Recent years have changed how we do business. For instance, businesses now hold meetings primarily on Zoom. Also, because of the recent world health crisis, providers have opted for contactless ways to make their products and services available to their customers. Lastly and most important of all, social media has become the go-to platform for marketers to grow their brands.
With the undeniable importance of social media marketing, many business owners and marketing professionals have shifted their campaign focus to social media platforms. They have spared no effort in staying on top of the latest social media activities. And if your small business hasn’t caught on to the trend yet, now is the perfect time to get started.
Things You Should Never Skip Doing on Social Media
In this blog article, we will go over the top social media activities you should never skip for your business.
- Build relationships with your customers.
- Provide extra value to your followers through content curation.
- Have a social media marketing plan.
- Measure your social media presence.
- Focus on the right social media platforms.
- Know what your customers want.
- Take advantage of social media management tools.
- Build your own identity as a brand on social media.
- Take time to learn new digital marketing skills.
- Log off from social media platforms when you have to.
Let’s discuss these social media marketing ideas for small business in more detail below.
Build Relationships with Your Customers
It’s no secret that having a working relationship with your customers is the key to long-term success as a business. Cultivating a connection based on trust and communication helps consumers feel more secure with your brand. Consequently, if your customers feel more connected with your business, you can expect them to stay with you and make repeat purchases.
On social media, you can build relationships by engaging your customers in meaningful conversations. One way to do this is by asking them thought-provoking questions about their pain points and guiding them to realize that your products or services are the solutions they are looking for. And always remember that your social media platforms should be seen by your customers as a place where they can expect real-time communication and feedback.
Provide Extra Value to Your Followers Through Content Curation
There is more to content curation than just simply sharing other people’s content on your social media platforms. Content curation is a valuable strategy for digital marketers and business owners to highlight their industry expertise while providing their followers with extra value.
In a nutshell, content curation is the strategy of sharing content from other brands or individuals to your own social media accounts. This can be done by simply sharing someone else’s social media post or by sharing a link to a blog post written by an industry expert. By curating content, you don’t just build relationships with your customers but you also network with other key players in the industry.
Have a Social Media Marketing Plan.
With 4.9 billion social media users in the world as of 2023, it is no surprise why social media offers the greatest potential for lead generation. However, this means that the platform is also the place with the greatest competition. As you venture into social media marketing, you must expect to encounter other businesses that offer the same things as your company and may even be doing the same marketing campaigns as you do.
So how do you stand out from the crowd? Invest time and resources in developing a social media strategy. What makes a social media plan successful and effective will vary due to a lot of factors. However, the most successful social media strategies often have the following things in common:
- An objective
- A target audience
- The social platform(s) to use
- A desired action
- Method(s) for monitoring and analysis
Simply put, you must know exactly what you are posting about, why you are posting, to whom you are posting your content for, which social media platform to post it, what you expect your audience to do with your social media post, and how to check if your goal for posting is achieved or not.
Measure Your Social Media Presence
Aside from generating leads and increasing sales, all your social media marketing efforts are geared towards one goal, and that is to improve your social media presence. Social media presence refers to the visibility of a business on its chosen social media platforms and the connection it has with its target audience. In other words, it refers to the level of engagement a brand has with its social media followers.
Unlike other digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs), such as conversion and click-through rate, there is no mathematical formula to measure social media presence. You may measure your audience growth rate, but as many digital marketing marketers would agree, social media presence is more than just the number of your followers. Social media presence is much broader in scope, and to measure it, you must keep track of all your social media metrics.
Focus on the Right Social Media Platforms
There are a plethora of social media platforms to choose from, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the wide array of options. As a business owner, how do you know which platforms are perfect for your business and which ones are not worth your efforts? It is critical that you determine this before you pour time, money, and effort into any social media campaign.
Aside from considering your target audience and your brand’s line of business, you must have an in-depth understanding of the different social media platforms and their uses. Each platform has its own personality and ways of communicating with its users. Below are the most popular social media platforms for digital marketing:
- Tiktok
Facebook is the biggest social media platform in the world. While its versatility makes it perfect for almost any goal, Facebook is great for local marketing, advertising, and community building. On the other hand, Instagram is a solid choice for e-commerce, organic engagement, and influencer marketing. Meanwhile, Twitter is your go-to platform for customer service and news. LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform for B2B marketing. Lastly, TikTok is your social media platform of choice if you aim for more entertainment and emotion-based marketing, especially among younger audiences.
Know What Your Customers Want
Customer reviews are very important for your business. And because of social media, consumers nowadays have a louder voice than ever before. For small businesses, it is doubly critical that you listen to them. Your business is not a business without them.
Social media is all about conversations. Aside from launching various marketing campaigns to get your customers to purchase your products or avail of your services, you must also use the platform to understand them and what they want, need, or experience.
One way to do this is by learning the buyer personas that are drawn to your brand and your products and services. A buyer persona is the idealized representation of a company’s customers. This representation is based on research and data about the company’s potential and existing customers.
Take Advantage of Social Media Management Tools
Although the potential of social media as a venue for digital marketing is greatly promising, small businesses must be careful in using it. You can easily waste valuable time and resources trying to manage multiple inboxes for different social media apps, post the same things on the different social media platforms where your brand is present, and above all, stay on top of it without compromising your other responsibilities as a business owner. As your brand grows, you will discover that social media management becomes next to impossible without the proper tools.
There is a wide range of social media management tools that you can use to have full control of your social media presence. Many of these tools allow you to automate, analyze, and manage social media accounts from different platforms all at once and in just a single app. With the management part becoming a breeze, you can now focus on creating the kind of social media content your audience will love.
Build Your Own Identity as a Brand on Social Media
When hearing the phrase “brand identity”, the first thing that comes into the minds of most people is the brand logo. Yes, the logo is everything, and designing a powerful one is the first step in developing your brand identity. However, as any social media manager would agree, it is only the beginning, especially if you are focusing on social media marketing.
There are many ways to create a unique brand identity on social media. Here are some of them:
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Have a standard color palette.
Standardizing your color palette is important, especially if you are advertising on a social media platform that focuses on photo sharing, like Instagram. Sticking to a color palette is important to creating your brand identity as it establishes brand consistency and cohesiveness across all your social media posts.
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Be consistent with your content tone.
Being consistent with how your content should sound is not about saying the same thing again and again on your social media platforms. What it means is that you have to be consistent in what you are trying to accomplish with your social media posts. Whether you want to be informative, promotional, or entertaining is completely up to you, but you need to observe this tone every time you post on your social media pages.
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Collab with social media influencers who match your brand.
There is a good reason why influencer marketing is so popular these days, and that’s because it provides a better return on investment than other marketing strategies when done correctly. Influencer marketing is a digital marketing strategy wherein brands partner with popular social media users to promote their products and services. These famous social media users, also known as social media influencers, have a large following that businesses can leverage to create leads and drive sales. However, you must also bear in mind that creating a brand identity using influencer marketing is not just about picking the social media influencer with the highest number of followers. You must also make sure that the image of that individual matches the brand identity you want to build.
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Create unique hashtags for your brand.
Branded hashtags are hashtags associated with a specific brand on social media. A branded hashtag can be a word or group of words that encourages social media users to be involved in a conversation started by a brand. Branded hashtags are commonly used on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Using branded hashtags not only helps you create your brand identity but also helps you connect with your audience. When you create branded hashtags for your followers to share, you are effectively spreading your business name, making it easier for you to track user-generated content (UGC) about your brand.
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Use a template for each social media channel.
Using a content template for your social media posts can help you automate the process of content creation and save a huge amount of time. This ensures that your brand aesthetic is consistent and firmly establishes your identity as a brand. Not everything that you post on social media will need a template, but it is a good strategy to make sure that all your postings are recognizable as your content.
Take Time to Learn New Digital Marketing Skills
Digital marketing is constantly evolving. This necessitates that social media marketers have to learn new skills as much as they can and whenever they can. Facebook, for instance, has been known to update its algorithm from time to time. Whether you love it or not, you must understand its algorithm to be successful on the world’s largest social media network as a digital marketer.
To be a successful and effective social media manager is to be an integrated digital marketer. This means you need to have a wide array of skills and not just limit yourself to social media management.
Log Off from Social Media Platforms When You Have to
Various research studies have found that social media can have detrimental effects on one’s mental health, especially when not used responsibly. It has been known to cause a wide range of mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and stress. As a social media manager, this means that excessive exposure to social media can affect your productivity and drain your creative energy.
As much as you want to be online all the time, you will also need to log off every once in a while. You may get some fresh air, immerse in nature, or do anything that allows you to reflect on your next move. Remember, digital marketing is all about having a carefully laid-out strategy.
Things You Should Never Do on Social Media
If there are social media marketing actvities you should never skip doing on social media, there are also things you should never do in the first place. Committing any of the mistakes below can negatively impact your brand’s reputation and possibly incur losses for your business.
- Posting without double-checking
- Focusing on just one social media platform.
- Ignoring negative comments
- Being formal all the time
- Treating your website and social media pages as two different channels
- Depending too much on social media automation tools
Posting Without Double-Checking
Everything that you do on social media will help shape your brand identity. Every piece of content that you publish on your social media platforms will become part of your digital marketing footprint. Spreading wrong information, even when it’s not intentional, can change your customers’ perception of your brand. In fact, even a typo can get exploited by trolls to create materials to mock your business. Memes that make fun of your brand are the last things you will want as a social media manager.
For these reasons, it is critically important to double-check everything before posting them on social media. You must proofread for grammatical errors and cross-check facts.
Focusing on Just One Social Media Platform
You must have already heard the proverb that says “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” This phrase warns us not to risk everything by committing to one plan or idea only. Regardless of what industry your company is in, focusing on just one marketing form is never a smart—let alone sustainable—move for business. And this is especially true for social media marketing.
As discussed earlier in this article, each social media platform is designed to cater to the needs of a specific audience. And sometimes, you have to consider this fact rather than solely focusing on the number of users a social media platform has. While Facebook, with its 2.9 monthly active users, seems the best place to get started with social media marketing for any business, a B2B company foregoing LinkedIn altogether is intentionally missing out on a lot of professional connections.
Ignoring Negative Comments
You know what they say: it is best to ignore negativity. While this common saying can be applied to any aspect of life in general, it is not the case all the time. This is especially true in digital marketing. As a social media manager, you should NEVER ignore negative comments. When a customer has a negative experience with your brand and reaches out to you via social media, you must promptly respond to them, instead of letting their comments get buried under recent ones. It may just be one customer, but their comment is visible to the rest of your followers. Ignoring negative feedback will send the wrong message that you don’t care about your customers.
Being Formal All the Time
Social media marketing is all about humanizing your brand and making your business more relatable to your audience. If all your social media posts sound like a business letter, then you are obviously missing the point. Your goal on social media platforms is to engage with your potential and existing customers, and you should do that in their language. You should incorporate humor and entertainment into your social media content and show your audience the lighthearted side of your business. For instance, while meme marketing seems like an out-of-character move for your business, it can help you reach a wider audience and increase your brand presence online.
Treating Your Website and Social Media Pages as Two Different Channels
As a brand, your online presence is an aggregate of all the platforms you are on. It includes everything from your press releases, news articles, blogs, and social media pages, including your business website. That’s why it only makes sense that your digital marketing strategy should be integrated into all these platforms.
Treating your business website and social media pages as two different channels is a big no-no. It can cause you to lose a huge amount of traffic that you could have effortlessly generated if your website and social media are interlinked with each other.
Depending Too Much on Social Media Automation Tools
Thanks to modern technology, the job of a social media manager has never been this convenient before. With social media management tools, you can now schedule multiple posts on multiple platforms in just a few clicks. However, it is still critically important for social media managers to be active in the process of social media management as these tools are not 100% bug-free and may not be able to detect human errors. Keeping an eye on these automation tools will ensure that everything is running smoothly and errors are addressed right away.
What’s the Takeaway?
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to having a perfect social media marketing strategy. In fact, there is no perfect social media marketing plan at all. You may observe all the dos and don’ts of social media marketing, but at the end of the day, the success of your social media marketing strategy will still depend on how you implemented it after careful consideration of many factors. Mistakes will happen. It’s how you addressed them that will matter in the long run.
If you need the help of social media management experts to learn more about how businesses use social media for marketing, don’t hesitate to contact us at +1 (877) 216-0852 today!
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