RESOURCES

Social Media for Small Business Owners

6 min. read

Is your business making effective use of social media?

Are you getting the most out of your social channels to build your brand, increase visibility or connect with customers?

Or is a faltering social media strategy leaving you wondering whether you should even be investing time and money into it anymore?

Social media can be a fast, efficient and relatively inexpensive way to step up your digital marketing game. However, like any marketing strategy, there are right ways to execute social media strategies – and there are wrong ways. Let’s dive into what you should and shouldn’t be doing when it comes to your business’ social media strategy.

Don’t Start Posting on Social Media Without a Plan

Many business owners and marketing managers assume (at their peril!) that simply posting on social media will draw attention to their business, engage with customers, generate traffic to their website and increase leads & sales.

Alas, this “build it and they will come” mentality has led to many failed social media accounts and countless lost revenue opportunities.

Social media accounts that flatline or never really launch well at all are usually the result of poor planning.

Instead, Start by Setting Your Social Media Strategy with Specific Goals & Objectives

Smart social media managers always start by setting the goals and objectives that they want to focus on.

Think about what you want social media to do for your business. Some great goals and objectives to have include:

Social Media to Increase Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is a common goal for a business’s social media strategy. That’s because social media is one of the easiest ways to grab the attention of potential customers.

Some means of measuring brand awareness generated by social media include:

-Follower count
-Reach of your posts
-Likes, shares and mentions

These are the most common ways to measure brand awareness. Of course, brands carry an intangible component to them as well. But for our purposes here, we’ll stick to what we can and do measure to determine how well a social media strategy is helping the brand.

Driving Traffic to Your Website from Social Channels

Driving traffic to your website is another objective you can set for using social media.

Good metrics (such as those generated by Google Analytics) show how many visitors are coming to your site, the quality of the traffic (time spent on page/on site, other pages visited, bounce rate, etc.).

A social media account that gets you likes but few clicks to your website is basically leaving money on the table. A good social strategy, however, drives traffic and increases conversions & revenue.

Social Media for Lead Generation

Social media has become a powerful player in a customer’s journey. When considering a sales funnel, social media is a highly effective tool for getting people to the top of your funnel.

Lead generation can be tracked in a variety of ways from the amount of customer information that you collected through social media, participation in contests or campaigns and the quality of the leads you are getting from social media.

Okay, my goals are set, so now I’ll just start posting across all social media platforms, right?

Whoa, not so fast!

It’s true that between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and countless other social media platforms, business owners have a lot of options to choose from.

But should you be posting across the board?

When it comes to social media a good rule of thumb is, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Here’s an idea of how to decide which platforms are right for your business:

Facebook

Facebook boasts billions of monthly users. In theory, it gives you the ability to reach a large number of people.

But… does it?

The reality is that today’s Facebook (like many other social platforms) is seeing more and more “noise” that can drown out the message you’re trying to get across. A spray-and-pray approach to Facebook posting isn’t likely to get you much in return.

With an effective, well thought-out and properly executed social media strategy, however, Facebook offers savvy marketers a good platform for lead generation and advertising. Their user interface is well-designed for building relationships, adding a human touch to your business and turning leads into followers and then customers.

Instagram

Instagram has come a long way from the photo-sharing app that it once was. Today it has become a platform that offers businesses everything from live broadcasting to e-commerce.

But Instagram is undergoing changes as of late, responding to its competitors such as TikTok, meaning that the ways to connect with your customers and grow your brand on Instagram are changing as we speak.

That’s why it pays to have an experienced, knowledgeable social media manager who stays at the cutting edge of all the changes in Instagram and other platforms.

Twitter

Twitter is a nice platform to share snippets of content with your audience quickly. Updates, announcements, important information and other text-based content that is easily digestible is great for Twitter.

Twitter is used by many businesses to engage customers in a conversation, and to respond to (very public) customer service requests or complaints.

If you have customers Tweeting at you and calling out your service or product, you need a social media manager to stay on top of the tweets and keep you brand intact. This is one of those cases where no response (or a bad one) is worse than not having an account whatsoever.

TikTok

TikTok’s popularity as a social platform has skyrocketed over the past year. With a focus on short video creation, it has allowed companies to engage with customers in a new way.

They offer advertising for businesses looking to expand their presence.

However, TikTok is still a very youth-oriented platform. Many consumer brands can do very well by being active and engaging on TikTok. A local service business, though, like a plumber or accounting firm, would be wasting their time with TikTok.

Keep Your Social Media Execution Consistent

It’s important that you don’t post too often or too little.

Your audience will get annoyed if you post too often or they might forget about you if you don’t post enough. Stay consistent and post high-quality, original content that is relevant to your audience and your business.

Make sure you are keeping track of the data and analytics you have access to so that you can adjust your strategy if necessary.

Drastically changing your approach or strategy can do your business more harm than good, so make sure you take advantage of learning from the analytics.

Avoid Sounding Sales~y on Social Media

“Everyone likes to buy things, but nobody likes to be sold to.”

That adage rings true on social media perhaps more than anywhere.

When it comes to posting content and the type of content you’re posting on social media, there is a sweet spot. Social media is great for connecting your audience to your business, but if everything you post is overly promotional, they will lose interest!

Instead of overwhelming your audience with promotional content, smart social media managers use platforms to educate their audience, to connect with customers and to share useful info & tips. If you’re doing these things well, your audience won’t mind (and ideally will even be excited about) the occasional tweet or post letting them know about a sale or a new product.

Companies With Social Media Strategies to Watch

Let’s take a look at some businesses that are using the best features their chosen platforms have to offer and killing the social media game.

MidDay Squares

MidDay Squares is the perfect example of a Canadian company that takes its social media strategy to a new level.

They approach their social media strategy with a strong emphasis on storytelling and relatability. Their main platform of choice is Instagram where they take full advantage of stories, IGTV, Reels and other business features to build their modern-day chocolate empire.

Casa Di Moni

Casa Di Moni is a local Ottawa company (and WebMarketers client) that is a great example of how to build your brand with social media.

They post high-quality content that features their delicious Italian cuisine and gelato!

Using highlights, Reels and the “Order Food” tool, they have built a profile that is engaging and easy for customers to navigate.

Fika Beauty Studio

Fika Beauty Studio is an Ottawa based salon.

They have a consistent social media strategy that naturally focuses on beauty services, tips and trends without being overly sales-y.

Fika is a good example of a local service business that gets its audience, knows who & where they are, and used effective social media strategy and execution to reach them.-.

Social Media Management with WebMarketers

When you choose to work with WebMarketers for social media management, your vision and your goals become our priority.

Our Solution Specialist will take the time to speak with you about your vision and any ideas you have for your social media strategy. Then a WebMarketers Social Media Specialist will audit your current social media strategy. Your vision, strategy, and ideas will be reviewed, and a 3-month strategy will be created together with you.

Our Social Media Specialist will check in with you every month to make sure you are in the loop and happy with how our social media management services are going.

Looking to really step your social media game? Take advantage of our new sister brand, Phantom Productions.

We’ll organize a shoot where 3 months’ worth of content will be shot (both photo and video content depending on your social media strategy). Using the content from Phantom Productions, our social media specialist will create a draft for 2 weeks worth of posts that you will review and provide feedback on. When we are coming up on the 3-month mark, a new content shoot takes place and the social media strategy cycle continues.

Interested in improving your social media strategy & execution with WebMarketers?

Get in touch with us today! We’d love to hear from you and talk more about how we can help you with social media management for your business!