The Social Observer

The Social Media Marketing Blog by SNHU Students

Building a Platform for Your Small Business

By: Michaela Choate

April 27th, 2023

In the year of 2023, it would be a missed opportunity to not take full advantage of social media. Social medial platforms such as Instagram and Tik Tok have changed the lives of business owners, especially when looking at small businesses. Social media can help companies gain more customers, increase brand recognition, and revenue. This is just a few areas that social media can help small business accomplish.

Choose Your Platform

Now we know the benefits, how can we implement social media in daily marketing?  First begin by optimizing your reach. “Choosing the right social media platform for your business is an essential step towards growing your business. However, picking a social media platform that fits your target demographic, provides you with the best tools for content marketing, and has an active user base isn’t always easy” (Thomas, 2021). Don’t limit the content to one application, create an account for every major social media platform. This seems sike a dauting and repettive task but there are secondary applications that will help manage the platforms together. This strategy allows for the small business to reach a wide range of users, giving them he most bang for their buck. When setting up accounts, be sure to have the same or similar tag names to make the accounts easily identifiable to users. Once to initial accounts are up and live, be sure to follow likeminded individuals, companies, and influencers that the small business would like to. Work with or are like. This will put you on their radar and will hopefully being in a startup following.

Content Management Tools

After setting up the small business cohesive accounts the next step is to connect the accounts using a secondary application. “Social media monitoring means tracking hashtags, keywords, and mentions relevant to your brand in order to stay informed about your audience and industry. By monitoring this data, you’re doing research that is both quantitative (metrics and analytics) and qualitative (inspiration for posts and strategies)” (Hootsuite Inc. , 2023). These applications are used to monitor, schedule, publish, and organize content across all linked accounts. Popular software includes Wrike, Hootsuite, Sprout Source, Buffer, HubSpot, and Loomly. There is an annual or monthly fee associated with these applications. For a small business that need to connect their platforms the Buffer application would be suggested. They state “Buffer helps you build an audience organically. We’re a values-driven company that provides affordable, intuitive, marketing tools for ambitious people and teams” (Buffer, 2023). They are also partnered with Facebook Meta and Pinterest giving them direct ties to backend knowledge of what strategies work well for these applications.

Content Creation

Once your small business has chosen what social media management platform, they think is best, the next step is to create relevant content and content posting schedule. When posting content, it important to make your brand its own niche. “A niche market is a segment of a larger market that can be defined by its own unique needs, preferences, or identity that makes it different from the market at large” (Sheehan, 2022). According to Forbes “here’s how to carve out a niche when launching a personal branding campaign” (Buffer, 2023).

  • Identify passions and interests.
  • Be authentic.
  • Become a recognized expert.
  • Define an ideal customer.
  • Research the competition.
  • Start a social media group.

By creating content based in the above concepts along with trend research and implementing it will increase followers. This is due to the fact that your business is not just posting to pos the content is authentic and is selling an experience not a faux persona. Once the content is created, make sure to diversify your posts. Which means if one long video is made splice funny or interesting bits and post that as short form content. Or take out just the audio and use that as a podcast session or ASMR. Always look for ways to reduce, reuse or recycle the content.

After the content has been finalized a schedule needs to be put into place. Consistency is key! “Posting consistently on social media shows your following that you are committed to creating content and providing them with a source of interest and entertainment. Those who post sporadically, especially if they are only posting promotional or sponsored content, will lose trust from their audience overtime” (LinkedIn Corporation , 2023). By implementing a solid posting schedule your business will set a standard. Viewer will be looking forward to your companies post as they are reliable. The more the business is in the eyes of the viewers the better. This will create a long-lasting impression enticing viewers to return to your company profile.  And If the business can only commit to posting once a week start with that. But do not stop posting, once the users base expects a certain number of posts they will come back for more because they know you are reliable.

Be Human

The final point to creating successful social media platforms is to be human. Users do not want to feel like they are interacting with a robot. They want a connection, or para social relationship. The way to foster these relationships is to be engaged with the audience. This means, commenting, responding to comments, going live, tagging mutuals/friends, doing polls, surveys and overall, just being attentive with the audience. “Social media is a great platform on which to show your genuine, authentic side. Ditch the polished marketing speech and go for a more real approach. Show passion for your business and product and tell its story. It will probably resonate much more with users” (Birch, 2016). Viewers want to be engaged with not only the content but company. The more the company is interactive the more the viewer will feel seen. The more the company foster these consumers to business relationships the more likely the consumers are to come back. And build long-lasting brand loyalty.

Bibliography

Birch, D. (2016, July 19). The Importance of Being Human on Social Media. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-being-human-social-media-darren-fiander/

Buffer. (2023). Grow your audience on social and beyond. Retrieved from https://buffer.com/: https://buffer.com/

Fisher, A. (2019, June 14). How To Define A Niche For Your Personal Brand. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2019/06/14/how-to-define-a-niche-for-your-personal-brand/?sh=32d3ed851ebf

Hootsuite Inc. . (2023). Save time and get REAL results on social media. Hootsuite makes it easy. . Retrieved from https://www.hootsuite.com/: https://www.hootsuite.com/

HubSpot, Inc. . (2023). Grow better with HubSpot . Retrieved from https://www.hubspot.com/: https://www.hubspot.com/

LinkedIn Corporation . (2023). Social advertising on the world’s largest professional network. Retrieved from https://business.linkedin.com: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/cx/18/01/social-ads-sem-desktop?src=go-pa&trk=sem-ga_campid.17143932910_asid.136047394253_crid.642059137806_kw.social%20media%20content_d.c_tid.kwd-4904222267_n.g_mt.b_geo.9002278&mcid=6929500172519383073&

Loomly . (2023). Save time. Improve quality. Collaborate effectively. Retrieved from https://www.loomly.com/: https://www.loomly.com/

Morris, C. (2021, October 20). 16 Reasons Why Social Media Is Important To Your Company. Retrieved from https://www.searchenginejournal.com: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-social-media-is-important/285809/#close

Sheehan, A. (2022, December 12). Start Selling in a Niche Market Today: 9 Examples (2023). Retrieved from https://www.shopify.com: https://www.shopify.com/blog/niche-markets#:~:text=A%20niche%20market%20is%20a,many%20different%20segments%20or%20niches.

Sprout Social, Inc. (2023). A powerful solution for social media management. Retrieved from https://sproutsocial.com/: https://sproutsocial.com/

Thomas, M. (2021, July 27). How To Pick the Best Social Media Platform for Your Business in 2021. Retrieved from https://www.bluehost.com: https://www.bluehost.com/blog/how-to-pick-the-best-social-media-platform-for-your-business-in-2021/?psafe_param=1&irpid=101&clickid=P61C101S570N0B5578A2D4499E0000V113&gclid=CjwKCAjw3ueiBhBmEiwA4BhspPtjrsgf_z69DGCAsTl-jGNI7ev3ijnLwj–oRNm3TJOhq37H0lRdRoCYv

Wrike, Inc. . (2023). One platform to streamline all workflows. Retrieved from https://www.wrike.com/: https://www.wrike.com/

Category: Blogging, SEO, Social Media Marketing 101

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