How to use Social Media Marketing: An essential beginners guide

What is social media used for?

Users go to social media to post or find up to date information and to interact in real time with people and organisations.

Businesses can get immediate access to their customers to easily inform them about news, products, offers, problems, delays, fixes, holiday opening and closing times, support availability etc.

Why post and share content on social media?

Social media offers small business huge marketing opportunities at little or no cost. Benefits and opportunities of social media marketing include:

• Reach and Visibility: Social media platforms have huge numbers of active users, so potentially you could tap into a vast audience. 
• Cost-Effective Marketing: Social media platforms are free to use so marketing can be done very cheaply especially if you do it yourself.
• Competitive Advantage: An active social media presence can help you become more visible and relevant in a crowded market.
• Building Your Brand: Consistent content sharing helps in building a stronger brand making you more memorable to their audience.
• Driving Traffic: By including links and calls-to-action in social media content you can drive traffic to your website.

As a small businesses you can effectively market your business on social media with regular posting of relevant, useful, timely and interesting content as well as respond to comments, answer questions and have conversations with customers. 

What could you share on social media?

Social media users prefer content that adds value. Try for at least one of these:

• Educational
• Entertaining
• Interactive
• Inspiring

Here are ideas for items you could share to help your business:

• You at work, or the process of creating your products.
• Positive feedback from your customers.
• Showcase your products or services.
• Product demonstrations.
• Special offers or discounts.
• Contests or giveaways.
• Create content around holidays, seasons, or special events.
• Encourage your customers to share photos or videos of themselves using your products.
• Stories or case studies of how your products or services have helped your customers.
• Tips, how-tos, or tutorials related to your industry.
• Ask questions or creating polls to get customer feedback.
• Introduce your team members with short bios and photos.
• Relevant news, trends, or updates in your industry.

By mixing these types of content, you can keep your social media presence dynamic and engaging.

Tip: Use photos, illustrations, infographics and videos whenever you can. Posts including these nearly always do better than just text.

Traditional marketing material does not get shared (except as paid for adverts) and is counter-productive. If all you do is post blatant self-promotional content, followers will perceive it as spam. Resulting in them loosing interest and unfollowing you or worse, posting negative feedback.

It is generally accepted that an occasional blatant self-promotion marketing post will be tolerated by followers perhaps once in 10 posts if your other posts are good.

How does social media posting and sharing work?

Social media sharing is a fundamental aspect of how content spreads. Here’s how it works:

1. Create Content: First, you create content that you want to share.
2. Post: You then post this content on your social media profile or page.
3. Engage: Once your content is posted, your followers can see it in their feed. Then they can engage with it by liking, commenting, or sharing it with their own followers.
4. Sharing: When someone shares your content, it is visible to their followers expanding the reach of your content beyond your immediate network.

When your content is exceptionally engaging, it has the potential to go viral, which means it is shared broadly and quickly. Of course, this only happens to a tiny percentage of content posted.

The feedback you receive from your social media posts can provide valuable insights into your audience’s preferences and interests. This can help you refine your business and/or create more targeted and effective content for future posts.

The bottom line is you have to add value – this is not like traditional marketing. It is subtle marketing by getting followers interested in what you have to say.

How to play the social media marketing game

Start small, track your progress and adjust your strategy as needed.

Watch others and follow their activities. You can learn from them. If they are posting boring rubbish, you can see what not to do and be better than them. If they are posting interesting items, you might also want to join in and comment on their material.

If you are already active and familiar with some social media platforms then you can put them to good use promoting your business. But separate personal social media activity from business activity.

To get started what you need to do is:

1. Start generating share-worthy content that is not just a marketing rehash of content you already have. Your content should be relevant to your business and should provide value to your audience.
2. Decide which social media platforms your audience are on. Perhaps try out all the main social media platforms to see what relevant activity there is on each. (See below.)
3. Start sharing and commenting on other people’s content (without looking like you are trying to sell something).  
4. Start posting your own content.
5. Respond to your audience. Don’t just post content and then disappear. Take the time to engage with your audience by responding to their comments and questions on your posts to build relationships and foster loyalty.
6. Perhaps, pay for some advertising on social media to kick start you by getting you seen by a wider audience as it takes a while to build up followers.

Be consistent. In order to build a following on social media, you need to be consistent with your posting. Aim to post new content on a regular basis, whether it’s daily, weekly, or monthly. See what others are doing in your business area and follow suit.

Track your results. So you can see what’s working and what’s not. Use social media analytics tools to track your progress and make necessary adjustments.

By following these tips, you can use social media to market your business and reach a wider audience.

Facebook

Facebook Pages are different from Facebook Accounts. Pages are public and therefore can be found and seen by everyone. They are free and designed for you to promote your business throughout Facebook.

As well as standard business information you can post news, offers, images, videos and business updates and advertising from Facebook Pages.

Information on Facebook Pages and Set-up

Other Social Media Platforms include

Common social media marketing mistakes

Avoiding common mistakes in social media marketing can significantly improve your strategy’s effectiveness. Here are some things to watch out for:

• Not planning: Jumping into social media marketing without a planning can lead to inconsistent messaging and missed opportunities. So be consistent and deliberate.
• Not targeting your audience: Trying to appeal to everyone will dilute your message. So focus on your target audience and be relevant to them.
• Buying followers: Purchasing followers might give your social media marketing an initial boost but they won’t engage and stay with you. Real followers are more likely to interact with your content and become loyal customers.
• Only selling: Treating social media like traditional marketing, spending all your time bigging up you and your products. This will turn people away.
• Overusing hashtags: Using irrelevant or excessive hashtags will put people off. So only use hashtags that are relevant to your content and audience.
• Not responding: Ignoring comments, especially questions or feedback, will make your brand seem unresponsive. Engage with your audience, respond to comments and fostering a community.
• Deleting negative comments: Deleting negative feedback will damage your credibility. So openly address concerns professionally and constructively showing you value customer feedback and are committed to improving.
• Over posting: You don’t want to be posting so often that your followers get fed up with hearing from you. Personally I think some people go over the top oversaturating their followers with more of the same content or self promotion. I have stopped following people for this reason.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can create a more effective social media presence.

Social media marketing and your website

Both social media and websites play crucial roles in an online presence, but they serve different purposes.

Some content definitely belongs on your website or blog (and marketed on social media), other content may just be posted on social media.

Websites are professional, detailed and organised. They provide comprehensive information about your business within a structure designed to make it easy for customers to find what they are looking for. They are the hub of your online presence, optimised for the search engines.

Social media is “in the moment”, about engagement and interaction, driving traffic to your website. A tool for building brand awareness and reaching wider audiences quickly. Social media can be a more human and more approachable face for your business.

Permanent and longer content belongs on your website or blog.

So when you add new content to your website that is worthy of broadcasting, you should post an extract on social media and link back to your website. Thereby boosting traffic to your website where visitors have the opportunity to find out more about your business.