You know that social media can help you grow your small business, but where do you start?
Your business needs a strategy before you start using social media. How is social media going to help your business? You need to be committing time and people.
These 10 resource-packed tips are sure to help your business take a head start in building a social profile!
4. Plan and define your target
audience
• Align social goals to business goals
• Audit your social presence (Hootsuite
template)
• Site, Followers, Last Activity, Action
• Define your target audience
• Analyze your competition
• Pick a platform (SproutSocial analysis)
• Develop a content strategy
• HootSuite, Buffer, etc
7. Match the tone of your
business
• What does your brand sound like?
• What kind of words do you use in your
social media conversations?
• Why are you on social media in the first
place?
• Don’t be a glorified RSS feed - humanize
your brand
• Be consistent across all channels
• 71% of consumers have unfollowed a brand
because they were embarrassed & 41%
admitted to unfollowing brands who don’t
share relevant information (SproutSocial)
8. Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable Media
“At a cocktail party, you wouldn’t walk up to someone and say,
‘Hey, I’m Dave. My stuff is 20 percent off.’ What you do is ask
questions, tell stories, listen and relate to people.”
10. Aim for engagement, don’t
try to sell
• It’s not always about “me”
• Share interesting and relevant content
• feedly.com | commun.it
• Share posts that are share-worthy
• #BALLOTBRIEFCASE - PwC
• Increased PwC’s social impressions 136x
on Twitter
• #ShotOniPhone – Apple
• 85% of users surveyed find visual user-
generated content more influential than
brand photos or videos (Adweek, 2016)
12. Use social media to get
people to your website
• If your audience doesn’t like what you’re
sharing on social media, they won’t go to
your website
• For every call-to-action you have, you
should also generate each of the following:
• 3 blog posts, articles or visuals/
infographics
• Hemingway App to write clear call-to-
action focused social media posts
• Use snip.ly to add your call-to-action on
every post you share on social media
14. #Hashtags?
• Be specific and cater hashtags to the social
network you’re using
• Daily hashtags - boost engagement and
visibility
• #MotivationMonday
• #FridayFact
• #Caturday
• Unbranded hashtags - #DoUsAFlavor
• Don’t have more hashtags than words
• How to Choose a Hashtag w/ Twitter
16. Optimize, optimize, optimize
• Your website should be mobile-optimized
• In-app integration
• Social-media friendly posting with
metadata updates
• All-In-One SEO Pack, Yoast
• Social media photos and image sizes
• Ultimate Cheat Sheet from HubSpot
18. Break through the noise
• Find the best times to post on social media
• CoSchedule Blog analyzed 16 studies
• Search for topics and keywords and
analyze what content or topics get the most
shares on social media - BuzzSumo
• Sloppy writing?
• Hemingway App
20. Use your creativity
• Visual content is more than 40 times more
likely to get shared on social media than
other types of content. (Source: HubSpot)
• Social media images - Canva
• Infographics - Venngage, Piktochart
• GIFs - gifs.com
• Video - Adobe Spark Video
• Slideshare - Turn your best blog post into a
Slideshare
• Twitter Moments - Add tweets by account,
search, link, photos, etc
24. How can I learn more?
• Hootsuite Academy
• Social Marketing Training, Certification,
Social Strategy Certification
• Training for each social media platform
• 61 Best Social Media Tools for Small
Business
• MarketingProfs
