There is no need to lecture or explain the necessity for utilizing social media marketing for any small business. While it’s easy to set up small business accounts on multiple social media sites, most small business owners do not have the strategy tools necessary to make the most of those accounts.
Although there are many possible strategies that may be useful for your business to use online, we bring you 6 of the ones we feel may be most useful for small business owners.
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Draw Traffic Back To Your Blog/Website
One of your overall goals with online marketing should be to increase traffic to your website or blog. If you have a company blog, that should be your “Grand Central Station” for posting detailed and updated information.
Using your social media accounts, you can simply post teasers such as “Read how [your company] made this customer’s day” and include a link back to your blog. A short post on social media accounts can contain more detail like, “Big Sale This Weekend – 50% Off!” and include the link so interested customers can read more details on your blog.
Of course, if you don’t maintain a blog, use a link to your business website.
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Use Tools for Automatic Scheduling and Updating
Who has time to update every single social media account multiple times a day? Thankfully, there are tools you can use to help you write down a list of updates at one time and schedule them for posting later.
Seesmic is a helpful tool that can be used on desktop computers and mobile devices. Write your posts and schedule them to publish later on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Flickr, Foursquare accounts, and others.
Hootsuite is another online social media dashboard that helps you manage multiple social media accounts, and view statistical results.
TweetDeck is a downloadable app that is its own browser for managing updates and contacts across multiple social media sites.
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Vary Your Posts
While you should be posting often to your social media accounts, your updates/tweets/posts should not all have the same tone or information. If every time you updated you simply wrote, “blog update (with link)”, your followers would soon be weary of such monotonous posts.
While it’s acceptable to post simple backlinks occasionally, it’s always a good idea to include posts with links to pertinent YouTube videos, or even photos, or even posts without links at all. Consider an occasional post simply stating, “Loving this day!”, or “I heart my customers!” This gives your social media account the attention it deserves, plus it adds a touch of human element, rather than a robot-like statement.
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LinkedIn Strategies
Your LinkedIn account can gain more credibility when others “recommend” you. It’s easy to do, and all you have to do is ask. Also, consider connecting with other similar small businesses on LinkedIn groups. Get involved with conversation and chatter.
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Upload Photos
Your social media account “icons” should be a thumbnail of your business logo. Use your own headshot if you are the sole proprietor professional like an accountant or attorney.
In addition, don’t hesitate to upload photos of your facility or events onto Facebook, or share them on Twitter via Twitpic. Photos will help give your business a much more professional appearance and help you become more trustworthy to your followers.
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Engage Discussion
One easy strategy to help gain new followers and retain the ones you have is to engage discussion and encourage conversation. For instance, say you own an ice cream shop. On Facebook, you might post an update asking a question like, “How do you beat the summer heat?”. Get your followers engaged. The undercurrent, of course, is to stimulate them to think of your business when they are ready to cool down with a cone at your shop.
Or start a conversation on Twitter using words or phrases preceded by the hashtag “#”. Encourage other to retweet your posts.
And most of all, encourage followers, fans, friends, etc., to all join you on your blog and comment on your posts. You may be surprised at some of the discussions, and be sure to monitor discussions to keep them civil and friendly.
