Social media for small businesses: 5 reasons why social is your biggest asset
Social media for small businesses is currently a hot topic in many industries. Can it be done? Is it necessary? Is it right for my business?
To many business owners and managers, marketing is a huge, daunting task. One that requires expertise, large sums of money, and high risk – not to mention shady marketing sales-people out to get every last drop of money with little accountability. It may seem harsh, but 50% of the time this ends up being the case, a risk many small businesses can’t afford to take. I’m not here to tell you whether or not AdWords is worth it for your business, or whether display advertising and other advertising tools are going to be a sure thing for your company. I’m just here to get you to consider why social media can help you. And I do only say CAN.
Despite it being my profession, I 100% believe that the social media model only works for some industries, and I would never go out of my way to convince a mechanic or a plumber that they need it in their marketing toolkit. This isn’t to say a mechanic or plumber can’t or shouldn’t put effort into social media – it has a number of great benefits, and I’ve seen some awesome things done on social media within these industries – but whether or not it’s the best place to be spending money should be considered at a case by case basis. So the following reasons should be reassessed within the model of your own industry before being taken at face value.
Except for reason number one.
- Social media is vital for your websites SEO and search ranking
Wait, what? What would having a social media account have to do with search ranking? It’s quite simple really, when you think about it. Google+ is a social media platform, designed by Google to contend with Facebook (ha, nice try). Google, being a loving older brother to G+, has set up algorithms to improve the search ranking and optimisation of websites and businesses that use G+, and have it linked on their websites somewhere. Now, this mostly applies to Google+, but shouldn’t be ignored for other platforms, and ultimately, if you’re creating content for one platform, it’s just as easy to be spreading it across all of the platforms with tools like Buffer and HootSuite. Social media for small businesses is about maximising your online presence, and SEO is vital to this.
- It’s basic PR, that you are in constant control of
PR is something nearly every business needs. It’s all about branding, and telling those positive stories about the business, and cleaning up the messes made by any negative stories. The problem is, PR is hard to do by yourself, and often expensive if you hire an agency. Social media however, is another tool that can be used to get those positive stories out there, and maybe fix the negative ones, that is cheap, it’s easy, and you don’t necessarily need an expensive PR agency to do it. Social media is all about telling stories, and the fact that businesses can now get their messages out there at such a low cost, is testament to how important it is.
- The younger generations are marketing-savvy, and respond differently to sales
It’s a plain and simple fact, traditional marketing has had its day, and it’s time for businesses to start innovating. The demise of AdWords (caused by the ever-increasing 60+million ad blocker users on the net) is a heavy indicator that people are starting to respond to traditional marketing techniques less and less, and while it’s easy for many brands to imagine this includes social media, I urge you to wake up and smell the statistics. While ad blocking can affect your Facebook advertising, it’s my firm belief that you shouldn’t be using social media solely for the hard sell anyway. Social media for small businesses is, as I said above, vital to your PR toolkit, and because of this, ad blockers shouldn’t be of any concern. Younger generations have proved they respond much more readily to social media influencers than any other form of marketing, and for that to work, you need to have your own social media pages at the ready for when that special influencer gives you a shout out. Is this model one that fits every business? No. While there’s certainly opportunity out there to consider influencer marketing for almost every industry, it’s unlikely to start reshaping the pest control industry any time soon. But hey, with a creative mind, anything is possible!
- It’s a space to really engage with customers and grow a loyal client-base
It’s hard to say this – particularly to business owners – but not everything about your business should be about extracting money from customers and audiences. It’s odd, but it’s exactly that kind of attitude and outlook that can actually convince people to spend more money on your business. Oftentimes, businesses become disengaged with their audiences, treating it as an avenue to push the hard-sell, and pump out meaningless content, but this is a dangerous way to view it. Social media should be a space where your current clientele feels encouraged to share their positive reviews, and photos of themselves with you or using your product, and a space for potential clients to feel like their questions will be answered – either through existing content, or through helpful and direct responses to their comments. Social media for small businesses is a space to engage, and encourage positive discussion. This is a proven way to connect with existing and potential clients, to create brand loyalty, as well as organic, “word of mouth” reach.
- It can help create personality for your brand and give it a voice
This is probably the most important reason why you should consider social media for your business. People no longer respond simply to brands and products, people respond to other people. Even if you aren’t keen on plastering your face all over the business Facebook, it’s still an avenue where you can inject a little personality, and a little relatable-ness into your brand. People want to see behind the scenes, they want to see staff events, they want to see photos happy customers have sent in, and they want to see all of the creative ways you can show off your business and product. Think of posts like photos of all the packaged orders ready to be sent off, think sneak peek photos of new products, think a stop-motion, moving flatlay of the ingredients of your next recipe, and think of that tagged Instagram photo of a happy customer using your product in a fun way. These all are ways you can show off a little personality for your business, and inject some fun into your marketing while staying on topic and on brand. Too many marketing techniques are informative. Buy this, this is on sale, we’re the only ones who stock this, etc, but there are more exciting ways to show off your products and services, but almost none of them can be done through AdWords and remarketing.
If you’re still on the fence, or maybe you’re at a loss at some exciting ways to talk about your product on social media, why don’t you have a chat with us, and we can see how we can help. This isn’t a sales pitch, and there is no obligation in a phone call or email, we just genuinely give a crap about social media for small businesses, and know we can help.
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