As a small business, getting new customers and growing can be really hard, especially when you don’t have a fortune to spend on ads.
And that’s why so many small businesses are utilizing the power of social media. It has no barrier to entry and it’s one of the best ways to get your business new customers online.
However, to be successful with it, you need a great small business social media strategy.
And that’s why in this blog post, we’re going to cover how to create it. So, are you ready to begin? If so, let’s dive in.
Understand Your Target Audience
This should be the first step regardless of what kind of marketing you’re doing. And on social media, it is especially important.
You see, unless you understand who is your target audience, there is no way you’re going to attract them to your profile, nor persuade them to do anything.
So, how are you going to understand your audience?
There is something called the Q-R-C formula for understanding them. Here’s how it works:
1. Audience Analysis Questions
The first part of this formula is asking yourself the 14 basic audience analysis questions.
But before I’m going to reveal them to you, understand how important it is for your small business social media strategy to answer them based on data and not guesswork.
When you’re going to answer these questions based on guesswork, you’re going to put EVERYTHING you do on the line and in 99% of cases fail.
Of course, you can be lucky and guess it right, but that doesn’t normally happen.
So, conduct surveys, check data that has already been collected by others, and on and on. Then answer the questions.
It is absolutely essential for your small business’s social media strategy success.
Here are the 14 audience analysis questions:
- What do they dream about?
- What do they desire?
- What do they love?
- What do they fear?
- What frustrates them?
- What angers them?
- What do they hate?
- What arouses their skepticism?
- What embarrasses them?
- What are they most thankful for?
- What are their sources of shame and guilt?
- What are their secret self-doubts?
- What are they proudest of?
- What makes them happy?
Make the answers detailed and clear. You’re going to use them for ALL of our marketing (not just social media.)
2. Their Daily Routine
Another thing that you should do if you want to be successful is simply writing down their daily routine, based on as much data as possible.
It will literally look like this:
7:00 They Wake Up
7:10 They Kiss Their Wife, Go To The Bathroom And Brush Their Teeth
7:25 They Dress Themselves Into A Suit And Tie…
And it goes on and on.
You literally want to list everything you can as it is going to have a massive impact on your small business’s social media strategy.
When you know when and what are they doing, you also know when and what to post to solve their problems and persuade them to take action, while growing a huge following.
3. Conversation
Consistently engaging in conversations with your dream customers is one of the main reasons why social media is so powerful.
During a conversation, you can get an in-depth understanding of your dream customer and discover things nobody would have ever said before.
Then you just apply it in your marketing and HOORAY! Your results will skyrocket.
Here’s an infographic that summarizes all of these 3 steps. You can download it below:
And now, when you understand your target audience, it is also absolutely essential that you’re going to do the second part of your small business social media strategy.
Pick The Right Platform To Be On
Now when you understand your target audience, you also have to know where you’re going to do your social media marketing.
Of course, there are many platforms to choose from and there can be more than one that will fit your small business’s social media strategy.
For example, (a bit unusual but obvious one), if you’re selling stock images, Pinterest and Instagram are most likely both going to be really amazing platforms for your business.
But even if you find out that more than one platform fits your small business social media strategy, you have to pick just one in the beginning unless you have a big team of people.
Alright, but how are you going to pick the right platform for your small business social media strategy in the first place?
- First, you have to check whether your dream customers are on that platform.
- Second, you have to understand if the platform is going to fit your brand.
- And last, you have to know the opportunities (e.g. organic reach, platform’s features, etc.)
For example, if I was about to decide between Twitter or Instagram, I wouldn’t even look at statistics like the number of users.
Nobody cares about that. Instead, I’d look at the organic reach of the platform, and if my dream customers are there…and also if it fits my brand.
So, if I’d be selling shoes, Instagram with its opportunities like Instagram shopping and huge organic reach would definitely win. Depending on the brand it would positively or negatively impact the decision as it has to fit your brand as well.
Alright, but we’re not even close to the end.
Create A Killer Content Strategy
If you’re not going to create a content strategy that is going to be absolutely fabulous, your entire small business social media strategy will fall into the toilet.
Your content is 80% of success regardless of the social media platform that you’re on.
Your content has to appeal to the 3 types of audiences. The first type is a cold audience. Those are the people who don’t know you, their own problem, or even the solution that you provide.
Second, there is a warm audience. Those are the people who know you and know that there is a problem that they need to solve.
And last, there is a hot audience that knows you, has a relationship with you, knows their problem, and knows that you sell a solution that they already feel keen on buying.
So, how are you going to create a small business social media content strategy that appeals to all of these things?
Here’s how…
Attraction Content (40% Of What You Share)
This is the type of content that is designed to make other people discover your profile and follow you. Usually it is about some trends or you create it similarly to the posts that performed the best.
Nurturing Content (40% Of What You Share)
This is another type of content that you have to create. It is designed to position you as an authority in your industry and build strong relationships with your audience.
For example, here belong content types like:
- Personal content
- Behind-the-scenes content
- Long-form educational content
- And more…
Over forty percent of all content that you’re going to share should belong here. In other words, if you share 10 posts per week, 4 of the should fall into this category.
Promotional Content (20% Of All Content That You Share)
Promotional content is used to convert a hot audience into customers and it is absolutely essential that you share it as well.
However, if you don’t want to lose followers because of over-promoting, it should be only 20% of all the content that you share.
Make sure that the promotional content you share is super appealing and it has the right copy so that it persuades people to take action. If it is a video, make sure it has the right script ready.
And now when you know how to create the right content strategy for your small business social media strategy, it is also time to define how are you going to reach new people.
Define How Are You Going To Reach People
This is another absolutely essential step for your small business social media strategy. Unless you know how you’re going to reach people, you’re never going to get a single customer out of the platform that you’re on.
There are always 2 main ways to reach new people.
First, you can leverage the algorithm’s own audience, and second, you can leverage people’s own audiences.
How are you going to do that?
How To Leverage Algorithm For Massive Reach
Every platform has different features where new content is shown to new people, regardless of whether or not they follow the creator.
For example, on Instagram it can be an explore page or hashtags, on LinkedIn it can be a search or recommendations in the home feed, and on and on.
What you want to do is to identify those features and study what is performing the best there. Then you want to model it.
If you’re going to do it long enough and test, then something like this can happen every day:
But you’ll have to be persistent until you find out what works and what the algorithm is going to promote to a ton of your dream customers.
However, it’s more than worth it.
How To Leverage People’s Own Audiences For Massive Reach
Here you’re obviously going to leverage other people to reach your dream customers. Basically, any kind of content sharing belongs here, influencer marketing belongs here, etc.
You’re not dependent on the algorithm here to reach people.
Instead, you’re dependent on how are you going to get in front of the audience other people have already accumulated.
Of course, you can do it free or paid way.
Both are effective, but remember that whenever you pay somebody you should do it only to get a positive return.
Otherwise, you won’t be able to do it consistently – ever.
Make sure you do your best to leverage people’s own audiences in such a huge way that it’s going to move masses to your profile and make your small business get more customers using social media than you could ever dream of.
Filip Konecny 