Anita Welch

Social media, ugh! It’s the last thing you want to think about when you’re preoccupied with running a business. Small business owners have so much to do already – scheduling, inventory, managing, and ordering. Who even has time to think about the Facebook or Instagram page?

As much as you can relate to this, social media is essential for small businesses. It’s a low-cost strategy to increase brand awareness, build customer loyalty, advertise, and maintain relevancy.

With social media, you have a higher potential to reach your targeted audience than with paid advertisements. Think of your brand’s social media as a little hub for all the people who already love or are interested in your product/service. Anything you post is delivered to them directly.

Social media allows you to:

• Drive traffic to your website or your business
• Generate leads
• Promote products and services
• Connect with your audience
• Build community
• Stay relevant

Small Business Tips for Managing Social Media

Social media is an investment of time and resources. Sometimes it might feel tedious, redundant, and maybe even pointless, but don’t forget about all the benefits previously mentioned. Use these tips to make managing your social media less of a pain in the butt.

Tip 1: Consistency is Key

It’s typical for brands to become discouraged when they don’t see immediate results. Like many things in life, it takes time. Social media growth can be slow, but with time and consistency you will generate results.

You should post high-quality content regularly, meaning at least once a week. More than once a week if you can manage it. Doing so will help portray a clear picture of your brand to the viewer. Imagine someone clicks on your profile and there’s a measly 2 low-quality photos that represent your business. It’s not a good look. Without content, users will simply lose interest and leave.

Posting at least once a week will keep your brand relevant. If you neglect posting for a month, people forget that you even have a social media page. Then when you remember to post, and decide to post 5 times in a row, people become annoyed with the spam of content. Also, not a good look.

Avoid these situations by dedicating a small amount of time each week to make just one post. It’s a start and overtime you’ll start to get a good-looking account. Who knows, you might even start to post more!

Tip 2: Gather High-Quality & Diverse Content

You don’t have to spend hours gathering content, it’s not difficult to spend 10 or 20 minutes a week taking a few quality photos and/or videos. You don’t need fancy camera equipment; a smart phone camera will do!

Content ideas:

• Candid photos of customers at your establishment (ask permission before taking photos)
• Simple but effective photos of products
• Reels of new items
• Reels of customers using a product
• Behind the scenes content
• Industry facts
• Trends – use viral sounds and dances
• Customer or employee spotlight

If you check out Point After‘s Instagram account, you’ll notice the clear photos used to advertise menu items and daily specials. The account also utilizes reels to diversify the feed.

Social media is supposed to be fun, so get creative with it! Explore and experiment with different types of content to diversify your feed and find out what works best for you brand. Social media is constantly evolving, what works today might not work tomorrow.

Diversify your content using:

• Polls
• Informational posts – how to do something/use a product, how you make a menu item, etc.
• Reels
• Photos
• Customer photos
• Quizzes
• Infographics
• Blog posts

Tip 3: Take Advantage of User-Generated Content

As a small business, you probably have a lot of regular customers. And maybe you’re even well-known within your community. Use this to your advantage! Typically, customers are more than willing to send you content of them at your business or using your product.

You could even ask your customers to provide a review of your product. If people are hesitant, you could offer them a discount on their next purchase.

Tip 4: Quality over Quantity

This goes for content and platforms. I already know you don’t have time to strictly manage all your social media platforms, so let’s just focus on a couple that best reach your target audience.

For example, I focus on Instagram and Facebook for Point After’s social media. I use Facebook to target our older demographic and Instagram to target our younger and college student demographic.

It also depends on the type of business you have. Instagram is great for restaurants because it focuses on imagery. There are so many great things to take photos of in a restaurant and it’s so easy to get creative with it!

However, if your small business is focused on writing or consulting, it’s not as easy to utilize Instagram. You have to be clever with your content, otherwise your feed will appear boring.

As for content, it benefits absolutely no one to publish poor-quality content. It doesn’t make your business look good and it doesn’t make people want to go there.

Look up some camera tips and tricks to taking photos with your specific phone type. You’ll be surprised at how much better you can make your content look just by changing certain settings on your phone or taking photos in certain lighting.

Tip 5: Find the Best Hashtags to Use

Hashtags can benefit your business by increasing your reach. Since you’re a busy person and don’t have tons of time to spend on social media, you’ll want to make the most out of your hashtags.

For example, if you’re creating content for a restaurant, beneficial hashtags include:

• #foodie
• #foodblogger
• #foodpics
• #YUMMY
• #instafood

In addition to using a few broad hashtags, like the ones previously mentioned, also incorporate specific hashtags, such as words related to your location. For example:

• #denversmallbusinesses
• #stevenspointarea
• #fortcollinscoffee
• #madisonrestaurant

These specified hashtags have less posts, providing a hire chance of your post to be noticed. It’s beneficial to use a few of each in your social media strategy.

Tip 6: Consider Paid Ads

If your budget allows, try pairing your organic reach with some paid ads to increase engagement on your social media channel. Even a small budget can get you hundreds of new impressions on your content.

Tip 7: Get your Team on Social Media

Get your employees on social media if they’re not already. You can increase your reach immensely just by having your employees share a post with their followers. Whether they have 100 or 1,000 followers, it’s more people than you were reaching before.

Final Thoughts

You’ve worked far too hard to let social media get the best of you. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to run an effective social media platform for a small business, just a little bit of time and research.

Apply these tips to your social media strategy and watch your account grow. Remember, these things don’t happen overnight, it takes time and consistency.