Is your business too small to benefit from social media? Do you need to have a big budget to get results from social media? Do your customers even use social media?
Social media is for everyone and even the smallest business can benefit from it a lot. But to get good results you need to have a strategy and decide on clear goals.
Be where your audience is
Let me start with your last question – are your potential customers on social media? The answer is yes! Whether you’re B2B, B2C, huge, or small – your consumers are waiting for you on social! There’s over 1,5 billion monthly active users on Facebook alone, that’s a lot! I’m pretty sure that quite a few of them could be your potential customers. Scale it back to only the UK – and we’re still talking about almost 40 million active users on Facebook.
Let’s not forget about the hundreds and thousands of users on Twitter and Instagram who might be already talking about your business. People expect you to be on social media!
Every network has its priority audience, Snapchat is for teenagers, LinkedIn for professionals and almost everyone is on Facebook. It’s up to you to discover where your customers are spending their time online. Don’t try to be everywhere at the same time, do your research and choose one or two networks that are most popular among your customers, and start building online relationships there.
Social media is for everyone, small or big!
At the beginning I asked are you too small to benefit from social media? Do you need to have a big budget? No and no! The size of your budget doesn’t matter. You can achieve great results even with your limited time and on a shoestring budget, with the right approach.
Learning which social platforms are the most popular among your key demographics should be your first step. Your next step should be planning a social media strategy.
In a nutshell, you need to know what your goals are, and make sure that those goals are measurable and aligned to the plans you have for your business. Don’t chase vanity metrics like numbers of followers or likes, instead look into your engagement with people, website traffic or the amount of leads generated from social media.
If your business is small, chances are that you don’t need to have a website or a CRM tool to manage leads yet. What you should focus on is building a community and relationships with your customers to raise brand awareness.
Always listen to your audience and respond to every question
Why is social media such a popular place for customer feedback and such a great place for customer service?
It’s all about two way communication, social media provides open platforms for public discussions in real-time. Previously people preferred one-to-one private conversations over phone or email, but with the boom of social networks and mobile phones, customers are becoming more and more flexible and you need to be able to keep up!
Are you missing out on new business by not being on social media? Because your customers are there and they’re talking about you. Now is the time to decide if you want to ignore it, or if you want to be part of the discussion.
How small businesses can win the social media game
Let’s recap:
- Are your customers using social media? Yes, and there’s plenty of them!
- Do you need to have a big budget to benefit from social media? No, you can get great results even on a shoestring budget!
- How can your small business benefit from social media? Know where your audience is, start small, listen a lot, always respond and be helpful!
You will benefit from social media if you dedicate some time to relevant platforms and you fully commit to it. Remember that social media isn’t about you, it’s about your customers! Be there for them, listen and help!
Do you have any other questions? Email me at koppova.len@gmail.com or tweet me at @lenkakopp and I’ll be happy to answer them!
