Social Media for Small Businesses

Social media helps small businesses create genuine and lasting relationships with target audience and customers.

Developing your social media strategy.

The surest way to fail at social media is to rush into it without a plan or strategy. The best way is to understand that social media is the integration and the sharing of words, images, videos and audios.
The challenge and a key reason for having a strategy is that there are so many conversations, so many channels to have them on and not enough time to effectively participate in all of them.
Developing a strategy will enable the small businesses to think through questions like:

•  Why are we doing this?
• What do we want to achieve?
• Who are we talking to?
• Which are the best channels to use?
• Which conversations should we join or start ourselves?

The following are the social media strategies that must be put into consideration:

1. Listening

Like all conversations, the key to social media is listening. Start by listening to yourself. What have you been saying to customers and prospects in your current marketing channels? What is the tone of your message?
Then listen to your customers, prospects, competitors and others in your category. What are they talking about concerning your products? 
Answers to these questions will help you determine which networks to focus your energy on, who you should engage, which values you should promote and attitudes you should change.

2. Define your goals

The best goals are quantifiable, so every small business is clear on what they want their social media plan to achieve. 

It is also important to identify what metrics they are going to track and how they are going to measure them.
Potential goals are:

• Sales -  using social media to create first-time customers or introduce them to the brand
• Leads - incoming calls, contact from submission forms, email subscribers
• Marketing - you may simply want to improve your relationship with existing customers and prospects.
• Loyalty/ brand enthusiasm - increase retention and/or improve customer service
• HR - attract and retain quality empolyees.

3. Choose channels

Which channels are best fit with your brand, customers, resources and goals? Perhaps your target audience is women who might be found on Pinterest, maybe you are a professional with lots of contacts on LinkedIn.

Prioritize your channels, start slow and get comfortable even is it means starting with just one platform. Spend time getting accustomed to posting content, answering questions and comments and the overall level of engagement required. Once you are comfortable, add another platform and slowly build your network.

4. Join the conversations

Start tweeting, pinning, posting and liking. Some of the best practices you should follow are:

• Mind your etiquette
• Be transparent - let people know who they are talking to. 
• Keep it conversational - write like you are talking to a friend or a customer in a store. Ask questions and look for feedback
• Strict to your knitting - talk about what is relevant to your brand and company
• Admit mistakes - be the first to admit when you make a mistake and do your best to make it right

Conclusion

Your social media strategy is a hugely important document for your business and you may not get it right on the first try. As you start to implement your plan and track your results, you may find that some strategies don't work as well as you had anticipated, while others are working even better than expected. Small businesses must ensure they track their data, evaluate and adjust their strategies where necessary for better performance in the social media world.

SM4SB-%20Social-Media-for-Small-Business%20-Book-2.pdf