Four Reasons Why Your Small Business Should Have a Social Media Presence
Everyone is aware of the importance of social media marketing at this point. It's easy to assume that social media is exclusively beneficial to big businesses, who can build large followings and keep posting regularly. If you only have time to post once a week, it may not be worth it to maintain your online presence.
Contents Toggle
- 1. You Can Increase Brand Recognition
- 2. Customers Expect to See Recent Activity
- 3. You'll Be Improving Your Return on Investment (ROI)
- 4. It's Easier to Develop a Loyal Readership
- How to Share Your Blog Posts on Social Media
- Conclusion
But the "all or nothing" approach is a myth. Social media can be an efficient way of keeping your customers informed and improve your business' exposure, regardless of how large or small your audience may be. In fact, over 90% of small companies use social media. It is but true that small businesses will need to have a different approach in their postings than larger competitors do.
In this piece we'll look at the four primary reasons that make it essential for small-scale businesses to be active in social media. In the next article, we'll offer some tips to begin. So, let's get going!
1. It is possible to increase brand recognition
Social media is an excellent option to increase awareness of your brand. This is because you can utilize social media platforms to highlight your brand's uniqueness, which is important for small businesses that need to make a mark. You'll have to help the potential clients know why they should select your company over a larger company like Amazon, which might be able to provide comparable products and services lower prices.
For instance, the online clothing retailer Everlane uses Snapchat to offer instruction and show clients a peek behind the scenes of the manufacturing process:
You can design your personal brand strategy by imagining the things that make your business unique, and understanding what your target audience is interested in. It may not be solely related to your products or services. Some companies stress the fact that they give a percentage of their profits to charity, or that they use only ethical means of production.
It's also important to consider the visual style of your company. It's as easy as picking a design scheme and recognizable logo to use on your website and across social media sites. In this way, visitors will be able to identify your business in a single glance, no matter where they see it.
2. Customers are expecting to see recent Activity
To 'win' at marketing, you have to remain in the game. This is particularly true especially for smaller companies. If prospective customers look through your Facebook page and discover nothing but cobwebs, they may think something's wrong, or that the business is closed.
Ideally, you'll make sure to post at minimum once each week on all platforms for you to ensure that your feeds are active. Here are some suggestions for easy ways to set up regular posts in the next article.
3. The Return You'll Earn on investment (ROI)
As a business as a business, you must have marketing. If customers aren't aware of your company, they can hardly purchase your products or services. However, putting up a physical ad like an advertising billboard, could cost thousands worth of dollars.
In contrast, it costs an incredibly low amount to market on social media. At as few as 5 dollars the cost of a Facebook ad can help you reach a wide audience. This will allow you to see immediately which strategies for advertising can have an effect and which ones aren't:
If you do not directly make a sale from a Facebook ad (or an ad on a different platform) but you're helping to build brand awareness. If you can get your company 'out there', the more its name is likely to stick with your target audience's minds when they're ready to buy.
4. It's easier to build a Loyal Readership
If you write engaging blog posts, it can make it easy to keep fans coming back to your site. More page visitors as well as time to dwell will result in improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and a rise in revenues from advertising, as well as a larger number of prospective customers you could contact.
In accordance with the type of membership site you're running, you can even make use of your blog to promote content that's behind a paywall. If, for instance, you're running a Web Design course, you could publish a couple of free examples and mention the advantages of your course's paid-for version at the bottom of the article. You can then make sure to share the post on the social networks.
How To Share Your Blog Content via Social Media
It's now more simple to make automatically social media posts using the blog's content. You can find plenty of applications that send out messages on your preferred social media channels when you make an update.
After that, you can click Connect to your accounts on social media to enable social sharing across the various platforms you choose:
If you go to open an article on your blog, you should see a box in the right-hand sidebar labeled "Publicize". You can click Edit to write a custom message:
This is all there is to it! Once the article is posted the post will automatically be published on the social media platforms you picked, along with the message. This allows you to get many uses from the same post, and keeps your social media accounts in good standing.
Conclusion
If you're a small company, it can be hard to gain attention and compete for your share of the market. It's the reason it's essential to maintain an active presence through social media.
The top four reasons you should use social media are:
- More brand recognition. Building brand awareness via social media is essential for you to set your company apart from the rest of your competitors.
- Evidence that your business is in operation. Having an empty social media account could look not professional and turn off people. Customers want to know that you'll respond quickly on social media.
- A higher return on investment (ROI). Social media offers an advertising channel with relatively low barrier to entry, as well as a high ROI.
- A chance to build an audience that is loyal. You can share blog posts on social media, and remind visitors to go check out your blog. When you produce good content, this is an effective way of building a following and drive traffic.
Do you have any questions about how to develop your small business' social media strategy? Please let us know via the section of comments below!