Top 5 Social Media tips for Marketing your Small Business

You have so much to think about with your small business, and more so when marketing it on social media. So what are the most important things, if any, you should remember when it comes to promoting your small business on social media? Here are Honey Bee Social’s top 5 tips to keep in mind.

Post Consistently

A question I get from a lot of small business owners is “I'm so busy with everything else around my business, I don't know when I should be posting content and how often should I be posting content, too? I feel like I don't have time to post everyday but I know that I need to do it . I feel like it ends up being a chore to post content on social.” 

It's not about how often you should post. What you need to remember is to post consistently. So, for some people, three or four times a week is pretty easy to do. If you want to do three or four times a week, go ahead, but make sure you stay consistent and you keep posting at the time. 

If your pattern in general changes, the algorithm on whichever social media channel is going to pick that up. If you suddenly stop and for one week you don't post anything, the algorithm is going to think you're no longer very active, and therefore it doesn't need to be showing your posts to your audience. And then you have to put in a lot more hours just to build up that momentum again and to get the algorithm to recognise you. So, it's not about how frequent you post, it's making sure you post consistently. 

Plan and create your content and social media posts ahead of time

Now why is it important to plan ahead? Planning ahead gives you time back, and helps with tip 1 of posting consistently. So for example, all the videos I create, I have actually filmed them in batches. By setting aside a few hours and filming multiple videos, I have more time left on the weekends for myself, and to spend time with my family, to run errands, or what have you. Before I did this batch filming, I literally had zero time. I was getting up at insane hours to work a bit before a job, then working as soon as I got home. As you can understand, it was brutal, and took a toll on my family, my friends, and even my cat (she HATED it. Sorry Minou!). But ever since I started batch filming well ahead of time, and finding a film style that makes it easy to edit and upload, I’m only creating videos once a month and getting back to important stuff like snuggles with Minou. 

Same goes for social media posting. Whether you are using a platform like Hootsuite, Buffer or Later, or using Facebook’s Creator Studio, spending an hour or two creating and scheduling your posts ahead of time means you’re not scrambling at the last minute to post something on social media, helps creating that consistency in your social posting, and gives you back time.

Planning ahead also lets you see that you've got a holiday coming up that you need to fill up with content so you stay in whatever algorithm’s good graces, or create a social media campaign such as a holiday sale. Planning ahead also helps you see where you have gaps in your calendar that need filling. Planning your content and social media ahead of time is all about organising yourself. Planning ahead keeps you on top of things. It keeps your engagement up. And it keeps eyes on your business.

Don’t constantly reshare content on your social media pages

A lot of small business owners are guilty of doing this, and perhaps that's just to make sure that they post something out on their social media channels every week. But if you do this, what's going to happen is your audience is going to start to see is that you're not actually creating your own voice or putting your own spin on a piece of content, an idea or an opinion. What you're doing essentially is promoting another brand or business by reshaping their content. You're not actually showing yourself, who you are and why you should be that thought leader or that trusted brand for your particular field. 

In addition, algorithms are not really big fans of people that repost or reshare content all the time. If you consistently do this on your small business’ page, they're going to start seeing this pattern of where you're not posting anything original, and what they might start doing is slowing down the frequency of your posts being seen. What you should be doing is posting your own content and recycling it. Have a read of this helpful article about taking one piece of content and morphing it into other forms. You can recycle your content every now and again, but don't constantly share content from another brand or another social media page.

Use customer testimonials to create social proof for your small business

Customer testimonials are a perfect example of user generated content, and they are absolute gold for promoting a small business. User generated content is content that your fans create for you, and customer testimonial are a prime example of this. They do a lot of the heavy lifting in creating that social proof that everybody is striving to get on social media. 

Remember that social proof is that phenomenon where people see someone doing or endorsing a particular behaviour and they deem that as correct behaviour. For example, a celebrity is using a protein shake to lose a lot of weight, and you look at the results that they have. That must be correct behaviour and therefore that might work for you, so you purchase it to try it out. That is social proof.

There’s other ways that you can do social proof, but customer testimonials are a great way of having that social proof done for you. Customer testimonials build trust within your brand for people that don't really know who you are. They’re starting to research about their problem or something to find them joy, and the customer testimonial helps affirm that you might be that best product or you might be that best service for them. It builds that trust to help convert that potential customer into a paying one. 

The most important thing that customer testimonials do is show that you are the best at what you do. You are the expert in that industry. You have that best product. Use testimonials in your social media for your small business. Put them on a capability statement that you will send out to potential customers. Put them on your website. They are a perfect, perfect way to show social proof and make your small business look amazing.

Optimise your creative for the social media channel you’re using

Why do you want to optimise your creative or images? Because people get turned off if what they see isn't configured for the channel they're on. Don’t you hate it when you are scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, and half the video you’re trying to watch is cut off? It frustrates users when what they want to watch isn’t in the right format or quality.

Social media platforms can demote your ad if it doesn't meet their requirements. Facebook won’t feed your ad, for example, if there’s too much text in your image. 

Here’s a few simple ways you can optimise your creative. Think mobile first. Most people use their phone over their desktop computer to look at social media. Have a lot of small text? No one is going to be able to read it on mobile. For Facebook and Instagram Stories, make sure your creative is vertical. For Instagram posts, make sure it's square. For Facebook, make sure your text is less than 20% of the entire image. That includes video thumbnails. For LinkedIn page posts, currently it's 1200 by 628 pixels.

If you keep up your consistency, get organised and plan ahead, share your customers’ love for your small business and make sure your images and video are sized correctly for where they’re going on social media, you’ll keep eyes on your business, the social media algorithms happy, and get a little time back for yourself!