5 Ways Small Businesses Can Improve Their Social Media Presence

Small businesses around the world know that social media is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean you haven't had the chance to put in the time or effort necessary to cultivate a proper presence on the right networks.

Creating a practical social media strategy can drive growth for your small business by fostering lasting and loyal relationships with prospects and customers. To ensure your brand’s presence on social media is managed with quality and consistency, use a social media style guide to keep track of the many different elements.

So what are the steps you need to take?

1. Choose Suitable Networks That Fit your Business

With all the options social media has to offer, how does a business pick the right ones? The advice from most experts is to join the most popular, and choosing the right ones comes down to your audience and your goals. Here's some information to help get you started:

Facebook: the largest platform, has 2.89 billion active monthly users, and the site is ideal for businesses that want to generate leads and build relationships.
LinkedIn: the platform for business networking can be used by both B2B and B2C businesses to create trust, build authority, and engage audiences.
Twitter: whose platform is immediacy, is perfect for businesses whose major audience is under 50 and who need to stay on top of time-sensitive information like breaking news, announcements, and trending topics.
Pinterest: the photo sharing site, is a fantastic platform for businesses with visual appeal (think restaurants, fashion, art, travel, and weddings). It’s more for social discovery than social networking, and is great for driving sales because so many users look to the site to plan purchases.
Instagram: Instagram was so successful that just 2 years after launching it was bought by Facebook, in 2012. Its success is rooted in staying true to its original goal - allowing users to post photos and videos from their mobile. The creation of Instagram Stories (an idea stolen from Snapchat!) featuring content that expires in 24 hours has enabled it to amass nearly 1 billion global users.
TikTok: A phenomenon in the social media world, TikTok is a force to be reckoned with, seeing rapid growth during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is the first app not owned by Facebook to have reached 3 billion installs due to its popularity amongst influencers and celebrities. The usability of the platform, huge music directory, and unique filters attract an engaged younger demographic.

2. Set a Goal

Being active on social media has a number of benefits for your business, and there are many things you can accomplish with a social presence. This includes performing customer service, engaging customers, generating leads, expanding your audience, driving sales, increasing web traffic, gaining valuable insights and feedback, and much more.

But in order to achieve these with any measure of success, you must have a goal to work towards because you'll need to take steps to create a social media strategy and get there. Your techniques for driving sales, for instance, will be different from your approach to improve your customer service. So it’s important to know what you want to accomplish.

3. Come up with a Strategy

Having a goal for improving your social media presence is great, but it’s only the beginning. Once you know what you want to achieve, you have to come up with a plan to get there.

Start by designating or hiring the person or team who will be part your companies' social media presence, and break up their roles and responsibilities so everybody knows what's expected and when.

You should also decide on your posting frequency, and create a content calendar that will help you plan posts and don’t miss days. This approach to scheduling is a big part of your strategy and there are great social media calendar templates you can use that lay out:

Who your audience is
What topics and subjects your audience is interested in
The usable content you already have
What kind of content do you still need to create or curate
When and on what platforms content will be published

The most effective way to develop a strategy for your business is to learn from the best. Consider a social media and marketing consultant that focuses on social research and social strategy so you find your audience and learn from them on how to engage them.

5. Maintain a Constant Presence & Brand Voice

Social media isn't a one-and-done deal. It takes time and patience to cultivate a reliable presence.

An ideal platform for brand building and recognition, it’s crucial that every post is in line with your brand and image. This can become difficult if you have multiple people assigned to social media because everybody will bring their own personality to their posts. For this reason, it’s best to limit the number of people responsible for posting and make sure everyone knows the voice and image you want to present.

When it comes to posting, automation tools used effectively can save you a lot of time and ensure your presence on your networks even when you’re not! With the right tools, you can minimize the time you have to dedicate to social media, but it will still require at least 15 minutes a day to monitor your channels and respond to questions.

In terms of how much you need to post, the right number really depends on the platform you're using. For Facebook, don’t post more than once a day, and limit posts to five times a week. Twitter, on the other hand, changes so quickly that the more you post, the better. With Pinterest, 11 pins a day seems to be the magic number while Instagram audiences seem to like 1-2 posts a day.

What's your next step?

It can be so difficult to manage a social media platform when you are managing a business, we hope these tips can help improve your understanding what you want for your company.

If you find the social media battle to be never-ending and need some help from an expert marketing team outside of your company, fear not, Accent on You Marketing has your back. Book a consultation today and see what our experts can do for you. Call (907) 441-9003 to set an appointment or book online through the link below.

Book a Consultation