As a small business, it can be very difficult to do all that you need to do to make your business run… and market your business so that you can build your brand, gain clients, and sell products and services. Here are a few essential keys to keeping your social media plan simple and sweet.
One isn’t a lonely number
Only focusing on one social media platform is OKAY! It is better than okay; it is great! There is nothing that says you have to try to manage multiple platforms at once. Studying the demographics of each and knowing where you can make the greatest impact is the most important thing. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Make a strong effort to provide solid social media content on one platform.
Quality over quantity
Your social media posts need to provide your audience/clients/customers with information that is relevant, that is needed, and that is informative. Creating lackluster content in order to post is not the way to endear your brand/business with customers. Frankly, they just get annoyed and wonder why you are posting irrelevant content every day that is clogging up their feed. Instead, post once a week, and make it important and valuable.
Do what you do and don’t apologize for it!
If talking is your thing, why not do a live audio or video post? If writing is your schtick, then write! If you have a blog already, take some quotes or bright spots of the content and post it on social media. If you create a podcast, then take the transcript and use it for a blog! In other words, do what you do well and kill two birds with one stone. Stick to what you do well (at least initially—then, of course, you should branch out)!
If you don’t know WHY you are doing it, then WHY do it?
In order to make your content valuable, you need to have clear understanding of why you are posting on social media in the first place. You know that it takes time, energy, focus, effort in order to be diligent about creating and posting content, so being clear on why you are doing it. It will help you to focus your efforts. A campaign strategy is more focused with an intended outcome, for example to promote your sales and bring in 100 more shoppers. Or is your intent to add more followers so that ‘word of mouth’ gets circulated more quickly. How will you make that happen? How will you know?
Being heard is almost as good as being loved
Really listen to the feedback you get on social media regarding your posts. What are people looking for? What do customers want? What are customers saying? How can you provide them with what they need? Use social media as a sounding board for your brand/business. They say that all publicity is good publicity. While that certainly isn’t true in many instances, you actually can turn a negative into a positive by handling a problem politely, graciously, and publicly on a social media forum. Public validation, even when a mistake is admitted, will do a lot to build trust with your customer base.
Don’t be neglectful
While you are busy creating amazing content for your social media channels, don’t neglect the other areas of your marketing plan. Continue to build business partnerships in your community, write your weekly newsletter to email to your customers, incorporate other channels like newspapers and radio spots in communities and for demographics that utilize those medias!