Using social media to promote your offering and engage with consumers are not only relatively easy, but also fun and for the most part inexpensive.

Small businesses in general have limited resources (including marketing resources) and compared to other marketing tactics, you can accomplish a lot with social media.

Why is social media a great marketing tool for small businesses?

If social media is used strategically, it can offer direct engagement with your target audience. Social media will not only raise awareness for your brand, but it can also drive targeted traffic to your website.

In order to generate results with social media, you need to have a strong strategy in place. It’s easy to get started with all the platforms available, but to see a return on investment you need to understand each platform and create a social media marketing strategy for your business.

How can you effectively use social media?

Firstly, you need to understand and define your audience, and what their needs are. All your social media platforms should work together to help achieve your business’ bigger marketing goals. One of these marketing goals normally is to get people to visit your business’ online base – your website. Your social media platforms should ideally drive people to your website where they can read your blog posts, subscribe to your newsletter or buy your products or services. If you have marketing budget available, consider paid advertising on social media platforms to help reach marketing goals.

Another useful tip to increase brand awareness is to incorporate social sharing buttons on your blog posts. This will make it easy for people to share your content. Make sure you have valuable content and then make it easy for people to share.

To further ensure success, you should invest your time only in the platforms where your target market is spending their time. Even more so if you lack marketing resources. Start off small and grow your social media strategy gradually.

As part of your social media strategy, you should create a content strategy that will determine what you will post, where you will post it and when you will post it. Your content strategy can be as simple as a Word document. At Twenty3Media we like to plan content ahead and create updates a week in advance. This gives us enough time to proofread the content a couple of times, and send it to the client for final approval. A tip from our side: Always proofread your content, you will be surprised to see how many little errors can sneak in. When people are engaging and interacting with you on your social media profiles, respond to comments, mentions and feedback. If you receive negative feedback or comments, respond and try your best to turn the situation around.

Lastly, track and analyse your performance. It’s no use doing all the work if your audience is not responding positively. Make sure you identify which tactics are working and which aren’t. Based on your findings, make tweaks and implement changes and continue to monitor your efforts. Do you have any social media marketing questions? Ask us in the comments!