Social Media Tips for Small Business Owners

How social media is beneficial to Small business owners?

The internet has enabled small businesses to thrive in this competitive world. It has given them cheap tools to:

• Create an identity: Entrepreneurs get a chance to try setting their brand image as close as possible to the ideals of the company.
• Gain popularity: Social media platforms are good in creating pop ups based on an individual’s past record which will work in your favour. If in any case your brand is relevant to something a user is looking for, analytics system of social media platforms will make sure that the business is featured in their ads.
• Know the customer base well: The algorithms used in a social media company helps you track every search done about your business or any conversation that included the brand of your business.
• Keep track of competitors: The small business owners also get an idea of how well other companies are doing in social media platforms through their posts about offers and discounts.
• Form clarity in Marketing strategy: Any change in trend or the direction to which the marketing is heading to can easily be tracked and a resultant modification can be made in the marketing strategy of the company. Social media also gives flexibility when it comes to correcting any deviation from the intended effect. Businesses can update their features and campaigns without incurring any additional cost.

Social and digital marketing techniques have gained popularity and are used by every type of businesses. Measures like the number of likes, comments, retweets and reposts is being used to get an idea about how well the marketing strategy is faring.

Relevant tip to make your business stand out:

• Know Your Product Well: With the availability of so many choices of social media platforms, an entrepreneur should be perfectly acquainted with its product to judge which of these platforms would help him capture the target audience. While Facebook is most widely used social platform, sites like Instagram and Snapchat is more images centric and used by youngsters. LinkedIn is highly professional and Pinterest attracts creative minds. YouTube has a successful ad revenue based model where grabbing eyeballs is easy.
• Refrain from promoting the product directly: This will prevent you from connecting with the customers. A strong bond will help you to stay long in the business. You should atleast try dedicating one third of your daily posts to sharing information and insights on trending topics. This will create interest among users and you will get noticed more often. The second one third should prompt a connection between your posts and the users on a personal level and the rest one third could then be used as a medium to advertise the product directly. Or 80 percent indirect and 20 percent direct promotion.
• Make Use of Facebook Business Reviews: Sometimes reviews from other users heavily impact the decisions of the users. You can consider enabling Facebook business reviews on your page. This enables you to respond to any consumer reaction to your service or product quicker and create a weightage of your brand in the market. However some fake ratings can also be experienced .Chances of getting negatively affected by this feature should be evaluated before taking the plunge.
• Pay Attention on Security: While social phishing attacks are dangerous in all levels, it can be particularly dangerous for a business as it can disrupt the value of the brand created over the years, in seconds. It becomes more important for the entrepreneurs to maintain high level security and hire professionals who can tackle these social phishing attacks.Anti phishing malwares should be installed in all the computers.
• More Use of Graphic Content: It is appealing and creates impact on a wider base. Do not keep yourselves from experimenting with new tools of video making available in the net. All the GIFs and memes can be used to attract customers attention.
• Schedule your Posts: Various tools are available which can help you schedule your posts to occur at fixed time intervals. This will save you lot of time to focus on other major areas of your business, one can observe and analyse which time of the day gives the maximum interaction level with its targeted group. Some users are more responsive in the morning and some during lunch breaks.

Most important of all is to maintain authenticity and provide quality product that the consumer finds worth their money. Only then the business can become truly successful.