Small businesses are always looking for ways to advertise and market themselves to reach customers at an affordable price. Small businesses can market their products or services through social media. Social media has billions of active users that enjoy spending time scrolling their feeds, which means you can build brand awareness and cultivate customer relationships. Here are social media tips for your new business.

Have a Plan

Every digital marketing strategy needs a plan, especially social media marketing. Before you start posting, set clear goals for what you’re trying to achieve. For example, you could be using social media to drive results for your website, or you might be using it as a way to advertise to your potential customers.

Part of your plan should include your budget if you plan to hire someone to manage social media for you or if you want to advertise. As a new business, you might not have a large budget, but putting a small amount of money into your social media can help boost your follower count and help more people see your posts.

Your social media plan should also help you decide which types of posts to create. Depending on the social media platforms you’re using, you’ll have different options, and you should plan to experiment to find out which types of posts resonate with your audience.

Additionally, you should make a list of all the tools you’ll need to use social media effectively. While you don’t have to use any type of tools, using social media management software can help you manage all of the posts from all of the platforms you’re using in one place. The software will enable you to schedule posts rather than signing online and posting every day and respond to messages from all of your social media accounts.

Do Competitive Research

Your competition is going after the same audience as you, so it’s essential to learn about the different types of social media marketing tactics used to see what works and what doesn’t. Make a list of your competitors and check out their various social media profiles. Of course, you should never flat-out copy your competitors’ social media posts, including copy and imagery; you can figure out the types of posts that perform well. For example, you might find out their audience likes contests or prefers videos over text posts.

Audit Your Social Media

If you’ve already started using social media, you can start evaluating your past efforts. With an audit, you can uncover the messaging that converts followers into paying customers. To audit your social media, ensure you have access to your social media analytics. Analytics gives you critical information that you can you to make sure you’re effectively marketing your products and getting a high return.  You can use social media marketing software to check your analytics for every social media platform. Common data to capture includes the average engagement rate per post and follower count.

Create a Calendar

Earlier, we talked about scheduling posts for the future so you don’t have to sit down and create social media posts every day. A social media calendar can help you plan posts efficiently and effectively, and you don’t need any special software to do it (although it does help). With a social media calendar, you can mix up the different types of content you have and plan for big announcements, such as a product launch, to help generate buzz.

When planning your content, integrate your social media calendar with your marketing calendar to avoid missing important announcements or events.

Choose the Right Platforms

You can be active on every single social media platform, but some of them may not be worth your time or resources, depending on your business and your industry. For example, B2B typically performs better on LinkedIn than on Instagram because of LinkedIn’s more professional audience. However, eCommerce businesses do well on Facebook and Instagram because they’re more visual and can allow you to sell products directly on the platforms to help you earn more revenue.

Overall, you should choose the platforms you use based on your customers. For example, if you sell to younger adults, you’ll have tremendous success on Instagram and TikTok than on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Understand Your Audience

Social media is effective for businesses because it allows you to target your audience effectively. However, you first need to know who your target audience is. Then, even though your business is new, you can start collecting data on new customers and use social media analytics to learn more about your followers.

Once you know who your audience is, you can build out buyer personas to help you learn how to market your audience effectively.

Try Influencer Marketing

Once you start marketing on social media, you’ll come across people who start to engage with your brand. Many of these people might have large followings of their own. You can easily begin an influencer marketing campaign by looking for influencers who are already fans of your products.

Additionally, you can start by working with micro-influencers who have a smaller following, but that following is typically more engaged than macro-influencers. When you first start an influencer marketing campaign, you might be able to use spreadsheets to track everyone’s work. Still, eventually, you might need workforce management software to help you manage the influencers you’re working with.

Consider Advertising

Social media advertising is one of the most cost-effective ways to get your brand in front of hundreds of thousands of people. On social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can boost posts quickly and efficiently to put your top-performing posts in front of more eyes. Unfortunately, these platforms make it challenging to reach your audience organically. However, they provide some of the best advertising solutions to build brand awareness and generate leads.

Final Thoughts

Social media marketing is a great technique to help new businesses flourish and beat the competition. However, you will have much competition online. So before you begin social media marketing or advertising, ensure you’ve adequately branded your company and can stand out from the crowd.

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