Why your business should be active on social media
You hear it constantly: “You need to be doing social media for your business!” But what does this mean, and is it worth your time? Social media is not a magic bullet to business success, but using it correctly will help you achieve specific objectives and accelerate your growth.
Because if your business has customers (and if you want more of them), social media is one of the easiest, cheapest, and most effective ways to reach them. Even better, once you reach them, social media gives you many different ways to interact with them and stay on their radar. Here’s what social media allows you to do with your business.
Top benefits of social media for small businesses
Social media has a distinct advantage over other marketing channels. While traditional advertising interrupts someone’s enjoyment of media or their activity, social media allows you to deliver highly engaging content with their permission. It can be a more intimate channel, but if companies use that opportunity to push ads rather than stories, customers will quickly find the unfollow button.
Grow your audience
Social media builds your customer base and expands your reach. While “Likes” don’t pay the bills, they increase your business's visibility with users who don’t follow you! We use social media to connect with people, aiming to get them off the platform, onto your website, or engage with your company.
Capture contact information
Once again, the goal is to keep these relationships on social media rather than form relationships. Therefore, you need alternate ways to contact potential customers to continue these relationships off the platform. Social media is a way to direct potential new customers to a place where you can gather valuable contact information to continue nurturing your relationships with them.
Nurture customer relationships
Whether it’s a friendship, romantic relationship, or business relationship, all relationships have rules and move through stages. Social media helps you carry customers along in their relationship with you as a brand, taking them closer to the decisive action of buying your product or hiring you.
Pre-frame your offer
Whatever your business does, it offers value to potential customers. Social media is a great way to welcome customers into your world and help them get to know you, pre-framing the offer you will make to them.
Pre-framing happens when customers listen to and interact with the stories you share, building up an emotional expectation and understanding of your offer. So before they are ready to start doing personal business with you, they already know what doing business with you is like.
Create FOMO
Great social media (smiley happy people and the stories you tell) will create a fear of missing out on your audience. The goal is to get them to want to join the club.
Six steps to your small business’s social media
That’s why you need social media, but how do you approach it, so it works for your brand?
1.Prep your stories
People pay attention when they know companies specifically make something with them in mind. We said earlier that stories are better than ads, so be social on social. Social media is like having an ongoing relationship and conversation with someone, and it’s through stories that interest is piqued.
The stories you tell should be about your customers—not some general person with whom you don’t care about doing business. Purposeful, thoughtful stories intending to enrich lives will consistently outperform a stream of ads on social media.
2.Planning your social media content
Your social media schedule is like a workout routine. You might not see results, but you'll see gains with a clear plan and the diligence to show up daily. To that end, a content calendar is a great way to hold you accountable.
When sharing your story, focus on understanding the 4-part social media story strategy:
The what: the broad categories of what your company provides and communicates
The who: connect each post to someone or something—a customer, a team member, a flavor, a specific project, or yourself—who’ll help bring it to life.
The why: the overarching themes of your brand’s mission and the main problem you help customers solve
The how: the different kinds of posts you can use to communicate your what on social media
If you start thinking about your content through storytelling frameworks rather than advertising, you’ll see success with your posts.
3.Knowing what to post for your small business
You’ve prepped your stories and planned your calendar, but now you must start thinking about the creative part of building each post. Each post has three components: copy, photography, and post type.
Users will first see your photos when interacting with your post. While your photos don’t have to be professional, they must be consistent. Show faces of real people using your product because any time you add a personality to your post, you add soul to your business.
Social media copy is not like any other marketing copy you’ve written. Social media is your opportunity to be social and laid-back. We have much to say about good social media copywriting, but you'll be better off writing as you speak in real life.
Stories and Reels have dominated the social media landscape, providing excellent moments for you to pull back the curtain and become even more personal. But don’t rely on stories alone to share important information or have extended captions. Just have fun with it!
4.Playing the social media game
Social media is a long game, so treat it as an ongoing conversation. Take every opportunity to interact with your community, like sending direct messages to new followers, re-posting and tagging others when people’s posts mention you, and more. Additionally, if a comment feels negative or uncomfortable, don’t ignore it since it’s all part of the natural conversation.
5.Growing your small business with social media
Creates rhythms and systems to initiate and surprise your potential customers using creative shoulder taps. Don’t assume people will find your brand through the algorithm alone. Organic social outreach is the sweet spot for developing relationships with your customers.
6.Measuring the impact of social media on your small business
Success looks different for every business, so you must define it yourself. Refer back to your business’s goals. Do you need more growth in sales, foot traffic in your store, or awareness about a particular product? While every platform will have built-in metrics that help understand your performance, it’s meaningless unless tied back to your objectives.
You don’t have to manage your social media alone
Running an effective social media campaign is difficult for small businesses to manage alone. So if you’re reading through our series on social media and thinking, “This sounds great, but I could never accomplish this—I’m way too busy,” then schedule a meet-up with us. Our talented team of social media strategists and content creators is ready to help you grow your business and share your stories.
The Complete Social Media ToolKit is ready!
Our fully illustrated social media toolkit for small businesses is online now! Get yours here. Or, schedule a meet up!