5 Social Media Management Tips for Small Business Owners in 2018
Social media marketing becomes more competitive as time goes by. As social media usage increases and as the volume of content on social media increases, so does your organic ability to reach your target audience. Social media advertising will also get progressively more ineffective and expensive, as more advertisers begin to use the platform. The takeaway isn’t to freak you out, however, if that’s where you were headed, but to change the way you approach social media.
Here are 5 social media management tips for small business owners in 2018.
1. Pay attention to audience behavior
The more you understand your audience, the better you will be able to target them. For instance, if you know what your audience members are typically interested in, you can identify and participate in all the right groups, communities and discussions.
Use Facebook insights, Twitter insights, Google analytics, surveys and personal interactions with consumers as a reference to learn more about audience behavior, and use that information to guide your social media content creation and distribution.
2. Invest in a social media management tool
Once you have insights into audience behavior, you can create the right content and distribute it. If you want to save time on distribution without compromising on precision and consistency, invest in a reliable social media management tool.
Some social media management tools offer queue automation, which allows you to create custom queues of content and set them on an automated posting schedule at a frequency or even order of your choosing. DrumUp and CoSchedule are two good options for social media management to try.
3. Avoid excessive or inadequate posting
Social media experts will tell you that it’s safe to post multiple times a day. But how many times a day should you publish content? The truth is that there’s no one-size-fits-all formula; you have to decide the frequency of posting based on the social media platform. For instance, Twitter’s feed fill-up rate allows you to post at least 4-5 times a day, but do not do the same on LinkedIn, as you might be disfavored for spamming.
Create an experiment or run a survey and see how many times you need to post to increase your reach and engagement, without affecting your reputation on social.
4. Monitor trends and opportunities
Social media marketing isn’t a one-way broadcasting activity, especially in 2018. Your audience wants to be heard and fitted with just the right content. This requires some listening in addition to simple social media publishing. Social media managers should always have ears out to listen to audience feedback, one-on-one marketing opportunities and social media trends.
You could use a social media monitoring tool to “listen” to certain keywords on social media. Tools like Brand24 and BrandWatch are examples of software that help you “listen.”
5. Use powerful storytelling
Storytelling is what social media platforms are built to do. With Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat having introduced features dedicated to “storytelling,” there’s no doubt that mastering storytelling can change the way you market to your target audience.
When creating content for social media marketing, ask yourself what the story value of your content is and what it will convey to your target audience.
Use creative ways of conveying your marketing messages and consider getting other content creators (influencers or consumers) involved in the storytelling process, because the more involved your audience is, the more likely they are to interact with your content and make it a success.
Social media marketing may have become super-competitive, but with the right perspective and tools, you can reach your target audience and make an impact on them.
