Social Media is a channel that you can rigorously use if you want your small business to enhance its online plan and strategy. It can help your business and entity to attract more traffic, branding, fans, and, ultimately, sales and profits.
So, let us look and check out the 10 social media hacks that your small but ambitious business can utilize.
1. Selecting the right Social Media platforms
In today’s world, you can cling on to several Social Media websites when you are looking for some online support. However, as the owner of your business, you first have to understand and recognize that not all social media websites are same.
Facebook is not the same as Instagram and likewise, Twitter is different from both. While, on the other hand, Pinterest, Foursquare, and Youtube are very oblivious to these three.
Apart from this, you have to consider the fact that —just because they exist, you do not have to exist on all of them if it is not required.
Being alive and active, everywhere, helps but you can leave out the unnecessary and unneeded platforms. For instance, a News publication entity’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Reddit would more influential and useful than on Instagram.
Before selecting, first, try to understand the benefits and the SWOT of all the platforms. If you believe all the top social media websites can help you with customer engagement and sales, then use it.
However, remember, not to duplicate and share the exact content on all platforms just because you cannot think of anything else!
2. Content matters a lot
Just as you must not duplicate content on all platforms, similarly you must always try to put in quality original content at any cost. Your followers and fans expect good and relevant content on your social media platforms. They wait and anticipate for content that they would like to see, laugh at, or read.
All of it can help you to promote one simple thing: sales. Thus, it is very vital that you must make and promote content that your followers like and share continuously.
3. Make visual content
Visual Contents are likely to get 40 times more shares: Source
Content is not only the textual pieces that you find on blogs. Content can be anything that attracts the attention of your viewers. This is where it is important to have top quality visual content on your social media shares.
Visual graphics and images increase user engagement by 37 % Source
Gifs, info-graphs, and animated videos are quite popular amongst people, and much importantly, users tend to share them more, against to general textual content. You can use tools like Venngage, WhatFix, Visme, and GIFBrewery to make and create attractive visual content.
4. Follow the 80/20 rule
The ‘80 %/20 %’ rule is one of the best ways to engage with your followers on social media. The 80/20 rule states that only 20% of your social media content should be about promoting your brand or products, while the remaining 80% should be about what your followers/fans like and general things.
The promotion and acceptance of the 80/20 rule have occurred because experts believe that followers do not like seeing marketing and sales pitch on their walls/feeds at all times. Thus, if you run a business, always try to create a bond with your customers through social media utilizing user-friendly posts.
5. Call to action
Encouraging your followers to engage and interact with you can be one of the best things that you can do through Social Media. However, for that, you must have a very convincing call to action or CTA in place. Yes, for sales, CTA is quite vital and you can use the social media to promote these CTAs in adverts/posts.
Just remember to make CTAs that are eye-catching and propounding. For example—
- Don’t miss out! Click here
- Download this application now!
- Hurry, book now/apply now/buy now
AdRoll found out in a month’s test that Facebook ads with CTA in them had 2.85 times higher click rates than the ones that didn’t have a CTA: Source
6. Make use of tools
You can opt for social media content management, sharing, curation and monitoring tools in order to make the most of the platforms. Businesses can utilize content marketing apps and tools to schedule their postings for maximum impact.
Tools, specifically like Mento, SocialPilot, and Buffer, are quite popular amongst account holders and businesses for managing their social media posts and correspondents in a better way.
7. Using latest features and development of social media platforms
Quite recently Facebook introduced reaction buttons where users, apart from ‘Likes’, could actually react to a post with several general emotions. Like general account holders, even you must make use of all the latest features and development of the social media channels.
Thus, include new things in your plans like emojis and other features like Facebook Live Chat, Twitter’s Gif button, and advanced Twitter Timeline.
8. Use Hashtags
One of the best ways to classify any page or content is by hashtagging it to its respective topic, keyword or subject. This makes finding and searching relevant content easier for viewers as categories are all sorted out.
As a small business, even you should consider using Hashtags on your pages and content. Hashtags (#) generally are hyperlinked to searches so that one can easily get more data and content on the topic. Businesses can use hashtags to increase more engagement on their social media platforms.
9. Consider the time when you post
There no point posting something at 3 AM in the morning, people are asleep at those times. There are certain times that you must keep in mind when you want to post any content on social media.
Some stats regarding it—
- On Facebook, the best time to post is on a Wednesday at 3PM,
- While the time from 1P.M to 4 P.M results in the most clicks,
- Moreover, on the Weekends, do not put anything up before 8AM and after 8PM.
Thus, there are permutations and combinations on schedules that you have to adhere by if you want your business to make the most of the channels.
Read More: Best times to post on Social Media
10. Inviting users
You should invite users to participate and engage on your social media posts for maximum reach and impact. You must encourage people, who like your page, to be more involved and participating.
A follower/fan must not only follow your page, he or she must also engage in it to make your page or content more viable and relevant. You may start by personally addressing people on walls or feeds; this will encourage them (and also others) to post and engage more.
The ploy would certainly result in more traffic, engagement, brand awareness and, ultimately, sales numbers.
Opportunities for small businesses always come few and far between; hence they have to make use of all hacks and tricks that they can conjure up from their sleeves. Social Media is a box full of opportunities for them, and they have to use it for their benefit.