How to Do Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses.

According to Datareportal, there are now more than 5.18 billion internet individuals, making up almost 65% of the world’s population! 

Several small businesses are expanding their marketing efforts digitally, using social media as a tool to reach a wide audience and increase visibility. In this article, we will review what social media marketing is, the right platforms to use, best practices for social media, and common mistakes you should avoid. 

What is Social Media Marketing? 

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. It is simply the use of social media to market your products or services. 

What Social Media Platforms Should Small Businesses Use? 

Although it is common practice to have a business page on as many social media platforms as possible, this is not a requirement for success. 

It's more important to review which platforms your target audience use the most and what is most suited for your business. For example, a pastry business would find most of its target audience on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest. These platforms are the top choices for customers looking to buy pastries. 

Another detail to consider is understanding how these social media platforms work. Here are details you should know: 

1. Facebook: Facebook continues to be the most used social media platform globally. It boasts over 2.989 billion monthly active users (Data in April 2023). It also has the largest demographic of users ranging from boomers to Gen Zs. 

Best Content Format: Long posts, photos, and videos usually perform well on Facebook. 

Pros: Works well for online advertising and running campaigns. Meta also offers a wide range of tools for small businesses.

Cons: It is more of a generalist platform. Also, most younger users tend to spend less time on the platform. 

2. Instagram: Functioning under the parent company Meta, Instagram is mostly used by a younger audience and works best for more specialized businesses. 

Best Content Format: Visual content including videos, photos, and graphic designs works best on this platform. Although hashtags also matter, general visual aesthetics are very important to the audience. Several brands use a specific grid layout to achieve the look on their feeds. 

Pros: It can be linked to Facebook, allowing you to easily share your posts on both platforms. Instagram also works well for online advertising and has different features to support small businesses.

Cons: Individuals older than 44 are not usually on this platform. Moreso, due to the demand for visual content, not all small businesses can effectively use the platform. 

3. Twitter: Twitter is the 'conversation powerhouse'. Usually, the most important conversations happen on Twitter in tweets of less than 280 characters. This audience has more Millennials and Gen Zs than boomers. 

Best Content Format: Written content works best on this platform. Although visual or audio content can be posted, tweets are more likely to receive engagement. 

Pros: It's a great platform to practice social listening. Twitter is also good for community building and engagement.

Cons: Small businesses that depend on the use of visuals to showcase their products might be at a disadvantage. The age grades active on the platform are limited. 

4. LinkedIn: With over 900 million professionals accessing this platform across the globe, LinkedIn remains the biggest platform for professionals. 

Best Content Format: Long posts, photos, and videos work well on this platform. 

Pros: LinkedIn allows paid advertising. Encouraging employees to post about the business can also increase visibility. Moreso, small businesses in the B2B sector might find LinkedIn more suited for them. 

Cons: This platform is mostly viewed as a place for company PR than an actual sales platform. 

5. YouTube: This is mostly used for educational and entertainment purposes. 

Best Content Format: Visual content particularly videos work best on YouTube. Other content formats might not perform well. 

Pros: Both long-form and short-form video content work well on the platform. The YouTube video 'comment' section is an amazing place to engage with customers. Several users prefer to read comments first before watching a video of interest.

Cons: YouTube is majorly for videos. Small businesses might find it strenuous to keep up with their post frequency on this platform.

6. TikTok: Mostly used by the younger generation, TikTok is also a fast-growing social media platform. 

Best Content Format: Video content.

Pros: It offers a sense of community. TikTok is also the place to stay updated about what is trending. 

Cons: Most of its users are relatively young. This might be restrictive if your target audience are boomers. You might also face privacy issues due to personal data insecurity. 

7. Pinterest: This platform is dubbed as the place to find 'inspiration'. Fashion designers, cake makers, and other creatives use this platform to display their art. Most users explore it for ideas, entertainment, and inspiration. 

Best Content Format: Visual content, particularly images. 

Pros: Helps with brand visibility and sales. Pinterest pins can be discovered by anyone and you can easily drive traffic to your online store from the platform. 

Cons: Overnight success is not common on the platform, marketing results might take some time to show. Due to the nature of the content, images have to be creative and of high quality. 

Mistakes To Avoid Using Social Media Marketing For Small Businesses

1. Sharing content in the same format: Several small businesses often share their content on different platforms in the same formats. This reduces the level of engagement they receive on these platforms and makes it less interesting. For example, a witty tweet would perform better on Twitter than sharing a graphic design from Instagram. 

2. Ignoring Page Analytics: Page analytics are a great way to understand your post and page performance. By reviewing this data, you can analyze your best-performing posts and understand what your audience wants to see. 

3. Jumping on everything trending: This is a constant 'trend' with small businesses to jump on everything that is trending on social media. Although this might give more visibility and exposure, it's usually temporary and might even be contradictory to your brand values. Rather than jumping on a trending mental health issue, you can focus on how to build a supportive and sustainable mental health community. 

4. Ignoring negative reviews: Bad publicity is still publicity. By responding to negative reviews in a professional manner and following up with action, you can increase your credibility and trust. This also shows your customers that you are always listening. 

5. Posting inconsistently: Inconsistent posts are often the reason why small businesses are not growing. To increase mental availability, you must ensure you maintain the same posting frequency. You can decide how many times you want to post every week, this helps you to show up more consistently.

6. Lack of brand authenticity: It's important to establish your brand identity early and also stick to it.

Best Practices For Small Businesses Doing Social Media Marketing

1. Understand Your Goals: Your goals are what you aim to achieve and will guide your social media marketing strategy. It's important to set SMART goals and also consistently review them. Important goals for small businesses include brand awareness, visibility, and sales. 

2. Understand Your Audience: Based on your target audience research, you should invest time in understanding your audience, the kind of content they enjoy, and which platforms they are most likely to be on. A good way to do this is by checking your competitors' pages to see what their customers enjoy. You can also check online forums to view frequently asked questions and other queries. 

3. Practice Social Listening: Social listening allows you to learn and jump on conversations related to your brand. There are different free social listening tools that small businesses can use for their social media marketing. 

4. Have a Content Plan: Winging content is not healthy for social media marketing. It's important to have a content calendar or plan covering a number of days, weeks, or months. This helps content flow and reduces inconsistencies. 

5. Repurpose content into different formats: Creating a carousel post from a blog post or transcribing a podcast episode into a newsletter are good ways to repurpose content into different formats. By doing this, you can keep your content flowing and also ensure your target audience can access it in whichever format they prefer. 

Disclaimer: Repurposing can be exhausting for small businesses with small marketing teams. It's important to focus on what format would best give value. 

1. Focus on building a community: By building a community from your target audience, you can interact with them and share new products and services directly with them. You can receive feedback and share important information with them. 

2. Focus on sustainability not virality: Contrary to popular opinion, virality might give a small business visibility however it does not grant sustainability. It's important to focus on long-term growth rather than short-term. This helps build trust and strengthen your community. 

3. Analyze results and make adjustments: Consistent review of your social media performance can help you to understand what kind of content is helpful. It is also important to constantly adjust your content plan accordingly.  

Conclusion

Social media marketing can be fun for small businesses, it gives you freedom to be creative and connect directly with your customers. By implementing some of the best practices, understanding the platforms, and avoiding mistakes, small businesses can use social media to grow and make sales.