No enterprise that wishes to remain competitive in the digital age can afford to overlook social media. Regardless of how small your business is, maintaining a solid presence on the web’s most popular social platforms can be a great way to build awareness for your brand and attract new customers. So, if you haven’t already done so, start creating accounts for your business and engaging with your audience. Whether you’ve been unsuccessful at utilizing social media in the past or have simply avoided it altogether, the following pointers can help maximize your efforts in this area. Below in this article, we will cover the Small Business’s Social Media Efforts.
Consistently Post New Content
In order to stay relevant in the eyes of your followers, you’ll need to post new content on a consistent basis. If you go days – or weeks – without posting anything, a fair number of your followers are liable to lose interest and possibly even unfollow. At the same time, however, you’ll also want to avoid inundating your followers with new content, as posting too often can have a similar effect to posting sporadically. For best results, post between one and five updates per day, and take care to carefully space them out in order to avoid the appearance of spamming.
Regularly Interact with Your Followers
The more personally invested modern consumers feel in a brand’s success, the more likely they are to support it. With this in mind, make a point of interacting with your followers on a regular basis. This means responding to comments, questions, and concerns shared in response to your posts in a timely and courteous manner. Taking the time to reply to prospective customers illustrates a commitment to fostering strong relationships and shows your followers how much their input means to you. Furthermore, if possible, try not to keep your followers waiting excessively long times for responses. If a question is posed during normal business hours, make an effort to respond within an hour or two.
When interacting with people via social media, keep in mind that it’s easy to come off as rude and discourteous via digital communication even when no actual offense was intended. To avoid having your responses interpreted as curt or indifferent, take care to choose your words and phrasing very carefully and to read over each reply several times before sending it. If you don’t have much experience with social media interaction, these precautions may initially prove cumbersome, but in time, crafting thoughtful responses is likely to come as second nature.
Don’t Get Drawn into Conflict
As anyone who’s spent a fair amount of time on social media can attest, some people thrive on conflict. For these individuals, inciting arguments on social platforms is among their favorite pastimes. More often than not, people like this don’t even have legitimate beefs with their targets – they just find it fun to goad them into arguments. Should you encounter a recreational conflict-inciter, it’s in your best interest to avoid taking the bait. Not only will engaging these people in arguments to give them exactly what they want, but it’s also liable to make you appear immature or ill-tempered in the eyes of your followers.
In most cases, simply ignoring these people will prompt them to lose interest and focus their efforts elsewhere. However, if someone insults you or your followers in a profane and/or threatening manner, you’d do well to block and report them to the site’s security team.
Hold Social Media Contests
Holding social media contests is another great way to keep your followers engaged and spread the word about your brand. If you’re looking to keep things simple, caption contests and photo-sharing contests are liable to draw in a respectable number of participants. Additionally, when looking for the ideal prizes for these contests, you can’t go wrong with promotional products that bear your brand’s logo.
Social media should feature prominently into your small business’s digital marketing endeavors. The web’s most popular social platforms are free, user-friendly, and highly conducive to getting the word out. Whether you’re trying to keep your existing customer base in the know or bring your brand to the attention of new patrons, a solid social media strategy is sure to serve you well. However, not all small businesses are equally adept at using social media to their advantage. To ensure that your enterprise doesn’t get left behind, put the measures discussed above to good use.
