The COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious negative effect on many small businesses in the United States even to this day. Many small companies have struggled to keep their heads above water as a result of declining sales and rising costs in services and materials. Many businesses have found themselves forced to temporarily or permanently close.
The epidemic has expedited a shift toward e-commerce and online sales, which has presented opportunities and difficulties for small businesses as they move into digitizing their inventory and service provision. With these challenges, there is an increased benefit of leveraging social media to optimize digitization and reach customers directly through their devices of choice.
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Social media is an essential tool for small businesses, mostly because it gives them an inexpensive way to reach a wide audience. It gives quick access to client interaction, easy information sharing about goods and services, and ultimately, businesses are able to gather feedback to inform marketing and sales strategy. Social media can also be utilized to increase brand recognition and position the company as a thought leader in whatever industry of speciality.
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With that said, social media accounts for small businesses can be a hassle to build and maintain. There has been growth in social media management over the last 10 years, but it’s worth noting that when business resources are limited, social media management can often be an afterthought. We spend a lot of time working with businesses to get their social media off the ground, so we have a few tips to help you make the management of your social media profiles easy.
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Select the appropriate social media channels. Check out where your target audience is active, and do some research to see what social media channels your competitors use. Pick those channels on which you know you can focus time and energy on creating content.
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Consider making a social media strategy. The more planning you do, the easier long-term management will be. What are your business objectives for the upcoming year? How much budget have you allocated to marketing (both resources and financial). What are current social media trends that resonate with your customer base? Create a plan for how you will use social media to further these business objectives. Choose the content to post, and the frequency of the posts.
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Create a content calendar that is realistic and bulked up with repurposed materials from other marketing initiatives. You don’t have to have all new content all the time (like we shared with this post) – using repurposed content can help keep your content calendar full and run smoothly. Once you have the calendar pulled together, prep and schedule your material in advance to help you keep organized and guarantee that you are producing high-quality content regularly.
Utilize scheduling tools like Hootsuite, Buffer or our very own Synup Social. These are platforms that you can use to schedule, edit and analyze the performance of your posts. This will help your business save time and make managing several accounts simple.
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Engaging with your audience is essential to make the most out of your posted content. Many small businesses have grown their reputations by using social media to build their credibility as experts at customer service. It's important to respond to comments and messages from your followers in a timely manner. Setting aside a few hours every week can make a big difference. This helps to build a relationship with your audience and show that you value their feedback.
Monitor your accounts regularly by setting aside time each day to check your accounts and respond to any comments or messages. This will help you stay on top of any customer service issues and ensure that you are providing a good user experience for your followers. It’s also a good rule of thumb to check your campaigns or ads you may have running, to make sure everything is going smoothly, links are still clickable and there are not any hidden customer service issues.
Utilize analytics tools to monitor and track the performance of your social media profiles. This can be done directly through the social media platforms, or using social media management tools like the ones we mentioned above. This will enable you to identify what's working and what isn't so that you may modify your plan as necessary.
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Assign a person, team or outsource. A lot of companies with restriced bandwidth hire a contractor to externally manage their social media, or they invest in software that makes it simpler and have one person on their team monitor their profiles. Think about a member of your team who has strong organization, copywriting or content editing skills. They might be a good candidate for managing the business’ social media profiles.
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It’s time to get started! Create accounts on the social networking platforms you've mapped out strategies for. It’s important to understand how to leverage each platform, so do a fair amount of research to ensure you are optimizing your channels. Be sure to include links to your website and all other required information when updating your account profile, as well.
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Ready to get your small business up and running on social media? Synup is offering a personalized demo today to help your company reach more customers by uniting your social profiles on one platform. Start a conversation with us to find out how we’re making this process stress-free with maximized results.
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