10 Ways to Improve Your Business’s Social Media Presence

Social media has made it easy for people to create a business & get their first few sales with the support of friends & family. It provides free marketing for your business while allowing you to showcase your products & personality to customers. Social media can help you to grow your customer base without having to spend large sums of money. People are spending most of their time scrolling online — If small businesses want to grow, social media is a great place to invest their time. We have compiled a list that can help your small business improve its social presence. 

1. Have a Strategy

Wanting to build your social media presence is a great goal, but you need to have a plan on how you’re going to get it done! You should decide on who your target audience is going to be, which platforms you plan to use, what kind of content you want to post, and how often it goes up. Once you are decided on your game plan, it makes it easier to work towards your goal.

2. Use Multiple Platforms

You should have social media pages on different platforms in order to reach a larger audience. Not all of your customers will have a Facebook page, so you should also use Instagram or Twitter. If you have a younger target audience, posting to a TikTok channel is a great way to engage your customers. Broadening your outreach to multiple social media platforms will help you expand fan base & make it more likely you’ll be noticed by potential customers who have never heard of you.


 

3. Add Social Icons to Emails & Your Website

Adding social media icons to the bottom of your website & on the bottom of emails is an easy way to grow traffic to your pages. Icons are small enough where they won’t become obnoxious or overshadow your content, but they are simple enough for your customers to navigate. Icons also make it easier for customers to check out your social media pages without having to through the trouble of searching for you themselves.

4. Create Content with Your Audience in Mind

Your posts should be created with your audience in mind in order to keep them interested. Customers follow your page because they want to be informed on new products or sales. If your posts tend to be unengaging or off-topic, customers will begin to unfollow you. A great way to encourage new followers & to help maintain your current ones is to host giveaways on your page. Giveaways are a smart way to grow your customer base by asking your followers to share a post in order to be entered in the drawing. All you must give up is a product or gift card and in return you have gained new potential customers by bringing them to your socials.


 

5. Maintain a Presence 

Every social media platform is constantly being loaded with new content. A user could refresh their feed & have a new story or post pop up everytime. This makes it easy for your posts to get pushed to the bottom of the line-up. To make sure your presence online is being maintained, you should be posting to your page pretty regularly. You should try to share on your page, whether it be a story or post, at least once a day. Do some research on what the most popular time to scroll is among your target audience — posting daily won’t do you much good if you’re posting when no one is around to view or engage with your content. When you aren’t posting, you should be engaging with your followers by liking or responding to their comments.

6. Use HootSuite or Later to Schedule Posts

Later & HootSuite are marketing platforms that allow you to schedule posts to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, & Pinterest. Scheduling your content in advance will save you the time of having to think & post content to your page everyday. This will also allow you to schedule social media posts that advertise corresponding scheduled store promotions to help boost your sales. By using Later or HootSuite, you are able to plan how your social media pages are going to look without having to test posts live. These platforms also offer their own analytics to help you get feedback on what types of posts get the best engagement from your customers.

 

7. Engage with Your Audience

Although what you post is important, it is also important that you are engaging with your followers. You should be responding to & liking comments, sharing posts, asking questions, & addressing complaints on your page. This shows your customers & followers you care about their experience & are paying attention to their feedback. Social media is a way for you to gain your customers trust & give them an insight into your business.

8. Use Hashtags

Using hashtags on your posts is an easy way to bring more traffic to your social media page. Your hashtags should be relevant to your post & the type of store you have. If you own a coffee shop in Detroit, you’ll want new users to stumble on your page when they search “#detroitcoffee.” Hashtags are also helpful in getting your customers to engage with your brand — create a hashtag specific to your brand & encourage your customers to use it to share their experience with your company. This will allow you to click on the hashtag & find any posts your customers have made, making it easier to interact with or reshare them. Make sure when you’re using hashtags not to use them excessively. The average number of hashtags businesses use is around 11.



 

9. Share Your Customers’ Reviews

Social media can be free marketing & advertising for your business. You should be asking your customers to share their purchases with their friends through social media. It is an easy way to get the word out about your business to people that have never heard of you. Plus, sharing these posts on your business page will let potential customers know that your current clientele is happy with your product or service. Customers love having their posts shared by businesses — it makes them feel special and acknowledged.

10. Provide Quality Customer Service

If you want to maintain customers & social media followers, you need to have great customer service. Many customers are now commenting or sending direct messages to businesses social media pages about product issues. In order to keep your customers happy & your business thriving, you should try to respond as quickly as possible. Providing quality customer service will help you maintain a good image & limit the spread of negative feedback about your business. 

 
In order to correctly measure whether your game plan is working or not, you should watch for new followers & more engagement. Each business owner will want their social media to look & be run differently. Don’t be afraid to try different ideas to see what works & what doesn’t.