Where to start SMM for small business: 3 simple rules
Printed 2013-01-20
There's an old saying among marketers that you should be where your customers are. In digital marketing, this means that social media promotion should be a priority for you, because that's where people spend most of their time. Small businesses that use social networks efficiently can grow. But how do you attract your potential customers in this already rather complex and vast, world of social media? How to learn to navigate in a huge digital space full of traps? A sensible but expensive solution is to contact marketing experts at SMM Agency . But if expenses for professionals are not yet included in your budget, then here are some simple tips to get you started.
1. Create a clear plan
Lack of a plan in most cases leads to failure. If you do not have ready-made scripts for action in various circumstances, you will encounter many problems that will be difficult to recover from. Without a plan, you cannot plan your tasks and allocate your resources correctly, and this spends a lot of time and money. Therefore, you need clear planning for each channel of advertising on social networks.
Without a single plan, some of your employees are likely to focus on the wrong goals, which may even prove harmful to the business (for example, on a thoughtless pursuit of the number of subscribers on Insta). The right strategy will give the right direction to your promotion efforts on social networks. You will know what to do at each stage. For a person who does not know where to swim, there is no tailwind ...
You need to draw up a strategy and schedule, with the distribution of tasks between employees, and money between advertising channels. Social media marketing is like a military campaign - you need a General Staff plan to launch an offensive.
2. Choose the right platform
Don’t just try to guess which platform to focus your promotion efforts on: you risk losing time and money. The fact that Facebook is the most popular platform in the world, and Vkontakte in Russia, does not mean that the first or second is best suited for your business. For example, if you have a teenage audience, run to Tik Tok before it's too late.
You need to understand where your target audience spends time before choosing a site. Go where your customers are, and don't wait until they find you (they don't find you!). You need to do at least some research to determine where people of interest to you spend most of their time.
Each platform has its own unique features, and they should match your plan. On Facebook, more users are between the ages of 25 and 36. Therefore, you need to understand at least the demographics of your customers.
On Instagram, on the other hand, 55% of users are between 18 and 29 years old. According to American studies, only 6% of adolescents consider Facebook their favorite social network.
If you have B2B and need to communicate with other company executives and specialists, LinkedIn would be the best social platform for social networks. Unfortunately, in the Russian Federation it is blocked; the closest analogue, on which professional contacts work well and a lot of business audience, remains the same Facebook.
You can achieve significant success in your efforts to promote on social networks only if you choose the right platform to start. Otherwise, this process will not only disappoint you, but will also be very expensive. In fact, you may even face unfavorable consequences for the reputation of your brand by choosing the wrong platform.
3. Don’t get hung up on sales
Some people still think that it's enough to publish an advertising post so that sales “go” (as if we are talking about an advertising banner at the exit from the metro). But the point of social networks is not to provide you with an attractive audience for your promotions. This is primarily a means of communication and interaction between people. If you want people to spend their time and attention on your advertising, first give them something. You should publish highly informative, useful content that will provide value to users. Clients will avoid your social networks if they see that you are only spamming selling posts: who is interested in looking at this? You must give them knowledge, give emotions, and then allow them to make independent purchase decisions. People don't like companies that try to get them to consume their products.
You must earn trust, and therefore offer valuable content, not just advertising publications. Post news about your industry, share tips on what tools or techniques are effective in your topic, give tips. It should look like your main goal is to be a friend (insidious, huh? :)). You want to be useful, not just increase sales. In turn, if you find it useful, it increases your sales in the long run.
Conclusion
Of course, these three tips are not enough. You're right. We barely touched on what needs to be done to succeed in SMM for small businesses. Developing a complete strategy is a huge job, and in order to do it right, you need good experts to help you with this.
