How To Optimize Social Media To Increase Revenue For Small Business
In today's fast-paced economic markets, the use of social media has grown to be a powerful tool that can optimize your business and increase your customer base. There are many benefits to engaging prospective customers on social media, many of which can support the growth of SMBs as a marketing and/or advertising tool.
Social media is underutilized and underfunded by SMBs, and it shouldn't be! Here we will look at why a business might use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat as marketing channels, in addition to their print, broadcast, and storefront advertising campaigns.
Optimizing Social Media For SMBs
Social media began as a way to connect groups of friends, family, and hobbyists so they could interact with each other online by posting comments, photos, other newsworthy information. But, consider how quickly it spread.
"The percentage of US adults who use social media increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019. Even on a global stage, the speed of diffusion is striking: Facebook surged from covering around 1.5% of the world population in 2008 to around 30% in 2018."
What needs to be understood is that the amount of business reviews, recommendations, referrals (and complaints!) being posted by social media users resulted in corporate America taking notice. Larger companies quickly seized this emerging online trend to connect to an ever-growing social media customer base. But, for SMBs the growth has been somewhat slower with small business owners preferring to simply have a website with some ecommerce benefits.
Maybe the reason why this advertising medium has been so slow to be adopted by SMBs is the concept that social media marketing is complex to set up and time-consuming to maintain. But, nothing could be further from the truth. Similar to a website that has been optimized to rank higher on search engines, a social media campaign can be easily started and optimized to open doors to a whole new demographic of shoppers, to enter new territories, or to launch new products or services
What is Social Media Optimization
"Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of social media sites to manage and enhance an organization's message and online presence. As a digital marketing strategy, social media optimization can be used to increase awareness of new products and services, connect with customers, and mitigate potentially damaging news."
Having an online presence means having more than just an ecommerce website. An online presence includes a variety of internet platforms that are considered business assets. Each platform will provide different information or engage your consumer base in different ways. While a Facebook presence may focus on your business as it relates to the local community, a Twitter account may be strictly used to re-Tweet industry information made by leaders in your industry. If you own a small landscaping service, then you will definitely want to post project pictures of your lawn installation on Instagram!
Here are 3 ways to make sure your social media presence is optimized:
1. Show up on a consistent basis with fresh content
Plan to add social media posts on a regular basis, even if it's responding to customers, posting pictures, or linking to other relevant content. According to studies:
"Daily posting will grow followers 4x faster than posting less than once a week...And, for social media sites like Twitter or Instagram, one-third of posts should be about your business. one-third of the content should share personal stories or local content and one-third should be informative insights reposted from experts or influencers"
Daily posting is not necessary for a small local business, but for an optimized social media presence, you should post something new at least 2 or 3 times per week. Posting regularly will increase your brand awareness and offer more opportunities to rank higher in search engine results.
2. Engage your base, don't sell your product
Avoid using social media for business promotion, instead use social media to provide customers with a valuable resource for information to make better decisions. There are methods to use called click-throughs that will lead a potential customer to your new sales campaign or discount service for new customers.
What does it mean to engage your social media followers? Since you are the expert in your line of business, you know the pain points of your customers. A small auto dealership knows how difficult it can be for someone with bad credit to get approved for a car loan at a decent interest rate.
Here is a chance for that dealership to post blogs on how to increase your credit score, ways to save for a bigger down payment, or tips on how to choose a good used car, instead of buying a new car.
This is how you engage your customer base, by posting relevant information that can save them time, money, or hassles when making purchases in your chosen industry.
3. Focus on the social side, the business will follow
Make sure your social media outlets show the human side of your business, tell your story, and follow up with more stories on how your product or service has been of benefit to someone or some challenge. A good way to look at social media is to consider these platforms as the new 'word of mouth' advertising or even as a substitute for taking a potential client out to lunch.
A business lunch includes the discussion of general business, some pleasurable conversation, and the exchange of information that is critical to both parties if they want to have future business relationships. Optimize your social media pages as an informal sharing of industry-related information. Never treat a business social media website like a personal one - there is no room for sharing personal information, except for the telling of your business journey and how, why, and where you launched your venture.
For those that may be social media-challenged, it would be a wise investment to pay for a service that understands your industry and will create and manage your social media outlets. You will likely fine many freelancers right in your community willing and extremely able to handle the optimization of social media for a small business.
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