How To Start Social Media for Small business (SMB)

Social Media For Small Businesses

Do you have a small business social media Twitter feed? Facebook page or a blog promoting your businesses services, products or key messages? Not yet? Don’t panic, not all businesses need a Facebook page to promote and advertise on the Internet. In fact, if you’re struggling to find enough time in the day, prioritise and don’t attempt to tackle too much at once.

How to start your social media business presence?

In essence, you simply need to create your own blog/site; sign in for social media tools such asTwitter, Google+ and Linkedin (they allow you to share on Twitter from there). Focus on promoting it and let your Internet users find you and share your product or services through social media.

One piece of advice however, when creating a profile on any of these sites, it’s vital that you link them up, so you’re giving your messages a chance to be published throughout the social media network.

Example: On any Twitter profile you should include a link to your blog and/or Website. Twitter feeds can be automatically added to your blog, and so on. However, you need to create your social media business campaign first.

How to implement a small business social media strategy?

Let’s start with – Define your goals with SMART here before moving on. SMART stands for:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely

The first steps when creating a social media strategy for small businesses

Let’s stick with the marketing principles. The first steps are:

What are your business’s goals?
Who will you or your team talk to?
What messages will you include in your campaigns?
What sort of relevant topics you want to offer to your audience?
What promotional messages accross your social media platforms?
How will you use social media to get your campaigns/messages out?
What will be the frequency of your messages? 4-5 times a day or more? etc.

For example..

You may want to use your small business social media strategy:

To daily interact/engage with your audience
To promote specific product/services
To business branding purposes
Do drive traffic to landing pages
To share events/ quizzes/ surveys
To announce new market positioning
etc.

Take a moment to think about what your small social media business presence would be like. Create and/or revise your plan, audit what your business’s needs are, then create a SWOT plan. All this is needed before you move into this vast arena.

Social media is the inexpensive on-line version of word-of-mouth. I am serious, it can be cost free, if you know what you’re doing. So read this and other posts and plan your social media business ahead.

To recap, do not mess it up, use it as a proper business communication tool. All you need to do is to create, share relevant topics, with clear and unique messages, preferably useful industry reports and accurate case-studies and you could find an increase in followers/customers within a month. As i said above, if you’re a small business with no employees stick with two to three social sites maxi. As you move on, get your family and friends to write more content for your blog so you can share it.

Most small businesses start their strategic presence on two to three social media sites. You can begin yours with the most important ones, and why not get your employees to do the same. If you sell services start with LinkedIn as the main social media for your business, get involved in groups, create your own discussions, engage daily if you can, share relevant topics and start submitting/curate content on social sites like Google+, Twitter and other microblogging sites, compare micro blog sites*.

Note: Make sure you write super interesting and relevant content worth reading. Do write for your users, not for yourself, and in a blink of an eye your brand is being shared with your new followers, family, friends and workmates. People like to share things, talk about something good they have experienced.

Is this your time?

The beginning of a lovely story, who knows the start of your brand becoming a household name? Why not… go for it!

What are social media’s rules for small business?

The main rules to be successful in social media are:

Honesty
Availability
Be engaging
Know your audience
Be responsive
Re-tweet and share with others

These are the factors that will help your business get to the top of consumers shopping bay — don’t get into the habit of saying ” its just another user”.

Be honest with your users at all times, don’t promise what you cannot deliver. You’re a business person who always tweets reliable information, shares and links to interesting businesses. The reward is.. people like that.

In the event you get a few hundred or thousand followers, you must maintain the dialog and be available to reply to possible comments from your users in order to convert them into a possible sale. Remember that you have to post interesting stuff, it makes your users coming back for more, they’ll interact and buy more often.

Second biggest mistake small business people make in social media – they do not take the time to respond to comments or mentions. Once engaged in social media your business will get positive and negative comments (and lots of spam/troll comments). As a small business you have to be clear, focus and always courteous no matter how stupid, unfair or disrespectful the comment is.

Remember that Social media can either create or destroy your reputation in a single day – so don’t let that happen. Why not pull together social media business guidelines, that make it clear with employees what the rules and procedures are.

Keep this in mind – often the best response is brief and to the point, people don’t have time to read a novel (well they do, at their own time). But whatever you are writing or sharing, make sure someone is available to respond within 24 hours.

Third mistake – Lack of fresh content or not updating pages with more specific posts. Preferably get your Twitter, Fb or Google+ feeds updated daily.

Read Start Social media for small businesses Part two

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Article related information:

*Compare social media platforms