Social media marketing is one of the major pillars of internet marketing even for small businesses. No matter if your own a small business, it is always necessary to adopt the right path for your social media marketing. The following social media marketing milestones are designed to lead your social media marketing on the right track by earning customer engagement to improve sales for your business.
#1 Do consider a social media marketing plan
Planning is the key to the success. As you planned before starting your small business, it is necessary to plan your internet marketing as well as the social media marketing for your small business. Goal settings are the essential part of any planning and the takeaway is to avoid mistakes during the process.
#2 Social media Audit
Planning your social media marketing is incomplete without auditing your current social media presence. Doing so you will find your strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities; SWAT. This will help you create realistic goals. You can find free social media marketing audit templates, take benefits of them.
#3 Know your customers
It is an advanced approach to know your customers during the planning process. Be specific to approach your customers. It is not wise to spend your efforts, time and money to reach to someone who is not your expected customer. Be smart rather too hard worker. Only spend for those who matter to your business. Create buyer personas.
#4 Which social media platform suits your business?
Once you have decided on your targeted audience, pick the social media channels where your prospects are found. Every social media channel has their own audience and targets specific interests. Don’t consider a social media channels where your business should not have a presence to reach your customers.
#5 When in Rome, do as the Romans do
As every social media channel has their own atmosphere and their users use to enjoy spending time respectively, you should be wise enough in your presence. As people used to go to Youtube for videos and Twitter for short blogging, you should customise your presence according to every social media channel(s).
#6 Consistency
When it is about internet marketing, consistency is very important. For your social media marketing, you have to take an oath to yourself that you will remain consistent. Segment your presence in the hours, days and months. Never miss a slot you have defined as your customers will be waiting for your next post.
#7 Give a personalized experience
Getting engagement, you need to build a relationship. When it is about building the relationship, it is about personalization. What do you have for your audience? Do you talk to your customers or only about your products or services? Personalized content is always appealing and appreciated in response.
#8 Selected Audience require selected content
Don’t publish everything. While creating buyer persona, you choose a selected audience. When it is about a selected audience, choose selected content. The content that is more about your audience and less about you and your product or service.
#9 Speak to your audience
Finding selected content that is designed and developed for the selected audience always attracts. As your prime goal is to engage the audience, you should be present at a fixed slot of time to communicate with the audience on social media channels. Either spend time yourself or hire a team of professionals, who knows how to participate on social media channels, who can speak to the selected audience. This gives a message, that you are real.
#10 Analyse and improve
No one is perfect, so do we. Define a time period during a month or a campaign when you will be going back and analyze your efforts which you have put on the campaign. Analyze your recent posts and previous posts to find which gone well and which was at an average. Improve the content and then go after it.
#11 Thousand words are better than a picture
Visuals have the ability to teach the audience without words. Use engaging and meaningful images in your posts on the social media marketing. And then observe how much effective last audit was.
#12 Don’t spam
About a few years ago cold calling was so popular in the businesses. Today, the customer is most uneducated as this is time of iPhone, iPads and 4G internet connections. Spamming your targeted customers will be a biggest threat in the SWAT you did in the planning step. Doing so you can lose the relationship with your customers.
#13 Optimize your social media marketing posts
Optimization is import factor even if it is about social media marketing. Make the social media marketing posts more valuable. You should add links to useful information which can help your audience as a solution. If this is case, you will observe more engagement as well as getting your post viral.
#14 Content A/B testing
To find what works and what not, try different versions of the content or consider it as A/B testing of your content. This rule can be applied on all types of webpage which contains content on your website. Try maximum content type and analyze which work better.
#15 Empower with Hashtags
Hashtags play vital role to spread your post on the respected social media platform. Don’t stick to a particular Hashtags, keep revolving the hashtags to analyze and further improve.
#16 Pinterest, a social media channel, good for image sharing
Pinterest is best to engage audience for your brand through image sharing. Create boards of interests what matters to your business as well as interest your audience. Design image base content that your buyers are expected to see and get engage with. Small businesses can utilize Pinterest equally.
#17 Facebook, a social channel, good for every content type
Create a business page for your small business, invite contacts and then start sharing valuable content on the Facebook. Facebook users are likely to get engage if they find a piece of content interesting, informative and actionable.
#18 Your audience is waiting for you
Once your audience find a piece of content shared by you interesting and informative, they are likely to join you at your business page. As you planned your time management, don’t miss a day to interact with your audience because they are waiting for you everyday.
#19 Curated content | An important segment
Content is king, but if you are not able to find interesting post everytime for your audience, curate it according you and your audience. There are many ideas out there which can help you come up with a nice piece of content which will be equally interested. It is better to keep your audience engaged and interacted with the department.
#20 Social media promotion
Whenever you write a piece of content, never forget to share it on social media. As the daily average time spent on social media channels is eye-opening, it is really beneficial to share your posts on social media channels.
#21 Linkedin
The white color audience can be found on internet at Linkedin. Though it is not possible that this audience convert but it is possible that they will stop and see your post. The content type for Linkedin should be wise and according to the interest of Linkedin users.
#22 Ads to target Audience quickly
For a new and small business, the thought may come to mind, how to reach more an more people in the short frame of time? Ads offered by social media channels are very quick way to reach more and more expected buyers. While using social media Ads, the spending may increase if not monitored properly, be attentive.
#23 Modify your content
The content contains a message within itself. If you find that the message is not responded, modify the content of the post. Give more value to your customers as everyone comes after customer. Don’t forget that you have to design and develop the content for every social media channel accordingly.
# 24 Youtube
Youtube is good to choose as social media marketing channel for your small business to promote. create an educational video, use hashtags, keywords and brief description to help you rank in the category.
#25 Competitor Analysis
Doing competition analysis gives an insight and make you able to see out of the box. While doing the content analysis of your own site. the other advance approach is to keep an eye on your competitor and keep learning from them as well.
Conclusion
Most of the social media channels offer free analysis tools. These tools are near to advance level and provide an ample amount of analysis that can lead to achieving the business goals set at the early stage of this technique.
Please share what social media marketing solutions have you adopted for your small business.
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