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Easy Yet Effective Social Media Tips for Small Businesses

Does your business have a social media strategy? It turns out, many businesses do not. A recent survey found that one in four small businesses don’t use social media at all. Implementing social media into your day-to-day business operations can help you build brand awareness, expand your customer base, and drive sales. Without a workable social media strategy, your business may be missing out on growth opportunities. You just need the right social media tips for small businesses to get started.

A quick review of some facts and figures on social media use highlights the importance of social media marketing. Around 80 percent of internet users in the U.S. log into Facebook regularly, per data from Status Brew. More than 90 percent of users on sites like Pinterest say they plan to or have made purchases directly through social media platforms. And many web users attest to researching a company’s social presence before they consider buying products or services from them.

While you might be ahead of the pack if your business is already using social media, having a robust social strategy can lead to huge rewards for your business. If you do decide to financially invest in your social marketing efforts, consider funding. The supplemental working capital could help trigger the next phase of growth that you’ve been planning for.

Choose Your Networks

The first and most essential step in creating a social media business strategy is to determine which social networks your customers most regularly use. A critical component of a marketing campaign is defining who your target audience is, then figuring out how to reach and engage with them. Determining this information can often be difficult.

One simple way to know which social media sites your customers use: ask them. Communicate with your customers to seek information about how they found your business. Find out what social networks they’re engaging with on a regular basis. An easy way to do this is to create a brief survey. The survey can then be included in emails, newsletters, or other customer-facing communications.

If you still aren’t sure which social networks your business should be targeting, check out which social media platforms are most used by your competitors. Generally, businesses will start with Facebook, since it’s the most popular social media platform and one of the most-visited websites in the world. Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest are also popular, with millions of daily users. And they are especially useful for businesses to showcase and update photos and videos of their products or services. Meanwhile, networks like Twitter or LinkedIn can help target more specific groups with timely updates about your company.

Don’t forget that most social networks allow businesses to create and run paid ad campaigns. Paid advertising helps to get your business in front of a very targeted audience. Honing in on a select audience could help to drive up engagement and sales. While these campaigns can be costly, it’s not hard to kickstart them using business marketing loans to get your ads going.

Test and Repeat

The exact techniques for maximizing the benefits of social networking and growing an online presence differ from one business to the next. However, the general plan of attack is typically the same for everyone:

• Track the results of all social marketing efforts.
• Analyze those results.
• Tweak the strategy to continuously improve.

Knowing how to track and test social media strategies isn’t always easy. Most social network sites provide business users with special tools to help them analyze the performance of their network, preschedule posts, and conduct administrative tasks. But connecting the dots between multiple accounts can become time-consuming and costly.

To maximize the marketing potential of social media, many small businesses find value in utilizing web applications designed for social media management, or even hiring a contractor to create and analyze a social media campaign on behalf of the business. But turning these social media goals into reality requires targeted financing that many small companies don’t have.

With short-term business financing from QuickBridge, it’s possible to get the funding you need to fast-track your implementation of the above social media tips for small businesses without having to reallocate cash. Get in touch today to learn more about how QuickBridge is helping small businesses turbocharge their social media marketing efforts.

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