Get Control of Your Social Media Marketing

For small businesses with a local audience, social media can either be overwhelmingly beneficial to the growth and success of your business… or it can just be overwhelmingly confusing.

If you’re going to jump into social media, it is important not to dive in over your head. Start by picking one network to master rather than taking on every opportunity. Don’t let titles like “13 Social Networking Sites You Should Be Using” steer you down a wrong direction.

Unless you have the resources to hire a dedicated “social media manager” whose full time job is to maintain multiple networks—you’re probably doing it yourself. Rather than letting social marketing take away from the more important parts of running your business, focus on:

Where Your Competitors Are

In this instance, it doesn’t have to be a competing business. Competitor may also refer to anybody else in your industry. If a network is working for them, you can take some inspiration without copy-catting.

Where Your Audience Is

Honestly, this is what matters most. Right? Focus on your demographics. Not everyone uses Facebook but it is the most generic “catch all” for social marketing. Twitter is restrictive in marketing abilities but ideal for building a brand identity and getting attention from young professionals. LinkedIn is still a great way to promote B2B services. Pinterest is currently the most powerful way to reach crafty or thrifty women.

You know your product or services, and you know who uses them. Now you should only have to worry about using the same channels that your best customers are actively engaged by.

What You Can Handle

Only use the social networks that you can actively update, maintain, and participate in. Your updates should be effective, automatic, and natural. They should never be recycled or duplicated.

Now when you add a photo to Instagram, feel free to check the box and let your Facebook followers see your new post. But to create an entirely new post in Facebook for something you posted on Instagram is very unoriginal, tedious, and blatantly pointless.

Autoresponders and pre-scheduled posts rarely work well. So keep it simple and only use the networks that you can handle.