No matter the size of your business, social media is crucial to boosting your brand in 2022. For this reason, it is essential to learn social media hacks for small businesses for excellent performance.
While it’s easy to start a social media page for your business, understanding how to use it isn’t always straightforward. How often should you post? What type of content will your audience love? What platform is best for your business? There are so many questions regarding social media usage.
Fortunately, some tips can help small businesses get the best out of social media marketing. In this article, you will learn how social media helps small businesses and the best tips to grow your page.
Why Do You Need Social Media?
People are spending more time on social media apps. You know what that means for you as a business owner? It means your prospective customers are spending more time on social media and that’s a great time to reach them.
As a small business, you need customers to thrive, and the best way to reach your customers is by being where they are. Currently, over 4 billion people use social media, including your prospective customers. You ought to be there if your prospective customers are on social media too.
Want to know how social media helps small businesses? Here are five benefits:
- Build brand awareness
- Reach and connect with your target audience faster
- Sell products and services
- Improve search engine rankings
- Increase revenue and grow your business
Social Media Tips for Small Business
There are a lot of tips on social media; however, these hacks sometimes don’t apply to small businesses starting from scratch. If you are just starting with social media, the first thing should be building a presence. Here are some of the biggest social media hacks tailored specifically for small businesses:
#1: Stick With Social Media Platforms That Are Right For Your Brand
You may want to try out different social media platforms to get the best result when getting into social media marketing. While this sounds like a good strategy, it is not always a great approach.
You don’t have to be on all social media platforms. In fact, one of the essential social media tips for small businesses is to identify the right platforms. Once you know the platforms that work for you, scrap those that don’t work for you.
How do you know the social media platforms suitable for you?
- First, understand your target audience and their behaviour.
- Second, identify the platforms that work best for your audience and stick with them. Ask questions like what platforms do my customers use the most? What platform am I likely to reach my customers?
In summary, the best social media for small businesses depends on the target audience. For example, LinkedIn will be a perfect place if your audience are professionals. However, if you sell gaming gadgets or baby outfits, LinkedIn is probably not the best place for your business.
Also, it’s best to start small and then try to expand into other platforms as you grow. A good rule of thumb is to start with two platforms that fit your audience persona and then expand to other platforms as you grow.
#2: Post Relevant Content and Eye-Catching Visuals
A top-secret to social media marketing for small businesses is audience engagement. The best way to gather more engagement on social media is by posting relevant and interesting content. To get this right, you must first understand your target audience and the kind of content they enjoy.
Next, create content that your target audience will find:
- Relevant
- Educational
- Informational
- Inspirational
For instance, if you sell beauty products, you can provide tips on using a product the right way or share quotes on beauty. You could even ask them how their beauty routine went that day. Posts like these will get their attention and encourage them to engage with you.
Also, one of the most effective social media tips for small businesses is to deliver your content through visuals. People love visuals a lot —images, videos, colours, memes, photos, name it. Visual content performs better than written content, so you should prioritise them.
#3: Don’t Be Too Promotional
One major mistake many brands make on social media is being too promotional. Yes, you are on social media to reach more audiences. However, you don’t have to focus solely on pushing your products/services in your customer’s faces. Instead, you should focus more on building relationships with your customers. This is important because people lose interest when it’s obvious you are selling to them. So, if your plan is to plaster your products and deals across social media, you need to re-strategise.
What can you do instead?
Form a relationship with your audience. One of the best social media hacks 2022 is to aim for the 80:20 blend. Use 80% of your content for engaging or entertaining posts and 20% for promotional posts. Instead of just promotional posts, try to create educational, entertaining, and valuable content to connect with your audience. Share some tips, share a joke, shout out to your customers — these are great ways to build customer loyalty.
#4: Be Consistent
Ask any marketing expert for quick social media tips, and consistency will definitely come up. ‘Out of sight is out of mind’ holds very true for social media. This means if you are not posting regularly, your customers may forget about you. To solve this, you need to post frequently without sacrificing quality. Two great tips to make posting on social media easier include;
- Creating a social media content calendar for a week or month
- Leveraging scheduling tools.
Meanwhile, consistency may mean different things to different brands. For example, you may decide to post every day or you may post every Monday. Find what works for you, schedule your content and be consistent.
Note: A great social media secret for small businesses in Nigeria is to repurpose your content for different social media platforms. This way, you won’t have to create fresh content for each platform. For instance, you can edit your post on Instagram to create a tweet.
Also, consistency isn’t just about posting regularly but keeping all your social media platforms on brand. If your brand colour is orange, keep it consistent across all the platforms you use. Also, ensure all your channels have the same tone and personality.
#5: Start and Join Conversion on Social Media
Many studies show that being responsive and engaging is one of the biggest social media hacks to prompt customers to patronise you. A great way to start a conversation and increase engagement is to post content that prompts responses. Ask a question and add a CTA to encourage people to share responses. For example, you can post two similar products you sell and ask customers which they prefer.
You can also talk about something that stirs emotion to bond with your customers. If you run a restaurant, ask about their worst kitchen experience or even their best meal.
Also, don’t let your customers comment into an empty space. Only 10% of comments left on business pages get responses, which is not good enough because responding helps boost engagement.
Some quick social media tips for joining conversations include:
- Taking time to respond to every comment and question on your social media posts.
- Using user-generated content.
- Making comments on others’ posts (keep it professional)
For example, although Netflix has a high following on social media, they take time to react to some comments (and criticism). And you know what, this helps build a great rapport with the audience and encourages more people to comment.
#6: Tell Stories
One of the most important social media hacks in 2022 is to harness the power of storytelling. Today, many top brands connect with their audience through stories. And it works! Why? Because customers love to form emotional connections with brands.
One great way to tell stories effectively is to share a narrative about your brand, the people, customers, or your products. You can highlight a staff, talk about why you started your business or a relatable story for your audience. A great platform that uses social media telling effectively is Airbnb. This brand shares its customers’ experiences and stories.
#7 Leverage Paid Strategies and Micro-Influencers
Do you need a paid social media strategy for a small business? The answer is Yes. If you are here to learn how to promote business on social media for free, don’t fret yet. You don’t have to pay to promote your content on social media. However, a secret to social media success is to leverage both organic and paid strategies.
Why is this?
Paid ads help amplify your reach, enhance your targeting and build brand awareness. This is especially important because the number of businesses advertising on social media is a lot. That’s millions of brands trying to get people’s attention. To prevent falling behind, it’s a good idea to leverage paid advertising to facilitate the goals of your business. Also, social media algorithms don’t really favour business accounts when it comes to organic engagement. For this reason, you need to pay for your content to perform very well.
Another social media secret for small businesses in Nigeria is to partner with influencers with a considerable number of followers. Look for micro-influencers in your niche or with a following among your target audience and work with them. Influencers help brands create content and advertise for a brand. They make brands look appealing and can help you reach a specific audience. Meanwhile, influencers don’t need to have huge followings to impact your brand.
#8: Use Social Media Tools
One of the crucial social media hacks for small businesses people often leave out is leveraging tools. Specific tools and apps are designed to help people handle their social media platforms more effectively. Some of the tools include:
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Automation and management tools (e.g Hootsuite)
You may not have the time to post consistently as a business owner, but an automation tool can help you. With these tools, you can automatically schedule your content to post at a specific time. The best way to use automation tools is to create content in advance and then schedule them.
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Graphic/Design apps (e.g Canva)
As emphasised in #Secret 2, customers love visually appealing content. That’s why one of the top social media secrets for small businesses in Nigeria is to create aesthetically pleasing content. Luckily, design apps like Canva make it easy for small business owners to create visual content like infographics, logos, etc.
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Analytics tools (e.g Sprout social)
Like other marketing strategies, it is necessary to measure your performance on social media. Analytics tools can help you do just that! Also, some social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have in-built analytics tools.
#9: It Takes Time
Finally, one of the critical secrets to social media marketing for small businesses you should know is patience. Building a successful social media marketing strategy takes time and effort. So, whenever you feel like your efforts are going down the drain, you are not alone. It takes time as your efforts are not going to waste if you follow the right social media hacks.
FAQs
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What social media platform is best for small businesses?
There are over 50 social media platforms, so how do you determine the best one for your business? The truth is there is no one correct answer. The best platforms for your businesses will depend on the target audiences. For this reason, you should identify the platforms your customers are most active. Use the platforms that have most of your customers are the best ones for your businesses.
However, 5 of the best social media for small businesses at the moment are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp and TikTok.
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What can small businesses post on social media?
There are many content ideas for small businesses, but it all comes down to your business type and preference. Some social media tips for content creation include:
- Creating a poll
- Behind the scenes videos/pictures
- Product images
- User-generated content (e.g. customers reviews or posts)
- Infographics
- Latest blog posts
- A mix of different content types
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How can I create a social media strategy for my small business?
One of the top social media hacks for small businesses is to create a strategy that can work for your business. A social media strategy summarises your plans and goals for your social media. Therefore to create a social media strategy, all you need is to write out the goals that align with your business and plan to achieve them.