Social media is the easiest way to reach your target audience and build your brand awareness and use it to grow your small business.

Do you feel like you’re always competing with the big companies to grow your brand? That there has to be some way to gain some market share? Have you considered your social platform strategy? It is a great way to gain some market share for your small business.

Why Social Media You Ask

Chances are with the increase in technology, you can reach potential customers fairly easily. Choosing from Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, or Pinterest, there is always an audience to market to. It’s a great way to build relationships, increase your brand knowledge or even be a part of the solution, all at a relatively low cost.

Reasons to use social platforms

1. The reach is endless. It will get you in front of potential customers that without it you may have never been able.
2. Many platforms are free of charge. All you need is a computer, tablet or phone to start
3. Quickly create an account and start sharing your message.

Building your social brand

Why is brand awareness important?

From Forbes Council – With so much competition in the marketplace today, a brand needs to find smart ways to stand out from the crowd to become recognizable.

Panel®, E. (2021, September 14). Council post: 15 go-to tactics to expand brand awareness. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2021/09/14/15-go-to-tactics-to-expand-brand-awareness/?sh=5c486ad96af0

Consumers like to identify with a brand and tend to be loyal to those that they trust. As a small business, it can be hard to go up against the big guys and compete for even a small amount of market share, however, it is not impossible to do just that. Generating that kind of brand loyalty can lead to a positive brand image and an increase in sales.

Why do you need to build your brand? Stand Out!

If you don’t do something to make yourself stand out, your customer base could remain stagnant. In turn, your sales will depend on the same customer base. By using one or two platforms, sharing entertaining and relevant content allows you to connect and interact with these new followers. The reward is twofold, one, you reach your target market, and two it increases your brand awareness.

Let’s increase site traffic from social networks

Good content should pique the consumer’s interest and drive them to your website. Be sure to ask questions, present surveys, and interact with them. Try to make them feel special like they are your only customer. It should result in increased traffic and ultimately an increase in sales.

Why not try a giveaway. As a small local jeweler, use giveaways during holidays like Valentine’s Day to increase website traffic in addition to sales, and ultimately to compete against larger jewelry stores and need to increase their brand awareness to compete. Using simple Facebook posts allows them to reach their usual followers, as well as the friends of these followers as they encourage them to share the post to be entered. This is a great way to increase your reach and drive traffic to your site.

Other ideas to increase traffic, do you know any local celebrities or influencers that you can get to post on their platforms? Create a backlink, let them link a post to your website, or share a picture of a product they purchased from your site. Through that, you reach their followers, increase your brand reach and grow your small business.

Metrics and Why They Matter

Understanding the metrics and how your content is reaching the consumer is important. It can help you determine which campaigns resonate with potential customers versus which ones are duds and create zero buzz.

As Jenn Chen notes – Social media metrics are important because they prove you can measure how successful a campaign is, how well your social strategy is performing, and ultimately if you will have an impact on your overall business.

Chen, J. (2021, September 21). The most important social media metrics to track. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-metrics/

Facebook

Not sure where to start, some social platforms offer their own analytics. First, Facebook has its own set of metrics through business insights. Here you can see statistics on engagement with your posts, and how many of your followers shared, commented, or liked your posts. Lastly, it can see the number of impressions and organic reach. This information is important to gauge how many people you have reached through the newsfeed.

Twitter

Twitter is another platform with its own set of analytics. Logging in allows me to see my mentions, top tweets, and the number of impressions for that tweet. This information provides insight to see what content is getting the most interest through likes and comments. Using this data I can better tailor my tweets for the highest rate of engagement

Google Analytics

Finally, using Google Analytics is another way to monitor and measure your campaign strength. The dashboard is easy to maneuver and gives you a lot of different metrics and reports that you can view. Do you want to know your bounce rate or understand where a majority of the users are located? This information is obtainable and can be drilled down into for even more specific locations, what they are using for devices and how much time they spent on each page of your website.

Analytics can be very simple or highly in-depth, but either way, they are important to your small business’s bottom line. As long a

Conclusion

Small businesses may find themselves at a disadvantage by lacking the manpower, means, or money to compete with big businesses. However, using the right social channel, and creating engaging content can give you a leg up to grow your brand awareness and gain market share. As long as you are able to post consistently, engage with your followers and encourage them to share your content, you should see increased traffic to your website. In addition, as a small business, you are more nimble to react quickly to and respond directly to your followers. This kind of customer service means a lot to your customers, and in turn, could result in an increase across your social channels. All of this can be done for a fraction of the cost as compared to the big business marketing budgets, and still, be a success for your company. All in all, increasing your public brand awareness should result in increased sales and brand loyalty. When a customer is loyal to your brand, and they believe in it, they can be your best form of advertisement.

Category: Advanced Tactics