The Complete Guide to Social Media for Small Business

A strong marketing strategy is essential for any business, particularly for small businesses. Social media, for small businesses, can eventually increase brand awareness and acquire more customers when you have a specific goal in mind and a plan to achieve it.

By using a variety of marketing channels, you can reach a wider audience, improve your relationship with your customers, create a strong brand image, engage with customers, establish yourself in the industry, and so much more. As more and more audience spends time online, It is a no-brainer to start with a free social media strategy. If you are wondering that social media does not have enough audience for your product niche, then let me clear that you have many social networks. You will have a significant impact through these untapped social channels. 

There’s no denying that social media marketing plays a vital role in the strategies of many companies. With TikTok and Instagram being ever-present in many people’s lives, it’s evident that such channels are perfect for marketing.

Why Use Social Media Marketing?

Before creating your strategy, you must understand why social media is essential for your small business. What will sprout from your activity there?

Having brand accounts on different social media networks and platforms has become mandatory. It will be hard to find a business nowadays that isn’t present on a single social media network.

Customers expect you to have social media accounts, even if they don’t follow any of them. It’s not really up to you whether you want to use social media as a part of your marketing strategy or not.

However, you are the one who decides to which extent you will be using social media marketing. Some companies and organizations focus most of their marketing activities on social media, while others post there sparingly while relying on other marketing methods.

How important social media marketing will be for your business will also sprout, in part, from your budget. Social media marketing can be several times cheaper than other marketing types. Of course, you still need to be smart about utilizing every resource you have and setting goals you can achieve. But if you do all this right, the results could be fantastic.

Social media marketing presents a unique opportunity for a small business that doesn’t have a big budget to spend on marketing or advertising. Another reason social media is ideal for achieving different objectives is that you can pursue various goals through various techniques.

You can build an attractive social media brand image, engage with followers, share your story, increase sales, start challenges and movements, and so much more. Even small things like choosing your SCREEN_NAME could make a massive difference in the long run.

That’s the power of social media – anything can sprout from what you do.

Dangers of Social Media

On the other hand, being present on social media as a brand could also be dangerous for your small business if you aren’t careful. A social network is an environment where information can be shared very quickly, so if there is a critical situation that you mishandle, it could negatively affect your reputation.

For example, someone could start a rumor about the poor quality of your products or the poor experience that your past customers supposedly had with your brand. If you can’t deny such rumors quickly, such information could spread as fact and even go viral.

At the same time, you could be a source of danger for yourself. For instance, if you offer customer support through direct messages but take a lot of time to respond, this could damage your relationship with your audience.

Yet, even when such dangerous aspects of social media are considered, it is still clear that being on social media and using social media marketing is more beneficial to your small business than it isn’t.

To successfully use different social media marketing channels, you must decide which metrics to track, set goals, choose your tools and platforms, build your strategy, and start using different techniques.

Remember that the size of your business, budget, and priorities will largely determine your choices when planning your social media marketing strategy. For instance, if you want to increase sales instead of increasing traffic, you will need to use specific techniques.

While you will set specific goals for your activities now, you will also have to change those goals in the future based on the results you achieve with your current social media marketing activities. New plans will sprout from old ones. It may take some time to develop a complete and detailed social media marketing strategy, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Which Metrics to Track? How to Set Goals?

When designing a social media marketing strategy for your small business, you need to decide which metrics you will track and what kind of analytics you want to base your activities on. Depending on the platform – Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – you will need to track slightly different metrics. However, your overall analytics report will likely have similar metrics for other social media networks.

The best thing you can do is start from more straightforward metrics and then define additional ones that are more complicated. Among the most straightforward metrics are social media brand awareness and audience engagement. These can be measured by your content’s number of likes, comments, shares, etc.

Remember that measuring awareness and engagement can differ between platforms and content formats. People will engage with a video on TikTok differently than feature posts on Facebook. The same goes for the products as well.

The definition is less straightforward and more complicated are metrics like how well your message and story are communicated to your audience (which directly affects your social media brand image).

Defining a less straightforward metric like this can be more difficult because it is harder to measure such metrics. That being said, it is not impossible. So if you find the right approach, you can define any metric you are interested in tracking and including in your analytics.

If you are only planning to post on one platform (more on how to choose this later), then your metrics will be more limited than if you choose to post on multiple social media platforms.

Over time, you can start tracking more metrics depending on the network you are using, the goal you are pursuing, the type of content you are posting, and so on.

Social Media Marketing Goals

You will also need to define your social media marketing goals in choosing your metrics. If you don’t know how to do this, you can hire a professional writer from the writing services reviews site Trust My Paper, who will help you with planning.

The best way to define your goals is by using the SMART approach. Every goal you set has to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. For example, if you want to increase followers on Facebook, you need to decide how many followers you wish to acquire, by what deadline, and how you will acquire them.

You can set new or multiple goals for every new social media campaign you start. Still, you also need to have objectives for your overall social media strategy that you will be pursuing continuously (e.g., producing and posting content, acquiring followers, etc.)

The way you set a specific type of goal can also shift over time. What you are trying to achieve with a particular technique right now may not be relevant to you anymore in a year or two.

For instance, your goal for growing your audience will likely be much smaller now when you are just getting started than what you aim for once you have a big enough following on a specific social media platform.

This change in how you set your goals is essential for continuous growth. In other words, if you don’t change the way you put your aims, you will not be able to achieve bigger goals over time. The new goals you set and the new ways you define them should sprout from your old goals but should not be a direct copy.

It’s not just about making the goal for your number of followers several times bigger. The speed at which you grow your audience also plays a role in defining this goal.

There are many factors that you should consider when changing your old goals and setting new ones, but you need to rely on the resources you have and the priorities you have set for your social media marketing activities.

Which Tools to Use? Where to Market?

Next, you should consider which tool – or rather, several tools – you will be using to achieve your goals. These tools can differ depending on the social media platform you are posting on, but many of them will be helpful for all networks.

Hootsuite is a popular tool used to manage different accounts from one place. With Hootsuite, you no longer need to switch between other platforms to publish your content, see analytics, and so on.

Hootsuite is an excellent option for social media management. When using Hootsuite, you will save a lot of time. Besides, managing all your activities and aligning your content posting across multiple platforms will be much easier.

Another tool to try is Canva. It is the best free image editing tool with numerous templates, features, and customization options. You can use different templates for creating content for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

You can use a tool like DaVinci Resolve to edit a high-quality video (for TikTok or another platform). This expert-level program lets you edit videos, adjust the sound, color correct, and more without paying for professional software.

At the same time, DaVinci Resolve is user-friendly, so you will quickly figure out how to use it. No matter what kind of video you want to create, this tool will always be helpful to you.

Sprout Social is also one of the social and management tools. It can pull reports, access social analytics and schedule messages across all your social profiles. Sprout Social is known to be a premium product, so it’s not worth considering if you are a business startup. Sprout Social lowest plans start at $99 a month.

One more tool that is already used by many businesses and content creators is Grammarly. This online proofreading tool is perfect for editing all kinds of texts. Moreover, it is entirely free.

For a small business with a tight budget, finding free tools is crucial for crafting a solid social media strategy. You need to use every resource you have to the fullest, so if you can spend several times less just by using an alternative free tool, then, by all means, do use it. 

How you structure and organize your social media marketing activities will largely depend on how you plan your strategy. And this, in turn, depends on the tools you choose. To get the most out of your content on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms, you need to be smart about the choices you make about your marketing.

Where to Market?

One more thing you need to think about is where exactly you will be marketing. There are quite a few social media marketing platforms to choose from, so you have a wide range of options to consider.

It’s best to start with enormous and popular platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. You can also consider other platforms like Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc., that are also quite well-known.

You may consider a local social media network to target a specific audience. For example, WeChat is popular in China, while VK is widely used in post-USSR countries. Remember that you can’t be present on every social media platform. You won’t have enough time and resources to manage this strategy effectively.

This is why you need to set your priorities and decide whether using Instagram makes more sense than using Facebook and Twitter.

When choosing a platform, keep in mind your target audience. Is your customer more likely to use this platform or that one? Will they prefer a social media network that relies on visual or textual content? Likewise, would they rather watch a video or read an article?

The goals you want to pursue could also determine which social platform you will choose for your social media marketing. If you’re going to establish your small business as an authority in your field, then you will likely need to be able to publish long-form textual content.

Another aspect to take into account is the fact that many platforms share the same features. The video format used on TikTok was so successful that other networks introduced their alternatives: Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc.

In a way, even if you choose Instagram as your primary social media platform, you could still double-post your Instagram videos on TikTok for additional visibility.

Also, even if you choose one social medium right now, you can start opening more accounts on other platforms and expanding to target people on those platforms too.

How to Build a Social Media Strategy?

Now that you know the metrics you will track, how to set goals, the tools you will use, and which platforms you will market on, you can adequately plan your social media strategy.

The social media strategy for your small business will help you set a goal or several goals you can achieve as a result of a specific campaign (e.g., increase traffic or sales, engage the customer, introduce a new product, raise social media brand awareness, communicate your social message, etc.)

In most cases, a social media strategy for a small business largely relies on who your target audience is and which goal you want to achieve. So everything you have planned so far will be necessary for planning your strategy.

First, consider your target audience. How do you want your customer to engage with you and your content? Will you target users based on where these people live? Or do you want the people you target to have specific behavioral habits?

There are many ways to choose a target audience for your social media marketing, but it is usually in line with your small business’s target audience. So if someone is already your customer, then they belong to the people who make up your target audience.

But of course, you want to attract more users who are not your customers yet because that’s the main point of social media marketing. To manage all your social media marketing activities, don’t forget to use tools like Hootsuite. You should also build a schedule to post content at specific times.

For example, you can make a feature post weekly while making news posts daily. To see the best results from each piece of content you post, analyze your content’s engagement and choose when such metrics are the best.

The frequency at which you post could influence the success of your social media campaigns, so you should adjust your content schedule continuously until it works the best.

What is the content guide of guidelines?

One more critical aspect of the social media strategy of your small business is your content guide or guidelines for everything you post. If you don’t know how to create a content guide like that, you can hire an expert writer from the custom writing reviews site Best Essays Education who will create one for you.

Content guidelines for everything you post will not only help you manage your content better, but they will also help you build a stronger brand. A small business on social media needs to stand out in some way, so maintaining good content quality is essential for your brand.

Every customer you acquire will stay with you because they like to engage with your content, connect with your message, like a specific product you offer, etc.

This is precisely why you need to maintain high content quality – in a way. It is also a product you offer (but on social media).

Whenever you create posts and post something, they need to align with your branding (visual branding, brand voice, etc.). At the same time, every single post should meet the standards you set for your social media brand profiles.

For instance, every image you post needs to be of good quality and should be edited with specific filters to make it visually align with your other posts.

In your content guide, you should also list the topics you want to post about, the types of content you want to create, the main goal of your content (informative, educational, entertaining), and so on.

Essentially, it is a way for you to gather different rules about what you post in a single place to manage your content creation better.

Which Techniques to Use?

Once you have an overall social media strategy ready for your small business, you will need to decide which specific techniques you will be using to market on social media.

Naturally, which practices you choose should sprout from your strategy. To put it simply, your previous choices will determine how you market.

But if you change a specific goal, you could also change how you want to achieve it. You may want to adjust your plan and use other techniques when you see a report with new insights. In other words, what you choose to use now doesn’t necessarily determine everything you will be doing on social media. It can change over time.

Start with techniques that will help you communicate your message to your customer. You can create a defined brand on social media for your small business if you share your message nicely and your customer connects with your story.

Share customer stories and ask customers directly for their experiences. Present your team. Share your achievements and successes. Explain the history of your business. Show that your brand’s message on social media posts aligns with your customer’s and your business’s values.

Then, try to engage the customer by asking them to leave a comment, share your posts, create their content (UGC), give you feedback on a product, etc.

Continuous communication is excellent for engagement, but you shouldn’t be too pushy with what you ask for.

Remember that every customer or potential customer has a life of their own, so they can’t engage with you all the time. It will help if you value their time.

Another great technique you should try to increase engagement and sales involves creating product guides. Your product guide should sprout directly from the customer’s questions about using it (e.g., features, benefits, functionality).

Posting a product guide can be an article, a video, or even an infographic. It can be more of a report if you take the product manual as a foundation for your post.

Social media is where you have little time to present your brand to a potential customer, so even product guides should be short if you want to increase sales.

One great way to increase engagement is to post interactive content like polls, quizzes, etc. Yet, you can still see great engagement on other types of content. Consider a giveaway or a challenge if you want to post something viral. People will share your content and start spreading it quickly.

A great technique to engage your current customer is to post a special offer or discount notice for those who have already purchased specific products from your business.

Every customer wants to feel special, so a great tip would be to personalize what you post as much as possible, even if you only do that for a specific audience segment. Check your post report and see how many particular users engage. Do they share your post? Do they leave comments? If yes, then you are likely moving in the right direction.

But if the report shows poor results, you should start doing things differently. Perhaps, you need to change the way you create and share content.

Your actions on social media as a business should sprout directly from your strategy. Start paying attention to how people engage with your content and share it. Is that in line with your social media business strategy?

Try to understand what your audience thinks. Why do they engage? Why do they share your content with others? A great way to see your customers’ perspectives is to organize a survey and ask them directly about your social media business strategy.

As time goes on, start trying new techniques on social media and maybe even reinvent your business image.

Final Thoughts

Building your social media marketing strategy will directly affect your social media brand image and how your business is seen in the industry.

Your activity on social media can help you increase sales and traffic, improve brand awareness, build a strong relationship with your audience, raise engagement, and so on.

But to achieve any such goal, you need to have a solid social media marketing strategy that includes your aims and the means you will use to achieve them.

Utilize the tips in this article to help you create your own social media strategy and start using every resource you have to its fullest.

This article is contributed by Lafond Wanda, a professional content writer, copywriter, content strategist, and communications consultant. She started young with her writing career, from being a high school writer to a university editor, and now she is a writer in professional writing platforms— her years of expertise have honed her skills to create compelling and results-driven content every single time.