Benefits of a good social media strategy for your small business

Americans spent about 1,300 hours browsing social media last year. That averages out to more than 3.5 hours a day, time spent interacting with friends, laughing at funny cat videos, or just mindlessly scrolling. About 70 percent of Americans use at least one social media site, with YouTube a perennial favorite, followed by Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you’re not currently taking advantage of social media marketing for small business to reach out and connect with current or potential clients, you might be missing out on valuable growth opportunities. Here are the small business growth strategies you need to know.

1. Building your Brand

More people, especially younger people, are turning to social media, making it easier for you to harness the power of social media. As users scroll feeds and consume content, you have an unparalleled opportunity to get your brand, products, and services in front of them, to increase awareness and make connections.

It’s time to create your brand online, interact with potential clients, strengthen relationships, and humanize your brand.

2. Growing and Evolving

Social media is rapidly evolving with new platforms being unveiled regularly and new words being coined daily. Although these changes can be intimidating, the potential for change also brings growth potential. Posts, ads, and shared content can drive traffic to your website, blog, and social channels and bring more visitors to your content. Use UTM tracking tags to collect essential data and discover as much as you can about what works and what might not be as effective.

While not every lead will necessarily convert to a sale, the odds of a sale skyrocket when your users are engaged. With social media marketing for small business, your potential customers will have new ways to get and stay engaged, learning more about your products and services without feeling like they need to commit too much. Lead generation becomes a natural benefit, and many social media networks, recognizing this, have created advertising formats specifically designed for this purpose. With just a few clicks, you can be well on your way to more productive, affordable sales leads.

3. Creating Vibrant Content

While social media makes it easy to connect with your audience with a range of intuitive tools, it is still only as effective as your content. Your content needs to be engaging, exciting, and spam-free. This ensures you’ll get more eyes on your product and services and attract interested users to your site. The information-rich content your site contains will help underscore your expertise and build your authority.

Start with a template that builds and maintains your brand image and reinforces your product and services with each update, post, or link you share. Use a predictable posting schedule so that your followers know what to expect. Research options to stay ahead of the marketing curve, exploring new opportunities and ideas when possible. Remember to include links and posts from other sources when appropriate.

4. Engaging and Communicating

Social media makes it easier than ever before to engage and communicate with your audience. No longer are we reaching into the void towards static readers or listeners but rather directly interacting with dynamic ads and messages. We can, in real-time, communicate with our followers and ask questions, respond to concerns, and engage in fun banter, much like Wendy’s Twitter feed.

Your customers are already talking about you, and you can talk right back as it happens. The benefits are clear in a positive environment, but when the chatter turns negative, you can address the issue immediately before things turn wildly sour. Reputation management, crisis communication, and customer service and support are all increasingly valuable and necessary in this era of constant connection. Use your social media feed to stay professional, correct issues, and provide support. Finally, remember to show appreciation for the kind words satisfied customers offer, too!

5. Learning and Evolving

Gaining insights becomes easy with the power of social media. You can learn more about your customers, your competition, the industry, and even your brand when you start using analytics. Plug into your social media analytics tools to find out how engaged your followers are, what they are saying and thinking about your brand and others, and how you can take control to better protect your brand’s reputation.

6. Advertising

Few things have transformed the ad game like social media. These platforms have given people a place to gather, connect, and play like never before, and advertisers have flocked to the scene, but the old advertising methods have not necessarily worked on the new media. Consumers and consumer behavior have changed, and advertisers have needed to adapt to stay ahead of the curve.

With social media as part of your small business growth strategies, you can boost your brand, build brand awareness, target a specific demographic or niche market, engage new customers, introduce new products and services, and build and maintain interest through targeted promotions and offers.

Unfortunately, even with all that work, the majority of online shopping carts are ultimately abandoned, which makes retargeting essential. Tracking tools can help you identify these potential customers and help them close the sale.

7. Proving ROI

Ads can be endlessly customized and crafted to match virtually any demographic, language, and online habit to speak directly to your ideal customer. In other words, you will only pay to reach the people you want to reach. You will also have access to a wide range of tracking and analytics tools to see the full reach of your advertising activities, including follows, engagements, shares, and purchases.

Tools such as Hootsuite Impact, Google Analytics, and more can track website traffic from various activities from both organic and paid campaigns and provide you with critical information that enables you to tweak your campaigns for the best possible ROIs. With the right tools, you will be able to better engage your audience, measure your impact, and ensure that each post or video you schedule and share has the maximum effect.