A Guide to Best Practices in Social Media for Small Businesses

Businesses need marketing to succeed, and small businesses even more so. With that in mind Wirefreesoft wanted to share some tips with you to help you on that journey.

Small businesses often lack the resources to invest in marketing and advertising. This is where social media comes in, giving businesses a virtually global platform, a level playing field to showcase their products and services.

Social media has the power to put your products in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers with only one post. Hence, it is imperative to learn how to take advantage of social media when running a small business.

Here are some of the best tips, tricks and strategies for you to check out and implement. They all have the potential to reach a much wider audience and get your business the engagement you have always desired!

Understanding the Basics

Let’s begin by taking a look at some interesting facts related to social media marketing before we analyze and implement some of the best social media practices for small businesses:

In early 2022, there will be more than 4.62 billion people using social media platforms. Out of these an impressive 58.4% of these shoppers purchase something online every week.

Based on this trend, the average social media user spends 2.5 hours daily on social media. By attracting the attention of social media users businesses can build brand awareness, establish customer relationships, and make sales on social media.

Therefore, it is important to experiment with some of these best practices on social media:

1. Start with one platform and expand from there

Today, there are a lot of popular social media platforms.

Almost all of them can be helpful for businesses. The key is to find a platform that will bring in the most engagement when you are launching a business. For some, it might be Instagram, while for others, it might be Tiktok.

The marketing strategies vary from platform to platform, as platforms like TikTok and Instagram require you to build videos in vertical format, whereas Facebook has traditionally preferred horizontal and landscape formats for videos.

That’s why it’s helpful to experiment with marketing your products on different platforms and in different formats to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

As soon as you establish a good following on one platform, you can move on to other platforms. Develop engagement on the platform you already have and direct followers to all other platforms.

2. Develop a social media action plan 

No matter if you are a small business or an established business, having a good social media action plan is important.

Small businesses often fail to put enough effort into their social media marketing, especially when they are just starting. Most of them  approach social media without planning and without having a proper strategy in place.

Having a daily post, sharing your products regularly, and interacting with your followers, running ads, and interacting with influencers can all be part of your action plan. Having an idea of how much return on investment (ROI) you can expect from each plan helps you decide whether to invest your time or money in it or not.

3. Focus on engagement

As a small business wishing to improve its social media presence, you need to pay more attention and focus on engagement. 

Your social media channel should aim at bringing your brand to more eyes and ears. The goal is to make more people aware of what your business has to offer as a brand or commodity and make more people interested in your business. For some, Likes and follows are vanity metrics, however in the social media world, every interaction counts. It is important, however, to understand what are the matrices you need to consider. 

This can be accomplished by building a community that can do the marketing for you for free by spreading the word.

It is harder said than done and requires much patience, dedication, and consistent engagement to build from scratch (which is what usually happens with small businesses).

Make it a priority to respond to all feedback, whether it is constructive or negative.

Consider going live from your social media platforms periodically to interact with your followers and connections.

Engaging your audience consistently on social media allows you to grow much faster

4. As always, content is king

When small businesses are just getting started, they also make the mistake of not doing any research or optimizing their content.

Remember that a personal account and a business account are completely different and must be handled differently. Therefore, you should put more emphasis on research and optimization.

Understanding your competitors’ strategy is one of the best ways to get the most out of an opportunity. It also helps you come up with similar ideas that can work.

Research what works and what doesn’t work to get a better understanding. You should also optimize your content for search so that more people can easily find it.

By having your content optimized for the social media platforms you use, you also dramatically increase your business’ discoverability and organic traffic instantly.

Nowadays, almost every social media platform has a hashtag feature. With hashtags, not only can you reach your target audience but others can also discover your content. Businesses must therefore learn how to include hashtags in their content. 

There are several websites that provide hashtag generation services that can help you determine which hashtags to use. Ideally, you should use between 8 – 11 hashtags per post and avoid abusing hashtags. If you use too many hashtags, your post will be considered spam.

5. Use social media marketing tools

The process of social media marketing can be simplified by implementing the right social media marketing tools. In the world of social media marketing, there are hundreds of tools available. Knowing which can help you save time and effort makes all the difference.

Several tools are available to make your life easier, from social media schedulers and image editors to affiliate marketing managers. Try out different tools and shortlist the ones you like. It is easy for you to try out these tools since most of them have free tiers.

In Summary:

1. Start with one platform and expand from there
2. Develop a social media action plan
3. Focus on engagement
4. Content is king
5. Use social media marketing tools

Wirefreesoft is dedicated to helping you maximize your business’ growth. If you have questions or would like help regarding social media advertainments reach out to us today. We take pride in helping you figure out what methods are right for your business. If we don’t work on an area you need help in, we have partners who we can refer you to. Give us a call to find out more today!

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