Social media has touched most of our daily lives in one way or another. Whether it’s used for keeping up with friends, staying informed about current events, or interacting with your favorite brands, social media isn’t going away anytime soon. Social media will continue to evolve as a tool for people to connect with people in several ways.
Over time, businesses discovered the benefits of leveraging social media and social media marketing. Businesses large and small, such as your competitors, continue to leverage and refine their social media marketing strategies to reach new or current customers. With social media marketing, brands can increase their presence, increase leads and sales, and open a two-way line of communication directly with their markets. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of social media marketing for small and medium-sized businesses, and what to look for when developing your first social media marketing strategy.
Social media marketing is the utilization of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, etc., to market your product or service and increase your brand’s awareness to current or potential customers through these channels. Social media marketing could mean launching a multi-channel campaign to promote a new product. Social media marketing could also be posting a poll on your Instagram story to ask followers a question. If your business interacts with current or potential customers through social media, you’re participating in social media marketing.
By using social media marketing as a small or medium-sized business, you’re tapping into a direct line to your target markets and receiving almost instant feedback as you speak to them. Social media presents an effective stage for brands to attract new customers and generate leads that would otherwise be missed. Although driving sales through social media is a significant benefit of social media marketing, showing customers what your brand is about is where social media truly shines.
Like other forms of advertising, social media can expose new people to your brand. Social media is like a public bulletin board in many ways, where you’re not always sure who could come across your page or content. This is an advantage for small to medium-sized businesses that are trying to get their name out to larger audiences and grow their presence.
Similarly, those who are aware of your brand and actively follow your social media accounts can directly interact with you. By positively and consistently engaging with followers, who may be potential customers or active customers, you’re fostering more loyalty for your brand as a business that cares and isn’t a mysterious, faceless entity. These days, customers want to identify with their brands and the people behind them, not just enjoy their products or services.
When engaging as a business on social media, you have an opportunity to reassure current customers they’re making a good choice by picking your product or service and turn those valued customers into advocates on social media, who will tout your brand and attract interest from new potential customers. Even with negative feedback on social media, there is an opportunity to fix issues and show to others you’re a brand that takes accountability and does right by their customers.
Driving sales through social media is a key goal for social media marketing. We can break up social media marketing into organic and paid marketing. Through organic marketing, you capture potential leads and sales through the content you post, your interactions, and the ways you use social media daily. This could be promoting a sale you’re running on your social media pages, which captures the attention of your followers who then react by visiting your website and making a purchase. You didn’t pay anything for this attention to your account or content, it was viewed just by social media performing as it should.
Paid advertising on social media is as it sounds; you’re typically paying to ensure more people see your page and content. Paid advertising can be challenging to navigate, which is why there are entire businesses built around it. However, there are simple paid advertising tools that a small or medium-sized business can utilize without a considerable lift to help its lead generation.
Examples include “boosting” a post on Facebook by paying Facebook a daily budget to target specific users with your ad or content. Facebook can zero in on demographics such as location, age, and more to help your content reach the exact audience you want to target. Most social media channels have a form of paid advertising you can leverage to generate leads that may convert to sales and new loyal customers.
To customers today, brands are more than the products and services they offer. Brands reflect values people identify with and support. It’s vital for brands to communicate why they exist and what they stand for. Establishing thought leadership in your industry shows your brand brings more to the table than a product or service; your brand is here with a mission.
Social media presents an excellent space for small and medium-sized businesses to establish and build thought leadership. Brands can leverage social media to share what the brand stands for and what problems it’s trying to solve through its products or services. Additionally, brands can present their opinions or knowledge and have an open dialogue with industry members in a public space.
Insight can come from your competitors as well, it’s important to understand their stances on topics, what they’re saying, and how they’re saying it. Thought leadership can come from a brand just by looking over its various social media in many instances, giving potential customers a quick look into who they would be supporting with their dollars.
Social media users will occasionally share their content and experience with your product or service. This content is made organically and is typically called user-generated content (UGC). UGC content provides free advertising as your brand didn’t take part in making it. The post, video, or picture was made entirely because the user wanted to share it. This content can then be shared on your social media pages, showing users these customers who went out of their way to advocate for your brand to their own followers.
Those making user-generated content can turn into long-term advocates if your brand continues to engage positively with them and their content. Keep in mind, it’s important to get permission from the creator before sharing their content on your brand's page, simply to be courteous and present your brand as one that is respectful of its users or customers.
Brands and businesses can’t rely solely on quality products and services to get ahead in their space. When used correctly, social media can provide a fantastic channel to humanize your brand to consumers. When talking about humanizing a brand, we’re referring to showing the real people behind the business. These real people make up the brand and who are working toward the business’s goals.
Humans connect with other humans easier than with faceless businesses, and social media marketing can leverage this by building trust with your audience. In industries where building trust is paramount, such as healthcare, this can make or break a business. Social media can be an excellent forum to show off employees and give a voice to their role in a business.
If customers can put a face to a name and see how a person is involved in delivering the product or service they’re interested in, they may favor that business over those who aren’t as forthcoming about who they are. By showing off your team or your brand's missions and values, people will feel more confident with their decision to support your business when they’re ready to buy.
A community in social media is made up of those who follow your brand in one way or another. Building a community around your brand takes time. However, a social media community is a powerful tool that can amplify your brand’s voice and reach when activated.
Social media offers a unique chance to have an open dialogue with your customers and receive feedback quickly from large amounts of people. If leveraged and nurtured, a brand can have a consistent source of feedback from those who are avid users or customers. This is valuable to understanding customers and their experiences, as well as planning for your business’s future when considering new products and services to offer. From that, you’ll gain loyal followers of your brand.
Talent acquisition continues to be a priority for many businesses, especially small and medium-sized organizations that might run on smaller teams. Social media can help widen the pool of people exposed to your company and put more eyes on your job listings. This increases the likelihood your job listing reaches the perfect candidate.
Showcasing behind-the-scenes content about your business demonstrates you’re real and who you say you are. By pulling back the curtain on your operations, you are legitimizing your business to those who come across your content, such as potential job seekers. Posting content that features your employees and their working experience can also indicate the type of company culture a potential applicant can expect if joining.
A social media marketing strategy is a plan that states your social media marketing goal and the steps you’ll take to reach those goals. This social media marketing strategy will include what kind of content you’ll be creating and sharing, how often it will be posted, the messaging you’re conveying when engaging with those interacting with you, and what platforms you’ll be focusing on, among other pieces of information.
Having a social media marketing strategy for your business enables you to stay objective and cohesive with your social media marketing efforts as you move forward. Without a plan, you risk straying from what your social media followers expect of your brand and reducing the positive impact social media can have on your business.
Social media marketing for small and medium-sized businesses is essential in today’s world. Without it, your business may be missing out on massive potential to elevate your brand. If getting started seems daunting, start by researching and outlining your social media marketing strategy. Once you’ve opened your first account or created your first post, stay consistent and diligent with cultivating the brand image you want to be known for to your audience, now and in the future. Once you’ve created a foundation, you can build out your social media and utilize social media tools to further your reach and efficiency in your social media marketing.
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