Small Business Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media is one of the best places where you can market your small business online. And that is also a reason why you should go there and actually do it.

The question is, what is the best small business social media marketing strategy? Well, that is exactly what I am going to show you how to do, today.

So are you ready to begin? If so, let’s dive in…

Pick The Right Platform

If you want your small business to be successful on social media, you need to pick the right platform in the first place.

For example, it is not likely a wise thing for a business lawyer to be dancing on TikTok, right? Instead, there is a ton more of his or her dream customers on LinkedIn and it will be way easier to get in front of them and make them buy.

So, how are you going to pick the right platform? Here is a simple formula that you can follow:

The platform must be relevant to your brand
The platform must have a huge congregation of your dream customers
The platform must have a great organic reach

When all of these things are true, then you are going to pick that platform and stick to it until you master it.

If you really need, you can be on two platforms in the beginning but I highly recommend not exceeding that number.

That’s because if you are going to focus on all of the social media platforms, you are unlikely going to perform well on any of them.

Yes, you can be on all the platforms if you have help. But it’s not likely that you have a lot of employees that would help you manage all of the social media platforms.

And now, let’s move on to to the actual small business social media marketing strategy…

Attract

This is the first part of this small business social media marketing strategy and it’s actually pretty simple.

This part means making new people become aware of your brand and become your followers.

And on every social media platform, there are only 2 ways to do that. You can leverage other people’s audiences or you can leverage the algorithm.

(There are actually 3 ways as you can also buy ads but I won’t cover that now.)

First, of course, you can leverage other people’s audiences. There are many ways to do that from engagement to influencer marketing. Here is a list of the best ones:

Influencer Marketing
Guest Posting
Engaging With Other People’s Posts
Going Live With Influencer
Collaborating With Bigger Accounts

Yes, it is not easy to leverage other people’s audiences. Actually, it can be really, really hard. You will have to contact a lot of people and you will hear “no” quite often.

But remember that all you need is that one “yes” and you can reach a ton of your dream customers.

However, there is another really powerful way, especially for small businesses, that is working like crazy when leveraging other people’s audiences (the audience of your dream customers), and that’s to incentivize sharing.

Here is an example of what I mean. Let’s say you’re a barber and you are one of the best in your area but, you don’t get the number of clients you’d want.

Well, you can start giving away something inexpensive in exchange for them sharing their haircut on social media. For example, a mini bottle of shampoo or a tiny discount for when they come again (which is a great idea as it would make them come again, and it would also be an incentive for them to share their cut.)

Now, here’s the thing. When they share it, all of their friends are going to see it and they will likely want to come.

That’s because there is nothing more powerful than a recommendation from a friend.

So, not that only you’ll get new followers, but you’ll also get new customers. And when you do the same thing with the people that will come, it will cause a chain reaction to happen, meaning that their friends will come and then the friends of the friends that came will come, and on.

It is a genius way to grow and get customers.

In case, you’re all online, you can incentivize sharing your content in exchange for some digital thing that costs you nothing to deliver but means the world to the area customer.

For example, if they share your two latest posts in stories, they will have a chance to win the reward and it is going to happen every week.

Just imagine how many of your followers would promote your account.

Ok, but now let’s move on to the second way of attracting your dream customers which is to leverage the algorithm of the platform that you’re on.

Leveraging the algorithm means making the platform show your content to more people.

It’s a significant part of this small business social media marketing strategy.

Here is what you need to do to successfully leverage the algorithm:

Write down all of the features where exposure is given (explore page, hashtags, search, etc.)
Find out what is performing the best there
Model it, test, and improve

That’s it. It is really simple, isn’t it? However, it is not easy. But if you stick to it, it is going to pay off.

Now you know how to attract your dream customers so let’s move on to the next part of this small business social media marketing strategy.

Nurture

In this part, you need to build trust and relationships with your followers and customers. That is going to make them loyal to your brand, engage with you, promote your brand, and buy.

To do that you need to share the right content that is going to help you build:

Authority
Relationships
Trust

That is why 40% of everything you share should be helping you to build one of these 3 things.

The content that does it is usually behind-the-scenes, educational, social proof, telling some story about an achievement, telling a backstory, etc.

You might be afraid to go behind-the-scenes but you definitely shouldn’t. There is a reason why you trust somebody you know more than you trust a company that is several times more qualified to do something than your friend.

It’s because of relationships. If you don’t go behind-the-scenes and tell stories, you’re not going to have any of them.

So, don’t be afraid to do that.

And now, let’s move on to another part of this small business social media marketing strategy which is to sell…

Sell

Ok, this is the last part of this strategy. The last thing you need to do if you want to be successful is to actually sell your products or services.

Do it carefully and always follow the 80/20 content rule so that you don’t lose followers like crazy.

Here is what the 80/20 rule consists of:

20% of content = promotion
80% of content = value

For example, if you share 10 posts a week, be careful not to make more than 2 of those posts promotional.

It is fine to promote at the end of the post or a video in a way that doesn’t interrupt the core message that you are trying to get over, but only 20% of all the content can be purely promotional.