Social Media

Running a social media marketing account for your business as a small business owner is never a bad idea for anyone.

Because social media is now the fastest way to reach the audience who are online to catch fun and learn more.

People are always on social media 24/7 – the moment they wake up from their slumber…

…majority will carry their mobile phone to check up on what is going on in their social media accounts.

Many people now even favor their Facebook or Instagram followers more than any other thing they plan to achieve in life.

Their main goal is just to get a lot of likes for their posts and start using them to build a celebrity lifestyle.

These are the goals that many people now desire these days. Also, some people who don’t even fancy posting are online to see what is going on around them.

What they can learn from the internet or what they can watch or read that can make them laugh.

These are the reasons why social media is a good place to meet all these people because social media is now everyone’s friend.

Someone can be indoor for a day and don’t even bother to check out what is going outside their abode.

Below Is What Will Be Discussed In This Content;

• What Is Social Media Marketing 
• Benefits of Social Media Marketing 
• Determining Your Social Media Marketing Goals 
• Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy 
• Social Media Marketing Budget 
• Best Social Media Marketing Platforms for Small Business 
• Can You Outsource Your Social Media Marketing? 
• Best Social Media Management Tools 
• Start Marketing on Social Media Now 
• Social Media Marketing for Small Business 
• Conclusion 

So, let us quickly check out what social media marketing means and more in-depth guide into why you should start leveraging it to market your products and services.

What Is Social Media Marketing

Now, I know the next question you might be longing to ask is what social media marketing means.

Social Media Marketing is the act of reaching a wide number of people who are in your target market just with the use of a platform where people come to catch fun.

You can even be among those who also go to one of these social media platforms just to catch fun.

But because you are reading this guide today – you will start leveraging it to make money for yourself by marketing your brand.

Because we have been able to discuss what social media marketing means very briefly

Let us discuss the benefits that you will enjoy when you start leveraging social media as your source of generating a lot of sales through its marketing.

 

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Below are the benefits that you will enjoy from using social media as your source of generating sales for your small business.

 

1. Build More Awareness:

One of the benefits, why it is essential to start using social media as your marketing technique of getting a customer, is the awareness it gives your brand.

People go on social media and are active all the time.

Over 1 billion people are always on the Facebook platform active every day.

People are there to see what is going on and if you can also become a producer of content surrounding your brand.

People will follow you and will be ready to buy what you have to offer for them.

The majority of those who are on social media is the consumer of content and products.

That is why it is also very important for you to start leveraging social media marketing and start building more awareness for your brand.

This is how you can gain global recognition because everyone from different parts of the world uses social media.

And you can reach them from the comfort of your home without commuting from one place to another.

 

2. Creates Good Authority:

Another reason why social media is beneficial to you as a small business is that it gives you authority over your competitors.

That is why it is very good to leverage social media because that is where people can feel from you all the time.

Your audience cannot be coming to your website every day except if you are bringing them in yourself.

Also, another thing you have to know is that the time they spend on social media will be more than the time they can spend on your website.

They can spend hours scrolling on social media but will barely spend 8 minutes on your website.

So, you have to know this to buy your brand and have an edge over your competitors who are not leveraging social media marketing.

Don’t be scared of the competition you found on social media – just focus on who you want to serve.

 

3. Serves As Brand Advocate:

Social Media marketing serves as a brand advocate for many small businesses out there.

You don’t even need to promote yourself for a long time – you will keep earning money from your previous efforts.

When starting out with social media marketing – it will be a little bit difficult at first and this can lead to quitting.

But those who don’t quit with social media marketing and keep doing it will always earn from their previous efforts.

This happens in a way that some content they have created previously in their career will keep selling for them.

It is this content that will keep serving as an advocate for them and keep making them a lot of money from sales.

That’s why those who are doing social media marketing and are already to top brands online do see many tractions from their previous content.

Some content can be only 20 comments when you post it but a few years later – you will see it has 200 Comments.

That’s because social media serves as a brand advocate that sells your product for you.

 

4. Tells Brand Story:

Social Media helps in telling the story of a brand – just from your copy – you can easily tell people your story.

Most of the time – this is more effective than your website.

Although you can easily tell your brand story at the about section of your blog this is majorly once-in-a-lifetime stuff.

But social media is something that you can keep writing about the story of your brand for a whole week.

Also, the day of your getting low engagement to the days of your getting high engagement is a story on its own.

You don’t even have to tell much about yourself because when you become successful – people will go to dig out your old stuff.

They will now use it as a motivation towards their success story.

This is what achieving greatness is and social media is always there to help a brand tell its story.

 

5. Serves As Customer Support:

Social Media is also a platform that can be used to interact one on one with your customers.

That’s why many top brands make use of social media to interact directly with their customers.

Most times, customers prefer to work directly and ask for support through social media than email.

They prefer to ask what bothers them and expect the brand to be available to give them an answer.

So social media is a good place to serve as customer support to many small businesses out there.

And as a small business that wants to attain a high level. Customer support is very important for you to grow big.

Determining Your Social Media Marketing Goals

Every marketing journey without a specific goal is certain to fail.

So, you should always have a goal when doing social media marketing.

But what you have to know is that your goal must be something that you can control and not a goal that you cannot control.

Some people will be aiming for 1,000 Likes on their posts in the first month of starting their social media marketing.

That is not something you can control because you are not in charge of the distribution process.

Each platform knows how they distribute their users’ posts across their platform.

So, you are not in control. You should only have a goal for stuff you can control because it is that goal that will lead to the goal of stuff that you cannot control.

And I like to call my social media marketing goal the ENVELOPE GOAL.

The Envelope Goal is something that you can easily control and they are just Four Goals that will lead to the achievement of the goal that you can’t control.

 

1. Knowing Your Target Audience:

The first of the goals is to know who your target audience is. Because this is something that you can determine yourself.

When you know your target audience – it will be easy for you to know who your message is going to.

When you know your target audience and you are specific to them in the content that you are posting.

Your ENVELOPE GOAL is sure to be achieved because you are not just marketing to everybody.

You are marketing to a specific segment of a marketplace and not everybody.

So, you have to know your target audience and that should be your first goal before doing anything else.

 

2. Problems You Want To Solve:

The next in your ENVELOPE GOAL should be the problem you want to solve for this target audience.

What is the reason why you want to serve them and also make them see you as their savior?

You need to solve a problem for them or many problems for them.

You need to take them from the point of pain to their point of satisfaction and make them throw rocks at their enemy.

You can help them solve their financial problems by teaching them how to make more money.

Or you can help them eradicate their shame by teaching them how to stay fit or how to stay away from debt.

This is another goal among your ENVELOPE GOAL which you must have in mind when doing your social media marketing.

 

3. Determining The Platform Use:

The 3rd Goal in your ENVELOPE is the platform that you want to use in doing your social media marketing.

Each social media platform has what they are focused on and the content that you can post on their page.

A platform like Tiktok only focuses on video content and the creation of short and precise video content.

A platform like Twitter focuses on short written content that will be short and straight to the point.

A platform like Facebook focuses on both video and written content but more on the written content on the platform.

And so many other social media platforms like that. So, you only have to choose the one that best suits your purpose.

You will go with the one that can help you market your products and services the best because it is what you are good at.

 

4. Having A Timely Estimated Post Number:

Having a daily challenge is very important when it comes to achieving your goal.

And that is why a monthly post number is important when applying the ENVELOPE GOAL.

You need to have a timely estimation of the number of posts that you want to make daily and monthly.

You need to focus and be consistent with the timeframe at which you post your content on social media.

Because it is this ENVELOPE GOAL that will help you quickly achieve what you plan on achieving in a year.

If you are just posting without any Time frame of when you are to be posting.

You will get discouraged along the way once you see that you are not quickly getting engagements.

Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Since we are done with the Goal that you should set for yourself when trying to achieve good social media marketing success for your small business.

You now have to derive a strategy that you should have in mind when trying to achieve this goal.

This is like a plan which you will be setting for yourself to achieve your goal.

This strategy is called the LONG TAIL STRATEGY which you can make use of in growing a successful social media marketing brand.

 

1. How Many Times Do You Want To Post Daily?

The first strategy that you should attain is the times that you want to post daily.

Just like I made mention of in the first aspect of goals that you should achieve.

You need to have a strategy that will help you to be posting daily.

It now depends on the number of days in a week that you want to post your content.

It can be twice a week or almost every day of the week.

Anyhow you desire to do your posting – you just have to derive a means of achieving that goal.

That is why your first strategy should be on how you can achieve your daily posting.

You can make use of some automated tools that can help you schedule your content and publish it on your behalf.

 

2. How Many Followers Do You Want To Get Daily?

Although, the number of followers you can have daily is not something you can control.

You can control how many posts you want to be publishing – but you can’t control the number of followers you desire to be having.

The reason is that if you want to be too pushy with it – the platform can penalize you and ban you.

So, you need to be careful. But with the LONG TAIK STRATEGY at your hand.

You can easily follow a certain number of people daily to also get a follow back.

Since it is social media – there are other people like you who are desiring to also have a lot of followers.

So you can easily engage with them and make them follow you. Also, you can post on some groups to get follow back.

Following for following back is not a bad idea – just make sure that you are careful with the way you are doing it.

Don’t overdo it or else you will get penalized for doing it.

 

3. Which Type of Content Do You Want To Channel Most?

Although, if you are on a platform that focuses fully on a certain type of content.

You have no choice but to focus fully on the content that is being posted on the platform.

But because you are using the LONG TAIL STRATEGY – You need to have your signature and create a type of content for your brand.

A type of content that you don’t have to tell people that you are the one before they know who is posting.

You have to derive your signature in a way that they haven’t looked at your name but they already know what’s up.

It can be from the way you put gaps in your content.

Or the way you add humor to your posts on social media.

Or the intro of your videos and how catchy it keeps looking.

These are the signature that you must have to differentiate you from other people who are also posting content in your niche.

The LONG TAIL STRATEGY is what can help you easily achieve a fast result in your social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing Budget

Running social media adverts is also a nice strategy that can make you reach a wide range of people within the shortest period.

Unlike the days when our founding marketers who have a small business have to reply on radio, tv, and post adverts.

They have to do that before they can reach a very wide range of people for them to start making sales.

Just with a paid advert that is boosted on any social media platform you are leveraging – you can reach a wide number of people.

And the amazing thing is that you can easily achieve this without spending a lot of money.

Although, having a high budget is also a very good way for you to quickly make money from your business.

But you can easily start with as low as $100 to run your advert.

Your ad spent depends on the timeframe and the objective of your advert which you are using.

It also depends on the location you are targeting in your advert.

No one can specifically tell you the amount you can spend on social media ads because it depends.

But just know that you can start as low as $10 depending on what you aim to achieve with ads.

 

Best Social Media Marketing Platforms for Small Business

Although, there are many social media platforms out there that you can join – but it is very okay to join the ones that are hot and engaging.

You don’t want to join a social media platform that you will need to be the founding member of the platform.

You will need to join an ocean that is blue and has big fish you can catch to make money for yourself.

Below are the few social media platforms that you can join and start using to promote your business.

1. Facebook:

The first one on the list of social media with the highest number of daily users is FACEBOOK.

I am sure you already know about this platform or you have heard about Facebook somewhere.

This platform is good and useful for anyone who wants to grow his or her business to a high-income business.

You can decide to share both video and text content on this platform.

It is available for anyone who is good at any type of content and can be consistent with posting.

So, you can easily join the Facebook platform and start using it to promote your business.

 

2. YouTube:

Another platform that is very effective for small business to promote their business is YouTube.

YouTube is a video-sharing platform where you can express yourself in video format.

If you are someone who is not camera shy and can share videos of yourself online for people to see.

Also, if you are someone who is vocal and can speak your language fluently – you might not necessarily need to shoot a video of yourself.

You can just share your screen and provide value to people.

Also, some don’t even share their face nor use their voice but only make use of bot voice or typing.

And they are making a lot of sales and money from their YouTube channel.

So, you can open your YouTube and start using YouTube for your small business.

 

3. TikTok:

TikTok is another platform that is also a video platform like YouTube.

The only difference between the two is just that duration matters a lot when trying to use the platform for marketing.

Unlike YouTube where you can post a 5minutes long video while starting to post.

Even some can post 10minutes long videos just to give value or promote your business as a small business owner.

You will only be limited to 59seconds long video on TikTok for a start before you can start posting 5 minutes video.

But Tiktok is also a platform that had turned many small business people into TikTok influencers.

They have been making a lot of money and promoting their small business easily just by using TikTok for marketing.

So, Tiktok is a platform that you can also leverage if you are someone cool with video displays.

 

4. Instagram:

Instagram is another platform that is very effective for small business owners.

Instagram is a part of the Facebook brand that works hand in hand together since they are owned by one person.

So, running paid adverts and doing some internal marketing can be done correspondingly on both platforms.

You can make use of several features like Instagram Reels, IGTV, Hashtags, Instagram Live, and some other features on this platform.

You can use this platform for almost anything you want that is relating to creating content.

You can turn your advert into an Image carousel that people can keep scrolling to read or just shoot videos on IG reels.

So, many amazing features that will make you become a big brand and promote your small brand.

 

5. Twitter:

Twitter is also social media platform that small businesses can leverage to start booming their businesses.

It’s a short text content platform that calls its content “Tweets”.

You can easily post your tweets on Twitter and start generating traffic to your business.

Twitter is a fun place that if you leverage perfectly – you can easily boost your business and gain authority.

Many people are on Twitter who can serve as your brand advocate and help you make enough money.

They will help retweet your posts which will get shared with their audience and get more engagements.

You can start leveraging Twitter by signing an account and start using it to promote your small business.

 

6. Clubhouse:

The clubhouse is a new social media marketing platform that came into the limelight in the late last year 2020.

Many internet marketers have started leveraging this platform to grow more audiences and promoting their business.

It is an audio room platform where many people are gathered in a room to discuss business.

Although, it is presently available for iPhone devices alone and hopefully gets access on Android very soon.

You can create an account on clubhouse on iOS and start leveraging it to boom your business.

It is one of the new and trending social media platforms that you can use to promote your business since its algorithm is easy to handle.

 

Can You Outsource Your Social Media Marketing?

A major question that many people ask all the time is the possibility of outsourcing their social media marketing.

Oh yes, you can decide to outsource your social media marketing to several freelancers or ordinary social media managers out there.

There are so many social media managers out there who help small and big businesses to manage their social media account.

This will also help you to have more time to focus on other things that are moving the money needle.

All you have to do is to designate several tasks for a whole week by batch producing them for the social media manager.

Then they will help you to keep posting them one by one over a week or two weeks.

Another way you can do this is by making use of social media management tools.

That will help you to automate things and make it very easy for you to focus on other things.

This is what I will advise any small business to involve in and we will discuss that below.

Best Social Media Management Tools

1. Hootsuite
2. Buffer
3. Sprout Social
4. TweetDeck
5. Social Pilot

 

1. Hootsuite:

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that you can use to automate your social media content.

You can schedule and publish your content from a single dashboard of your account.

You can enjoy their 30 days free trial period to see whether it’s a nice platform that you can use.

The Hootsuite free plan gives its users the ability to schedule 5 posts per day.

This means you can schedule 5 posts in a day – but only 5 posts.

Once you go beyond that – you won’t be allowed to post.

They also have some paid plans that you will get charged for which ranges from $19 and above base on the plan you want to use.

You will enjoy more unlimited features with the paid plan of Hootsuite.

Check out the Hootsuite platform and start using them to promote your small business with their automated sequence.

 

2. Buffer:

Buffer is your engagement tool for a wide range of social media management features just like Hootsuite.

You can enjoy a 14-day free trial to enjoy all their features and use it to test out whether it is a nice tool to use.

All your activities will also be controlled from one dashboard and you can schedule posts for many social media accounts from just a single dashboard.

You can add 10 schedule posts when using the buffer’s free plan and can also connect 3 social media accounts.

They also have a paid plan that ranges from $15 per month.

You can try out Buffer to see if it’s a better alternative to solving your social media marketing.

 

3. Sprout Social:

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool that also helps you to automate your posts like the ones discussed above.

Just that Sprout Social has a different feature than the ones that are listed above.

They have their free trial which you can make use of when trying to see what suits your need.

You will enjoy 30 days of free trial without a credit card required.

Its lowest plan starts with as high as 10 scheduled posts per day.

You will also enjoy some more unlimited features which will allow you to grow successfully in your social media journey.

You can always automate your content in a calendar that helps you get things done easily.

Just go straight to the Sprout Social website and register with an account to start using.

 

4. TweetDeck:

The TweetDeck is a mobile application that you can use to manage your Twitter accounts.

If you are someone who makes use of Twitter for the marketing of your small business.

Then you have to consider using this application because it is worth it in every way.

You can use it to track your engagement and know your statistics rate on Twitter.

TweetDeck was owned by an independent person before Twitter purchased it officially.

You can download the TweetDeck application and start using it to automate your Twitter accounts.

Make life easy for yourself on Twitter by using this application to handle your Twitter accounts.

 

5. Social Pilot:

The last product that we will review in this guide is Social Pilot.

You can use this platform to perform the features that the majority of the managers listed above can do.

But you can always try Social Pilot out to see if it can also suit your needs.

Since trying to publish posts all the time can be very strenuous and time-consuming.

You can easily automate things with this tool and use it to control a wide range of social media accounts.

Social Pilot also has a free trial which you can test out but their services start from $50/month.

Although you will be handle to use it to handle many social media profiles like you to 25 accounts.

So, you can try them out and use them for your social media marketing purpose.

 

Start Marketing on Social Media Now

The best time for you to start your social media marketing is now because many marketers are using it to scale their brands.

So, if you are a small business owner or an independent marketer that is thinking of doing social media marketing.

Just start right away because the best time for you to do that is now and there is no right time.

The right time doesn’t exist – because if it exists – it would have been easy for everyone to know when to involve in something.

Everyone would have started at the right time and quickly engage in a lot of success stories.

But because the right time will never show itself to anyone – that is the main reason why your right time to start social media marketing is now.

So, are you a small business owner? Start social media marketing now!!!

 

Social Media Marketing for Small Business

This brings us to the end of this guide.

You and I have been able to discuss what social media marketing means.

The benefits with some goals and strategies that you can use to achieve a good social media marketing result.

Also, we look at some platforms that you can leverage with the tools that you can use to make life easy for your social media marketing.

So, if this is something that you enjoy and find very valuable – don’t hesitate to share this guide with your friends on social media.

Because there are a lot of small businesses out there that are just scrolling aimlessly on their social media.

They haven’t thought about using it to promote their businesses – so, if they can read this guide.

They can know exactly what to do and what they are missing out on.

 

Conclusion

So, are you making use of social media for your business?

If social media is what you make use of every day to get a lot of sales for your business.

Kindly hit the comment box and tell us your experience with social media marketing and why you will recommend it for other small businesses to use.

Also, if you haven’t started using social media for the marketing of your small business.

Tell us your reason why you haven’t started using it.