Social media can be a powerful tool for small businesses but it is also a huge time suck.
If you are not using social media to grow your business, you should be.
But if you are currently using it, chances are that the results could be better.
You might have tried posting on Facebook and Twitter once or twice and found no effect on your bottom line whatsoever.
This makes people feel something is wrong with your business when in fact the problem may lie with your social media content strategy.
The solution lies in understanding what works for other companies who use social media successfully and applying these methods to your own company’s strategy.
Step One: Define a Goal
The first step in setting up any kind of social media content strategy is to define what you want to achieve.
You should know for example if your goal is selling more products or getting more people to join your email list.
Knowing this will allow you to set and measure the specific goals that your social media campaigns are trying to achieve.
For example, you might wish to increase the number of email signups from your Facebook page fivefold in a period of six months or double the number of page views on your website within three months.
You could also try to do both if you want!
Step Two: Define Who You Are Marketing To
Always try and target your campaigns for the right audience.
If you are a vegan cafe, posting on a Facebook group that is dedicated to meat-eaters will not do much for your business.
You should instead join or set up a Facebook group that caters to vegans or vegetarian food lovers within your area or community.
If you are a local hair salon, joining your local chamber of commerce is a good idea as they will only add businesses that are within the same geographical area.
The more specific you get, the better results you will achieve because your target audience will be much smaller and more relevant to your product or service.
Step Three: Set Up Your Profile Pages
You will need to create profiles on all the social media platforms you are going to use for your company from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Then try and make them as unique looking as possible by uploading pictures that represent what your company is about and including a link to your website on each one.
You can also link all your profiles together to create a network for yourself and expand the reach of your campaigns.
You could for example write a blog post and then share the link across all your social media profiles so that more people have access to it.
This social media content strategy is great because it allows you to reach out to new audiences who may not have been aware of your company before.
Step Four: Spend A Few Minutes Each Day
When you first set up your profiles, don’t expect any results for at least a few days or weeks.
What you should do however is take some time out of your day to post relevant information about your business that your target audience will enjoy.
Post on a regular basis if you can but never more than two or three posts per day.
If you don’t have any social media accounts, now is the time to set them up and for these few minutes each day, which is going to take you 15 minutes at most, could be the difference between your business failing or succeeding!
Step Five: Create Your Content
You need to create all the content yourself. It is much better if possible to upload your own images and write out your posts than using ones that are created for you by someone else.
Also, try uploading pictures of something relevant to what your company offers as your cover photos or header images.
For example, if you offer laser hair removal services in Cardiff, upload a really good-looking picture of a model with no eyebrows to attract the attention of your target audience.
If you are posting on Pinterest then create boards that represent what your business is about and upload relevant pictures for each one of these boards.
Step Six: Build Your Following
You will need to build your following if you want results from your social media content strategy.
Some companies charge their customers for the service of doing this, but it’s not necessary if you have the right contacts and can connect with people who are like-minded on a regular basis.
There are some really good apps which you can use to connect with people for free and one of the best is Thunderclap.
You can create your campaign through this app once it’s set up and then ask your contacts to join in so that they help promote your campaign on their social media pages.
This will help increase your followings much faster and get your name out there to more people in no time at all.
Step Seven: Find Your Target Audience And Post Regularly
Of course, it’s not just about having a presence on social media platforms, you also need something interesting to post.
Create a marketing calendar that lists all the things you want to tweet or post about and when.
For example, you could post two tweets a day on Facebook with links back to your website or blog posts on Facebook every Monday and Thursday.
Or even upload one picture of something that represents what your company is about onto Pinterest every other Saturday.
You get the idea.
It’s much easier to keep your audience engaged when you post something relevant and interesting regularly than waiting for a long time until you figure out what it is that you want to say about yourself.
Post three or four times a day if possible but never more than this because too many posts will just make you look like an annoyance and people will start to unfollow you.
Once you have your social media content strategy in place, it’s time to sit back and wait for the results.
Step Eight: Track Your Progress
You need some way of tracking the progress that your social media content strategy has made for you as it makes it much easier to see what is working and what isn’t.
Use a tool like Google analytics or Hootsuite which can help you track everything from how many followers you have, to how many unique visitors are coming to your website from your social media platforms.
You can even use a tool like this to work out how many lead generation opportunities you have brought in from each one of your social media accounts too!
Step Nine: Be Consistent
So, this is the most important part about creating and using a small business social media content strategy for your business as any leads or customers that you gain will only become loyal if the followings continue to engage with your business.
So, make sure that every time you post something new on one of your social media pages, you take the time to comment and share there too so that people get the chance to connect with you and create a deeper relationship with your company too.
If you do this, the chances are that your social media marketing strategy will generate leads for a long time to come too!
Step Ten: Ensure that Your Social Media Content Strategy is An Ongoing Process
Of course, as with most things you create for your business, it’s always a good idea to review the process you have been following and make any changes that you think will help generate even more leads.
So, once your social media content strategy has been set up, review it from time to time and see if there are any changes you can make which would help boost your results even further.
For instance, maybe you could find out how much traffic each social media channel is driving to your website and then work out the best ones to concentrate on.
You may also want to take a look at what time of day your followers are online and schedule your posts to go out then too?
There are lots of different things which you can do to help make sure that your marketing is as effective as possible and this will ensure that the results keep coming in!
If you have a small business, it is vital for you to engage with your customers on social media.
By leveraging the potential of social media content strategy, you can make your business more efficient and effective.
Small businesses that are unable to invest in digital marketing should not neglect the power of social media as a free platform for gaining new customers.
You can drive traffic to your website, blog, or e-commerce store through organic posts on social media.
You can also use social media to build brand awareness, provide customer service and support.
A solid content marketing strategy can help you increase subscribers by offering valuable tips and useful information on your social media platforms.
It will also help you boost engagement with your audience.
It is important that your content is relevant to users who follow you on social media as it will help you get the most traffic and engagement possible.
Winding Up
Now, you should have a pretty good idea about how to create an effective social media content strategy for your business.
Doing this is really important as it will help you reach more customers and potential leads which can then be converted into paying customers too!
If you do this well, the chances are that your small business will grow and start to generate more leads from people who have found you through your social media content too.
So, follow the steps above and you should find that people really do start engaging with your business which will help it grow for a long time to come!
