Social Media for small business

Recently, I was approached by Biz.Yourself, an awesome website, a hub for all things biz, to share my top social media tips with their readers. There are heaps of tips I could share, however I wanted to pick the ones that will make a real difference to any small business.

Here they are:

4 Top Social Media Tips to Skyrocket Your Business

One of the biggest challenges of starting a new business is how to get your word out and get customers. You can have the best business idea, the best product or service yet if you are unable to spread the word, your potential customers will not even know you exist. The chances are that you will give up on your business well before the customers will have an opportunity to get to know you.

Luckily with social media and other internet marketing tools, this task has become less daunting. If you don’t have a massive marketing budget, using social media to market your business is the way to get your word out to the masses, reach your target market and collect quality leads to turn them into customers.

While it sounds so easy, there are some ‘DOs and DON’Ts’ of social media marketing. To help you get on the right track, I prepared 4 most common mistakes people do with social media with a solution how to fix them.

#1 No Strategy

Like with anything else in business you need to think before you act. Not having a social media strategy will result in un-resourceful use of tools. This means wasting time using the wrong social media platform and not achieving any results.

How to fix this?

Think about your target market; who are your customers? Where and when do they ‘hang’; is it Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest etc? What is their behaviour? Once you getter information, create a strategy of your social media use.

#2 Too Many Social Media Accounts

I’ve seen it too many times; businesses trying to manage too many social media accounts yet they are nowhere truly present. This results in spending too much time with too little results and lots of frustration.

How to fix this?

If you’ve done your social media strategy you know where you customers are. Use one or two social media platforms regularly. This means your customers will get a chance to know you better, which will result in better relationship and a higher level of trust. And you want that because the quality of the relationship is what determines the sale.

On the other hand, using less social media platforms will free up heaps of your time that you can use to run your business to success.

#3 Ignoring Statistics

Yes, I know stats are boring. But unless you measure, analyse and test your marketing efforts, you will never know what works and what doesn’t. You might be wasting your energy and money on things that don’t work. Imagine how much more you could achieve, if you put more in to things that work. And unless you look at the stats you will never know.

How to fix this?

Make a weekly commitment in your diary to follow the stats of your social media. It’s actually rewarding when you see positive results and when you find out the formula that works for you.

#4 Not Collecting Leads

While collecting fans and followers is fun and it gets the word about your business out, the real value to your business are leads, which you can turn into customers. You need to figure out how to turn your fans and followers into customers. Otherwise, you are wasting your time.

How to fix this?

You need to get your fans/followers to subscribe to your emailing list. Once they are on your list, you have better chances to turn them into customers during your email marketing campaign.

To collect leads you will need to get an account with emailing service provider such as Aweber or Mail Chimp and then incorporate a sign-up form to social media account (where possible) or drive traffic to your website.

Connecting social media with email marketing is the key to your success online. A subscriber is a warm lead. While they might not be ready to buy from you as yet, they’ve expressed an interest in you and in what you are doing. Now is your turn to show them why they should become your customer.

Always post information that is relevant to your target market and be regular with your postings. A simple search online will give you heaps of common tips about how to use social media. These 4 tips are my top tips if you are serious about doing business with social media. If you follow them, you will have success and you will grow your client base.

Let’s face it, it’s here, its importance and influence is rising each day and it’s not going to go away.

Why?

We are social creatures, we love being heard and we like having our voice. And Social Media is just another platform for voicing our opinions, sharing our life stories, connecting with friends, meeting new friends, ‘selling ourselves’….and all that in just few clicks in a matter of seconds, to the whole world. Wow!

I believe we are already past thinking about Social Media as a fad, not worth getting involved in it because it will go away tomorrow.

We are also past thinking that Social Media is only for celebrities, entertainment industry and big brands. If companies such as Ernst &Young are leveraging from Social Media, there is clearly more to it then chatting, photo sharing and playing games.

Social media is a new marketing tool that is effective, more targeted and cheap; and for that reason small business without big marketing budgets are benefiting even more from it. Anyone can be a marketing success online, no matter how small or big you marketing budget is. In the past, unless you had a massive marketing budget for TV commercials, printing and mailing campaigns, your marketing efforts have been restricted and you could have only reach a small group of people. With Social Media, the world is your oyster!

But you need to learn how to harvest it!

Social Media is not inventing new marketing techniques, the old ones still apply – they are just translated on-line. So whatever you are doing well off-line just needs to be translated on-line; simple as this.

But why even bother if you are doing just fine off-line. Here is 7 points why;

Social media and mostly Facebook are a ‘new’ word of mouth – and you know that word of mouth is the best marketing tool! Nothing new, just different platform.
People search for services and goods through social media and they seek opinions from their friends on Facebook.
People will choose what’s convenient. If they can’t find your business online they will do business with someone else. And that someone else is your competitor J
More people will visit your Facebook page before they visit your website.
It’s easier to rank well in Google with your Facebook, You Tube, Twitter & LinkedIn page then your website.
You can tell your story to masses with one click
Your competition is doing it, and doing it well!

Well…In have at least 3 more ‘WHYs’:

Social media is fabulous tool to engage with your clients, get to know them, what they like about your brand and what they dislike, what excites them in life. With this information you can target you market better.
You can test your new ideas, products and before you even launch them you can get fans behind them.
You can spy on your competition;
and the list could go on and on and on….

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that Social Media offers you pinpoint accuracy in targeting your market, communicating with your prospects and building meaningful business relationships in a way that it’s cost effective, easier and faster than anything else – and from a conform of your office desk.

You can no longer afford to ignore Social Media in your marketing plan.

Send us an email, and will get you started…