Choosing the right social media marketing services can be challenging if you’re starting out in business. Or if this is the first aspect of your small business that you’re going to outsource.
Get your social media started with these top 5 tips
Tip 1: Identify your audience
Think about who they are and what they do.
A great way to do this is to create a specific client/customer persona. This can be quite a fun process to do. Mine is called Lucky. Once you put together your client persona, print it out or have it somewhere handy when writing your socials. It can help get you in the right headspace.
Tip 2: Find your audience
Where do they hang out? Which social media platforms do they hang out on?
Tip 3: Define your social media goals
Do you want growth? How much growth? Or do you want engagement? Or a combination of both. Break it down by month even and get specific.
Establish some KPIs – key performance indicators, so you have something to aim for, and you can track how you’re going along the way.
Tip 4: Check out your competitors
Look at what your competitors are doing.
Remember to look, but don’t copy. You’re unique, and people will buy from you because of what you do, why you do it, and how you do it. So, remember getting inspiration and keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing makes good business sense. But remember to run your own race and be you.
Tip 5: Time
Don’t forget your available resources. Time being the main factor for a lot of small businesses. Remember, you can’t and don’t have to be everywhere at once. Choose the best platform for your audience and conquer that one before expanding to another.
If you struggle with posting, start with a couple of posts per week and increase. Once you get into the flow of posting regularly, it’s easy to add one more post in and one more, etc.
Remember, it’s always quality over quantity.
Social Media Marketing Basics
Don’t overthink your social media marketing.
Something is better than nothing. So, start simple and small and build on those foundations.
Create graphic templates to make creating graphics a more straightforward process. Or even take a step back and develop some branding if you don’t have it already.
If graphics aren’t your thing, this might be an area you look at outsourcing, too, as it will set the tone for your social media.
Plan your social media
I can’t stress this enough.
Develop good habits from the start. Like planning rather than posting on the fly all the time because you know what? It won’t happen.
- Something will come up
- You won’t be able to think about what to post when the pressure is on
Feel free to leave some posts to post in the moment, like:
- BTS
- new products
- industry news
- Lives
- Q&As
But even the posts you want to post in the moment should be allocated in your plan/strategy so you know when you need to do them.
Complete your social media profile
Don’t forget to set up your profiles and fill out all the sections appropriately, and include a CTA (call to action) if/where possible.
Engagement
Scheduling your core posts is a great idea, but don’t forget to spend time engaging. Your Facebook page or Instagram profile shouldn’t be a schedule and forget asset.
It’s essential to respond to all comments and messages too. If people are going to take the time to engage, it’s vital to show you appreciate it by responding.
I’m not talking about the spammy comments you get on Instagram “promote on xyz.” Just delete those.
Insights
First and foremost, check your insights, so you’re posting at your peak times. Organic social media can be hard work to get our posts seen. And it isn’t one size fits all, so you need to test and measure what works for your audience.
What works/doesn’t work can change too. So, keep on top of your insights so you can see what’s been well received and what needs adjusting or a different approach.
What’s the difference between social media marketing services and digital marketing?
Digital marketing is your bigger picture and is your marketing strategy (or part of it if you do non-digital marketing activities). Social media is one component of many digital marketing activities you could or should be doing.
When you have a digital marketing plan and strategy, all your activities work together and complement each other, making for a better overall result. And it’s a great way to keep on top of all your activities.
Is social media marketing services important to small businesses?
It all comes down to your audience as to whether social media marketing is important to your business.
But social media can be a very cost-effective (if you’re not doing ads) way to get in front of your audience.
Obviously, with algorithm updates and changes, it’s getting harder to have your organic posts seen by your followers than it was 10 years ago.
Social media marketing has many benefits though:
- It’s a great way to build brand awareness
- grow your audience
- grow your customer base
- connect and build relationships with your current customers
- build relationships with potential customers/clients
- stay front of mind so they think of you when it comes to conversion time
Also, social media retargeting can be a great way to get back in front of a customer/client if you have a website.
How to find the right social media marketing company
This is super important, so here are a few tips we recommend:
- Check out their social media channels
- Google them
- Ask for recommendations in business Facebook groups but ensure it’s a recommendation from someone that’s used the social media marketing agency they’re recommending
- Ask a small business friend for a referral if you know someone that’s outsourced their social media
- Meet with them in person or over Zoom if you’re not local to each other
- Look at some of their past and present clients and check out the work they do/have done
How to get the most out of your social networks
Remember though the more you are prepared to share with a social media marketing company the more they’re going to be able to do and achieve. There are certain types of content that you’re going to have to provide to get the most out of your digital strategy no matter if you want to be hands-off.
Be prepared for a good social media marketing business to get inside your head and your business because they do really need to know it inside and out. And if you don’t have a content strategy or social media marketing strategy then that’s probably where they’ll start to help pull your monthly social media marketing plans together.
And don’t forget social media is one of our rocking superpowers. So, reach out and let me know if you’d like to chat about your socials.
