In today’s article, I am going to tell you about How to Promote Small Business on Social Media, so if you want to know about it, then keep reading this article. Because I am going to give you complete information about it, so let’s start.
How did you learn about your favorite restaurant, bar, or supermarket? Maybe you were referred by someone, read an online review, saw an ad just when you needed their services, or you might have come across their social media campaign.
Yes! Social media campaigns can go a long way in helping local businesses. Are you a local business owner looking forward to running a social media campaign but don’t know how to go about it?
So let’s get complete information about How to Promote Small Business on Social Media without wasting any time, come on.
Table of Contents
How to Promote Small Business on Social Media:
If yes, this article is for you as it covers a complete guide to social media campaigns for local businesses. With the tips shared here, you can execute your social media campaign like a pro!
1. Set A Purpose For Your Campaign
First, why do you want to run a social media campaign? What are your set goals for this campaign?
If you are having a tough time defining the purpose of your campaign, you should consider thinking wide. With the points listed below, which one feels relevant to what you want?
- Promoting a new product
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating customer feedback
- Raising revenue
- Driving leads
- Increasing engagement
- Promoting a forthcoming event
This isn’t all, but it should give you an idea of why you want to run a social media campaign and how to structure your goals.
Local business owners without marketing experience tend to struggle when setting up goals for their first social media campaign. If the process starts getting overwhelming, consider looking for help.
There are plenty of skilled freelancers as well as local social media agencies that offer custom-made social media solutions based solely on your business needs. They should be able to guide you through the process from start to finish.
2. Decide Content And Channels
This is when you decide the content required for your different social media channels. This could be creating a catchy Facebook or Instagram video. If you want to promote an event, you would need a unique banner picture.
Also, it’s thoughtful to come up with photos for your Twitter and Pinterest profiles. Getting to know the use of each channel first is important for the campaign’s success.
Running a social media campaign can be tricky, especially when you aim at user engagement and interactions with your social media posts. If engagement and a friendly conversation with your customer is something you are looking for, then a chatbot can be a perfect option.
SendPulse’s Instagram chatbot, for instance, can react to your subscriber’s stories that mention your brand. This can greatly improve your marketing campaign on Instagram.
If you haven’t yet utilized the advertising feature of social media platforms, consider using one as an experiment to learn what’s best for your local business, customers, and content. As soon as you’re done, head on to the next step!
3. Make A Campaign Post Schedule
You should plan your entire campaign timeline on a calendar in this step. Use a timeline template to decide and track the days and exact times to publish your content on your social media channels. Also, this is the time you decide what message you will be putting out there to drive engagement.
You can use project management tools to manage day-to-day activities with your team members for the week or month on your socials. For instance, you can schedule to publish one or two campaign posts on your profiles daily.
4. Partner With A Local Influencer
As a local business, your budget may not accommodate an influencer with millions of followers on social media, but mini influencers can also work the magic. Also, you should consider looking out for bloggers or experts in your industry who stay within your area.
The challenge here is – how do you get hold of this kind of Influencer? A quick lookup on Google may not be favorable as it’s likely to display popular influencers. Also, it can be challenging to narrow down your Google search to a specific area. You can opt for one of the available social listening software out there. These tools can quickly locate profiles with your filtered follower count that discuss specific topics.
Furthermore, you can filter the search settings to focus on your area to get good results. After that, select the influencers that fit in and contact them. You can as well invite them over to your walk-in store to give them a tour or give them products for free. This is more like a mutual collaboration as you help them develop content, and they increase your local business awareness as they introduce you to their audience.
5. Publish SEO-Friendly Content
Publishing SEO content is also a nice approach to attract more customers. This is how it works – you first generate traffic to your website and social media profiles, then increase foot traffic to your walk-in store. However, the content here should be more catching and entertaining in nature. SEO is tricky. So you can get help from digital marketing experts for the best results.
The content should aim at telling customers and potential customers the history of your town and significantly increase your local business awareness. Your local business goals should be represented in your posts on social media, featured articles, etc.
For example, a blog post on the top five bakeries in your area is a nice approach to highlight your local business and increase its value to visitors and potential customers. However, you wouldn’t want to highlight your competition as well, so go for topic ideas that call for a list of different local businesses.
For instance, you can publish a blog post about hangout spots featuring bakeries, museums, and parks and highlight just your local business in it. Holiday sales are a great way to raise awareness of your local business.
Offer holiday sales on products, maybe at discount prices, then publish an article on family hangout fun ideas on that particular holiday season and feature your local business in it.
6. Join Local Facebook Groups
Your potential customers are usually active on Facebook groups, and by joining any Facebook group in your area, you get to kill two birds with just a stone. You get to know your customers more and, at the same time, promote your local business.
However, you should avoid spamming the group with your business information. You wouldn’t want to tell them about your local business and the discount you offer every single day.
You are less likely to attract customers if you harass them. Instead, you should consider bringing up topics that can raise the conversation about your local business. If you have movers in North York and provide such services, you can start with topics about relocation obstacles and pricing.
A nice approach is to value the members. For instance, you own a bakery and would like more locals and visitors to know about your bakery. You can share images of your product and ask the group members the recipe they like best or what drink they usually take with their cheesecake. Additionally, businesses can provide their phone number and website address so that site visitors can contact them. From there, you can tell them that you own a bakery, and they are welcome during open hours. Your goal should be focused on raising discussion that members will engage in.
7. Never Skip a Customer Review
Requesting reviews from people or monitoring your local business can be good but may not be creative enough for a social media campaign. But one thing local business owners should take note of is that review platforms aren’t the only place customers discuss your local business. Blogs and social media are considered as well in terms of reviews.
According to research, 77% of consumers read online reviews to know if they should patronize a local business. As of now, almost everyone with an active social media platform has an audience of some kind; this can be their family members or close friends. And customers are likely to post a review about your local business on their timeline.
Sometimes, they tag the local business’s social media profile on the review post, but what if you fail to notice that post? Maybe because you have tons of unattended notifications.
If the review was a good one and you missed it, you are seriously missing out on a lot – you should save, repost, and leverage it as a tool in the future. On the other hand, if it’s a bad review, you are putting the reputation of your business on the line by not responding. You might want to use social media monitoring software so that you don’t miss mentions on social media or review sites.
8. Launch A Social Media Contest
Everyone loves a good contest where they have an opportunity to win exciting prizes. One great way to increase foot and online traffic to your local business is by running a social media contest.
You can start a contest and promote it via your website and social media. For instance, you can launch a contest in which the first thirty people to visit your store on a given day get certain products or services free of charge. This can be very useful for your social media campaign, spreading the word about your local business quickly.
9. Keep Up With After-event Details
If your campaign should be focused on events, contests, or new product launches, you should always keep up with your customers by updating them on how the whole thing went.
If the event was a giveaway or contest, as recommended above, update your customers with pictures of the statistics, lucky customers, and the total number of contestants.
10. Create Local Partnerships
As you run a local business, you belong to an active community. Feel free to form a relationship with your fellow local business owners. Communicating regularly with fellow local businesses offers you a world of opportunities.
You get to find other local businesses that genuinely support you while at the same time looking out for the same audience. You should consider bringing up thoughts about a cross-promotion.
With that, you get to increase awareness of your local business and, at the same, raise a support group for local businesses. You can reach out to other local business owners via social media. You can try offering a combo of each other’s products, free promotions, and running marketing events together.
Bonus Tip: See How The Campaign Is Going
As you carefully execute the above steps, take a step back and look at how far you have gone. This is when utilizing a campaign management platform and having analytics of set goals comes in handy. To determine if your campaign is going as it should, you can start by checking if you got to accomplish your goals.
You can start by finding out:
- The helpful and least helpful components
- If you would or wouldn’t repeat this campaign in the future
- The simple and tough aspects of the campaign
- What you learned about your customers
- If you operated under the wrong assumptions
Hope you have read about How to Promote Small Business above. But now if you want, you can watch the video given above to get more information about How to Promote Small Business. And you can get more information about How to Promote Small Business.
Conclusion:)
Running a social media campaign for your local business is nothing close to time waste. Getting to know and meet your potential customers via their ideal social media platform is a nice approach to drive leads and increase engagement. Based on research, 77% of B2C businesses have gotten at least a customer via Facebook.
If you don’t know where to start, you should determine what’s best for your target audience and take a step. After all, your customers are the reason for your local business and social media campaigns.
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So hope you liked this article on How to Promote Small Business on Social Media. And if you still have any questions and suggestions related to this, then you can tell us in the comment box below. And thank you so much for reading this article.