses
Not only is the chart funny, it demonstrates an important point: not all social networks should be used in the same way. Content must be tailored to fit the channel it's being distributed over. Your business should definitely be on Facebook and Twitter. There's a good chance you should also be on Pinterest. Depending on your business, some of the other networks might also be relevant.
With over 1.15 billion monthly users, Facebook is the world's biggest social network. Most small businesses should create a free business page on Facebook (step by step process in previous newsletter).
On Twitter, members share posts that are limited to 140 characters. They can either be directed at other users or meant for your followers to read. Anyone who's interested in what you're saying can "follow" you. Everything you post will show up on their wall. As a business, the more followers you have, the better. You can also gauge the quality of your followers by looking at their profiles and seeing how relevant they are. The #hashtag (this is how it's used) is one of the things that made Twitter famous. Hashtags are added before words or phrases to categorize a post. Once posted, the word or phrase becomes a hyperlink that will tell you who else in the Twitterverse is talking about the same thing.
This cheat sheet from Elliot Design might be helpful for small business owners who are new to Twitter and want to get off to a fast start.
A network for users to share similar interests, Pinterest allows you to "pin" images, videos and other objects to your wall, or pinboard. Here is some basic information about how Pinterest works and some brands that are crushing it on Pinterest!
Don't know when or what to post about? Pinerly put together a nice infographic that explains just that.
Resources
With social media comes social media experts, and there are a lot of them out there. If all of this is new to you, don't get overwhelmed. If you don't want to spend time on social media every day, here are some great resources to schedule your posts in advance!
Buffer
Buffer is another great tool. It also allows you to write several posts at once to be distributed throughout the day at the best times to reach your target audience. In addition to analytics Facebook and Twitter provide (numbers of likes, shares, favorites and retweets), Buffer provides in-depth analysis, such as the exact number of people who click on links you share.
HootSuite
Both Buffer and HootSuite offer a free option
HootSuite is the most popular tool for scheduling posts on social media. It tracks your brand mentions and analyzes social media traffic for you. It's not only for small businesses that don't have time to spend on social media. Some of the biggest brands in the world use HootSuite, including PepsiCo, Sony, CBS and Virgin.
We hope you've found this information useful! If there are any other topics you'd like to see us cover, please don't hesitate toreach out. Once you implement them, we'd love to hear how the social media best practices have affected your business.
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