How Social Media For Small Business is Different From That Of Big Brands

Featured article by Neha Mishra, digital marketer, Organizein.com

Low marketing cost is one of the most significant aspect that makes Social Media extremely popular marketing tool for small businesses (between 2 to 10 employees). According to Social Media Examiner’s 7th annual report on Social Media Marketing Industry, it has been found that 92% of small businesses use Social Media as one of their core marketing tool.

It has been estimated the within the next two years, 50% of small businesses will use Social Media for enhancing their sales and thereafter, within the next 5 years, 70% of small businesses will see a substantial ROI from their Social Media presence, all across the globe.

As small businesses are often incapable of beating the big companies at their own game, Rhett Rowe, President of Capital for Merchants, who is also a small-business lender, says, small businesses should focus on increasing their community of loyal followers, expand brand awareness and thus enhance their website traffic. More so, because small businesses often cannot compete with the sheer volume of contents and campaigns that big corporations can create with the help of their unlimited manpower, technological and financial resources.

Nevertheless, here are a few tips and tricks that can help small business owners to hone up their marketing skills using Social Media Marketing tools.

Spread the News about your small business

Much like newspaper ads, social media posts are like virtual flyers that can help create brand identity and build up brand recognition for small businesses.

Use performance indicators such as “Impressions and Reach”, “Mentions”, “Follower Growth”, “Follower Sentiments” and “Locational Preferences” are found in Social Media dashboards. They can always help small businesses increase their online social reach. Social Media tracking metrics found through these indicators can easily portray when and which of your posts are boosting the image of your brand.

Increase your website traffic

Although sharing your business news through Social Media platforms is considered well enough for establishing your brand loyalty, enticing your followers to visit your webpage is an even better idea. So when you share links on Social Media platforms, share links to specific landing pages or dedicated website pages that are optimized for conversions.

Start tracking those Social Media posts which draw maximum people to click on your company’s URL and have led them to lead generation and purchases.

Use Google Analytics to set up ‘Goals’ to track visitors from multiple Social Media platforms. These Goals can include “Clicking on your URL”, “Filling out Contact Forms”, “Subscribing to your Blog” and several other online marketing activities of the similar kind.

Focus your efforts on perceiving how the factors, such as content sharing, social networks and also the time of the day the posts were shared have enhanced your conversion goals.

Form a Community

Your community of followers on the Social Media networks is often your brand evangelists and hence are potential repeat customers for your small businesses. Encourage your customers to reach you out on the Social Media networking channels, so that you can make them feel like they also a part of your small-business family. This way you can find your customers returning to you again and again, which shall increase the ROI of your company. In case you find that your clients’ questions are benefiting your business community, turn your answers into a blog post and also invite other customers to share their experiences. Creating an email or text message alert for your back-office online marketing team helps in immediately responding to the customer concerns, which in turn strengthens the growth of your online community fans.

Don’t try to beat the Big Guys

Last but not the least; try to monitor how other small businesses who are your competitors, engaging themselves on the Social Media platforms. Take a note as to how they are meeting their goals. But never try to use online marketing strategies which are conceived by the big guys. Remember, small businesses often don’t have that kind of money, time or stamina to replicate the marketing strategies of the big companies involved in the trade.

Author Bio: Neha Mishra works with digital marketing team of Organizein.com. She also provides social media services in Los Angeles to her clients looking to boost their business. She also takes care of writing part of her team and has written articles on Social Media, SEO, Web Design and many more.