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Social Media Marketing – Bare Necessities for Small Business

Posted by Colleen Frye

social mediaSocial media for local businesses can often seem like a daunting task. Between employee management, bills, keeping the business up and running, basically putting all your sweat and tears into your organization, the last thing you’re thinking about is social media. We get it!

Upright Communications is here to be your social media expert at all times! Whether it’s understanding metrics, getting a social media calendar scheduled or researching your competitors, we’ve got you covered. But if you’re just starting out or you’ve hired someone to help you within your organization, you can establish some ‘bare necessities’ to have you be successful in the social media world.

Below is a list of items we believe are important to consider.

Specify Your Goals

Social media isn’t for every organization. If you’re considering social media or a new social media marketing plan, here are our top questions we believe you’re organization should be asking:

‘Is social media going to……’

  • Increase brand awareness?
  • Drive in-person sales?
  • Improve quality of sales?
  • Create a loyal fanbase?
  • Improve ROI?
  • Establish a better pulse on the industry?

Define Your Audience

This is often something we see organizations missing the mark on. Just because a social media network is popular or up and coming, it doesn’t mean that your business needs to be on it. Here are some interesting statistics to consider when figuring out if a social media network is right for your organization.

Facebook –

  • 89% of users are women
  • 84% earn 30,000 or less a year
  • 82% have some college experience

Instagram –

  • 59% of users are 18-29 years old
  • 39% live in urban areas
  • 38% earn $30,000 or less a year
  • 37% have some college experience

Twitter –

  • 25% of users are women
  • 36% of users are 18-29 years old
  • 28% earn between $50,000 and $75,000 a year
  • 29% have some college experience

LinkedIn –

  • 31% of users are men
  • 34 of users are 18-29 years old
  • 45% earn $75,000 or more
  • 50% have some college experience

For example, if you’re a manufacturer, it may not make much sense to be on Facebook. But you would have better success targeting your ideal customer on LinkedIn.  Or, let’s say you sell women’s clothing, Facebook would be the best social platform for you to use.

For very specific demographics, read Sprouts Social blog.
Information provided by Spouts Social.

Establish Metrics

Understanding how your social media activity is going, it’s necessary that you pay attention to the metrics. Below is a list of metrics we would encourage you to pay attention to.

  • Reach: Post reach is the number of individual users who saw your post. Are your postings actually reaching your users?
  • Clicks: This is the amount of clicks on your content! The goal of social media is not always to get a click, but when you provide the user with an opportunity to visit your website or an informative blog, then you’ll want to pay attention to clicks.
  • Engagement: The total number of social interactions divided by number of impressions. For engagement, it’s about seeing who interacted and if it was a good ratio out of your total reach.
  • Hashtag performance: What were your most used hashtags on your own side? What hashtags created the most engagement? Hashtags for example are very important on Instagram for example, so it’s all about testing!

Competitive Landscape

Do your research to see where your competitors are listed. If you’re not seeing fellow manufacturers on Facebook, but they’re all over the place on LinkedIn, then LinkedIn will be your best bet. Or let’s sell you sell soaps…

The simplest way to find competitors is through a Google search. Look up your most valuable keywords to see who shows up. For example, if you sold soaps online, “handmade natural soaps” would be a great keyword to investigate. Then, click on your competitors and search their website to see their social media networks.

Develop Content

When it comes to developing your content, there is one main thing to consider. 80% of postings should be industry related, 20% of postings should be all about your business. When you’re developing content, consider asking these key questions?

  • Do I want to come across as knowledgeable?
  • Do I want to be known as the ‘funny social media page’?
  • Do I want to share valuable information?
  • Do I want to help my customers save money?
  • How often do I want to post?

Do I want to do all the above? The world is your oyster. Establish a content plan, follow it for a few months, study your metrics and revisit it if needed.

Engage

This can be a full time job! If you’re posting quality content, chances are you’ll get engagement. The whole point of social media is to be social. So if you’re unable to keep up with your users’ engagement, then it may be time to re-think using social media for your business. Here are our top tips for engaging with your users –

  • Respond to comments in a 24 hour period
  • Respond to all messages
  • ‘Like’ comments
  • If comments are spammy, delete them
  • If comments are negative, handle them with grace
  • Respond to all reviews
  • Engage! Simple as that!

Use Tools

This will make your life easier! And that’s exactly what we want. We use Hootsuite as a scheduling tool that we heavily rely on. For many accounts, we’re scheduled all the way through December, 2018. Whether it’s 40th anniversary celebration postings for the whole year or just postings for National Tire Safety Week, it’s super easy to schedule and let the postings do their thing.

We recommend scheduling postings for the month – take a few hours to develop the postings, take 30 minutes to schedule ‘em and then let them fly!

If you need our help with social media, give us a call or contact us online! We’re here to help YOU!