The social media wave is too big to ignore these days, and as a small business, you can either learn to ride it or risk being swept away by the competition. It could even affect how your potential audience views your business – if you have no social media presence, is your business the real deal?

Yet just because every business should be “doing” social media doesn’t mean that every small business owner knows how. After all, it’s not your core business so why should you?!

Managing social media for your business can seem like a minefield, a challenge that after a while seems too much, and many business owners throw in the towel after a few short months. Growing your audience, posting consistently, generating new and engaging content, engaging with comments and sharing other posts can be hugely time-consuming, especially if you’re not entirely comfortable with what you’re doing.

We’ve come up with some useful tips that will prove to be invaluable to your business when it comes to managing its social media:

  1. Make a plan – commit to a social media strategy. This means carefully considering who your audience is, why they’d want to follow your business, what social media platforms will best reach them, what content will engage them and what you’re aiming for from your activity. This helps create focus and keep you on track. If you don’t know where to start, then call on the expertise at SocialBee Social Media.
  2. Be you – the whole point of social media is that it’s a digital channel for the marketing of you and your business. It needs to convey your personality, your business brand and connect with the audience. After all, it’s often said that people buy people, not just products so make sure you’re showing your personality online.
  3. Don’t make it all me, me, me – yes, social media is your chance to promote yourself but don’t go into it too heavily as a sales tool. Your audience will quickly get fed up of being sold to and you’re much more likely to lose them as followers. You need to find the right balance between a little promotion and interacting with followers. Responding to posts from others, tagging relevant people and linking to interesting content is a great starting point. Also, make sure your own posts are public and have social sharing enabled so that anyone can share them.
  4. Don’t go for a scattergun approach – just because there are multiple social media platforms out there doesn’t mean that your business has to be on each and every one of them. You need a more strategic approach, especially if you have limited resources and budget. It’s much better to manage a smaller number of platforms well than a whole host of them badly. Carefully consider what will work best for your business, work out where your audience is and take your business to them. This is much easier than pulling them in from elsewhere. Also, pay attention to what your competitors are up to – sometimes being on a platform they have no presence on puts you firmly ahead of the game.
  5. A picture is worth 1,000 words – it’s all about the images. Posts are much more interesting if accompanied by an image. Statistics suggest that Facebook posts with images in them get 2.3 times more engagement than those without, and Tweets get 150% more retweets when they have an image than those without. Make sure your images are of a decent quality and free from copyright. These days smartphone cameras provide quality images instantly – have some fun around the office taking images of staff, products and points of interest, all of which will help your posts feel “real”.
  6. Movement is even better! – we’re talking video. The use of video marketing is gaining momentum as the topic of the moment, so now’s the time to get involved. Look at what’s going on out there and take note of best practice. Then have a go!
  7. Quality is better than quantity – aim for consistently high-quality posts. It’s important to check things like spelling and grammar, avoid repetition and posting too frequently. A couple of great, thought-out posts a day are much more effective than coming across as spam by appearing too often in feeds.
  8. Give it a boost – let’s face it, social media platforms want us to spend money on adverts, and they’ve developed very clever algorithms to help us achieve the very best from paid advertising. Increasing your reach this way can be incredibly effective, depending on the ideal audience for your products. For example, if you appeal to a younger audience then this is sound advice, as they’re the largest demographic for using social media.
  9. Hot topics – make the most of what’s going on in the world around you. National holidays such as Christmas and big events like the Royal wedding will be trending so be part of the activity, generate discussion, engage with what people are saying and you’re much much more likely to be of interest to potential followers.
  10. Call to action – quite simply, make people take action. Whether it be through an offer, a poll or simply a link to your product, getting people to follow your post and take action is what it’s all about. Use action words (click here, download here, contact us) with links to enable that action. Create a sense of urgency and make the benefit clear.

If this all seems too much to take on, never fear! SocialBee Social Media could be your partner to a successful social media journey for your business. Give us a call on 07484805545 or 01424 421423 to discuss how we can manage your social media accounts and how you can make use of our social media account management packages.