9th July, 2018
The average small businesses are spending nearly $5000 a year in social media. Want to make your dollar go further?
According to the 2018 Sensis Social Media Report [PDF], small businesses are planning to spend nearly 42 percent more on social media marketing than they did in 2017 – which is staggering!
But how much of that spend is wasted?
Want to avoid the waste and get the best value for every dollar you’re spending on promoting your business?
The key is to plan, and think smart.
You didn’t start your business without a plan, so why would it be any different when it comes to promoting it on social media? Start simple:
Once you understand this, you can build goals and objectives. When you’re thinking about your goals it’s important to:
That’s where the leads and revenue come from.
Oh, and make sure that your setting realistic targets based on your budget and audience. We’d all love 20,000 leads but it might not be attainable!
Social media covers many different platforms.
If one works for some, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to work for you. Each option has a varied and unique audience and by finding which of these will work best for your business is key.
READ: Do I need to be on all the social media channels?
Below are the some of the key areas to look at:
For reach alone, look no further than Facebook. There are estimates that half of all Australians and 2.6 million Kiwis use Facebook. It’s an incredible number and Facebook have made sure that they offer a strong platform to help small businesses promote themselves.
Although Facebook started out as a young person’s hideaway from boring adults, it exploded into so much more and now hosts strong audience across all demographics. I mean, who hasn’t had their Nan leave an embarrassing comment on their profile pic?!
Instagram uses a focus on the visual to differentiate from other channels and because of this must be looked at if you’re selling a visually appealing product. There’s a strong engagement rate with content on this platform and you can push yours out to far reaching areas of the app via hashtags.
It’s also important to remember that a whopping 85 percent of users are younger than 45.
A platform to build relationships and network. There’s a distinctly conversational and communal feel to Twitter.
Although in recent times there has been an extension of the word count, it’s still a place for quick updates like breaking news and event promotion whether it be in the run up, during or wrap up.
While LinkedIn doesn’t have anywhere near the number of users as Facebook, it does bring a professional option to the social media realm. The audience that you’ll come across in here are career-first. This means they want to see content relevant to their industry or business.
It’s a great place to promote achievements, awards and developments, alongside the Linkedin Pulse area where you can easily publish article content of your own.
Easy! More time to do what they love.
Stepping out into the world of social media may feel like something that’s going to eat away at your day.
But as social media has grown, companies have created a range of platform integration options to make your life easier.
Some options include:
These platforms allow you to have all your social profiles on one easy-to-use dashboard.
You can curate content, and on top of that, you can schedule posts to go out at selected times. This means that you can use a block of time each week (or however often works for you) to complete of your social media work and increase efficiency.
You can also engage with clients’ responses to your posts without needing to jump to each of your profiles.
By investing a little more time and energy into the early stages of your social media debut, you’ll find that the road after is much, much smoother.