If you run a small business, you should be using social media to grow it. Social media helps you gain traffic for your website, boost your sales, and manage your online reputation. It’s also inexpensive, especially when compared to other marketing channels.

Clearly, social media is a great equaliser for small businesses because it empowers them to compete with larger companies.

Note, however, that using social media wouldn’t automatically translate to success; you’ll have to play it smart. Here are a few proven ways on how to take advantage of social media to benefit your business.

Create a plan

Like every action you take in business, you must develop a plan before jumping into social media. Without one, you won’t have a definite goal and any concrete steps how to get there.

For instance, what tone and approach will you use in writing posts? What platforms will you focus on? Do you have a time frame for carrying out your steps?

To put together a strong social media plan, make sure that you:

• Determine your goals. Make sure it’s measurable, realistic, and time-sensitive (all goals need a deadline). Your goals should be underpinned by metrics that can affect your business. For instance, you should aim to grow your conversion rate instead of just getting likes.
  
  
• Monitor your performance. To know whether you’re succeeding (or failing), you’ll need to track the performance of your social media efforts, and there’s a wide range of tools to choose from. Based on the data you gather, you then refine your strategy and adjust your actions.
  
  
• Study your competition. You need to be aware of what your competitors do. Studying them through a social media competitive analysis is an effective way to ease your learning curve. Just make sure you don’t copy their every move.
  
  
• Create and follow a social media editorial calendar so that you can plan your posts ahead of time. This means your work will be more organised, and your posts will likely have fewer mistakes. The bottom line, you’ll produce higher-quality content.

Know your audience

You won’t be able to target your audience properly in social media if you don’t know and understand them. You need to know details like their age range, education, gender, location, occupation, and especially their pain points.

The better you know your audience, the more effective your social media content. Why? Because you’ll be able to:

• Write about and solve your audience’s problems.
• Know the voice and tone you’ll use in your posts.
• Create content that resonates with them.
• Successfully position what you’re selling.

Choose the appropriate platform

Because you’re acquainted with your audience, you should know which platforms they frequent. Yes, you can also just post in all major social networks, but using the appropriate platforms lets you save time and maximise your efforts.

For example, if your target audience is typically male, 34-42 years old, located in Australia, and runs a startup, we can most likely rule out Snapchat, Pinterest and TikTok because:

• Women make up 71% of Pinterest’s ad audience.
• Most Snapchat users are 15-25 years old.
• 41% of TikTok users are aged 16-24, and Chinese users account for 80% of the total time spent using TikTok in 2019.

On the other hand, you should probably consider platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.

• Facebook has over 1 billion active users per day. It’s likely that your audience has a presence there.
• 91% of executives view LinkedIn as their top choice for professionally relevant content.

Knowing your audience will enable you to make the proper decision as to where you should focus your social media push.

Grow your audience

The more people you can reach on social media, whether it’s through organic or paid efforts, the better your chances of boosting your website traffic, and selling more of your product or service.

That’s precisely why you need to expand your social media following. Here are a few effective ways how:

• Start by creating strong social profiles by a) including branded photos and videos, b) filling out all details, c) using compelling copy in your descriptions.
  
  
• Include photos and/or videos in every post. Doing so results in 94% more views and is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media.
  
  
• Produce viral content. You can actually do this consistently. To increase your chances, make content that evokes emotion, has a positive message, and provides useful information.
  
  
• Hold contests to encourage people to boost engagement and follow you. Just make sure you promote it everywhere (e.g. your website, email list), and give prizes related to your brand.

Engage with your audience

Most sales don’t occur on the first visit to your website or social profiles. You can’t just ask complete strangers to pay for your product or service. You first need to establish a relationship with them.

That’s where the need to engage with people comes in: it lets you build relationships over time. By answering their questions, helping with their concerns, and giving solutions to problems, you eventually develop people’s trust, which eventually leads to sales over time.

Furthermore, people who trust your brand will more likely share and like your content. When this happens, you’ll enjoy a boost in that platform’s algorithms, leading to a wider reach.

For best results, try to answer every query and reply to every compliment.

Capture people’s attention

Human attention spans are declining, according to a Microsoft study. Back in 2000, the average attention span was 12 seconds, but now we’re just at 8 seconds.

While the study’s method and results are debatable, one thing is certain: as a small business on social media, you need to produce content with instant appeal, otherwise you get ignored.

Here are several ways to make your posts stand out:

• Always include compelling visuals. At the very least, include an image or GIF. For better mileage, use custom images (e.g. adding text, creating memes). If you’re selling a service, show off your company’s culture via photos from inside your office.
  
  
• Produce videos. Consider the following stats: videos get nearly twice the average engagement in Facebook. In Twitter, videos get 10 times more engagement. For Instagram, videos get the most engagement vs. other types of content.
  
  
• Start a conversation by asking your followers a question or a statement that encourages them to engage. Either way, their answers will tell you what they want and need, giving you an idea what you should post about in the future.
  
  
• Use words that your audience likes to hear. Don’t take your post’s descriptions for granted. How you word them will attract attention as well. Go with classics like “what”, “when”, “where”, “why” and “who”. You can also use trigger words to engage your audience’s emotions.

Engage in social listening

Sometimes, replying to questions and comments isn’t enough. You need to be proactive by engaging in social listening.

Social listening is the process of monitoring your social media platforms for mentions, relevant hashtags, and conversations related to your business. You then respond to them when appropriate.

The process isn’t just about counting the number of times your business was mentioned; social listening helps you understand how people feel about your company. It’s great for:

• Engaging with your audience.
• Managing crises.
• Monitoring competitors.
• Identifying your audience’s pain points
• Discovering new leads.

So where do you start? There’s a wide range of tools to choose from, from HubSpot and Buffer, to Hootsuite and Buzzsumo. You just need to choose which one has the features you prefer.

Hire a social media specialist

There’s an easier way to navigate the social media landscape: hire your own specialist. Employing one means you can benefit from social media’s advantages while focusing on your business.

If you want to hire a top-performing social media specialist without the hassle and high salary that usually comes with it, partner with Remote Workmate today.

We do all the heavy lifting for you, including payroll and onboarding. This means finding the ideal social media specialist becomes so much easier.

You can actually choose from our pool of top candidates right away. Simply click the button below to browse a wide range of profiles on our Hotlist page.