by
Kenneth Javellana

Social Media Decoded for Small Business Owners

Every small business has a chance to become a bigger fish in a bigger pond, but this opportunity is always tied in with your ability to take full advantage of social media. Unlike other marketing platforms, social media consists of numerous ways to advertise about your business effectively but without paying a single penny for such services. More importantly, social media is a platform in which you rarely require third party services like an advertising firm or a marketing consultant to create and handle your company’s online marketing campaign. Social media is yours to conquer but only if you are willing to work hard at learning its fundamental principles and continuously hone the skills required by online marketing.

Always have a specific goal in mind.

When people talk about social media, you often hear people say it’s incredibly important to be “creative” and “unique”. That’s all well and good, but at the end of the day, social media marketing is still about making money. You still need to establish goals that would result into higher profit margins. As such, the same principles for goal setting still apply. The best goals are still SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Prepare a solid foundation.

At present, every small business should have a consistently active account on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Having your own private-domain website and blog are also critical components of the foundation of your social media campaign.

Be where your market is.

You also hear a lot of people saying that Facebook should be the hub of your social media campaign. That may be true for most markets, but it’s not always so. In the end, you should focus on the websites which your target market spends most of its time in. Are they really active on Facebook or do they prefer LinkedIn?

Knowing which websites your target market frequents allows you to allocate your time and resources more effectively. Of course, this does not mean you should ignore other aspects of your social media campaign. Rather, it just helps make your priorities clear.

Make good use of feedback.

Feedback is incredibly important in social media. It’s the best basis for determining whether a particular technique is successful or not. You can create opportunities for receiving feedback by inviting readers to comment on your posts or email you their opinions. As for unsolicited feedback, you can configure search settings of Google so that it will notify you every time the name of your business crops up in the Internet.

Prioritize quality over quantity.

It’s been said over and over again, but it’s remarkable how so many small business owners still ignore this all-important social media tip. If you want your presence to matter online, then you need to give people a very good reason to follow you on Twitter, like your page on Facebook, and link to your website or blog. For that to happen, you need to consistently provide them with high-quality posts instead of simply maintaining a specific number of posts each week.

Social media success is ultimately dependent on the consistency of your efforts. As such, it is important that you spend as much time online as needed. For this to happen, you may want to contact a broadband expert about upgrading your current Internet service plan.