Social media is not just for posting the latest memes. Instead, it can be a great tool to help local businesses bring in new customers as well as to retain existing ones. However, there is a very thin line between customers wanting to follow your business and wanting to unfriend you. Businesses that share too many promotional posts may run the risk of overwhelming customers and alienating them.
Cultivating a social media presence is similar to maintaining relationships in real life. We will always be more interested in talking and hanging out with people who involve us in friendly conversations rather than people who are always trying to promote themselves or sell you stuff. Businesses can succeed by following the same philosophy. By maintaining a friendly rapport with customers on social media, small businesses can ensure that their customers remain interested and engaged.
Here are some smart marketing tips for small businesses to increase and maintain their customer base on social media.
1. Offer exclusive deals
Getting their customers to stay involved in the conversation with the business is very important to maintaining long term success. This is easily done by offering good deals, exclusive to social media followers. This is the simplest way to organically increase your audience and gain loyal customers. Making the customers feel like an “insider” will turn them into a brand ambassador for your small business and spread the word around for free!
2. Gather and analyze data
Unless it reaches the right audience and targets them with the most relevant content, any social media marketing campaign will be a wasted effort. There's lots of easy ways to get access to metrics in social media. Using this data to create an actionable plan, run campaigns, gather results, analyze outcomes, and then fine-tune goals and targets in an iterative manner is very important to make social media work for small businesses.
3. Focus on brand awareness, not just leads
As tempting as it may sound, making every post about offerings runs the risk of turning off customers. Most social media experts recommend an 80/20 ratio. Just 20 percent of posts should be promotional in nature while 80 percent should be content that is useful to customers and engages them in ongoing conversations. This will keep audiences interested in your narrative, and not exhaust their patience which is important for long term success.
4. Comment on posts
Maintaining the social aspect of social media is very important for small businesses to succeed. By commenting on customers’ comments, or by quickly responding to queries and suggestions, businesses can help make themselves come across as more human and personable. Listening to customers is the key. In addition to building trust, this process will also give businesses key insights into customer thinking and will help formulate strategies and marketing plans.
5. Create shareable content
Social media is a very effective tool to get free exposure for a business. Posts that are original, funny, insightful or otherwise interesting have a higher chance of getting shared by followers--garnering free publicity for your business. While coming up with viral content is not straightforward, using attention-grabbing headlines and thoughtful content can help posts stand out from the crowd.
6. Reading more than writing
Social media marketing also involves reading your audience’s online content and joining discussions to learn what is most important to them. Keeping up with the latest news and happenings in their field helps small businesses stay on top of the topics that will catch the most interest. It also gives the business owners and managers insight into what is trending, so they can come up with fresh content and avoid outdated topics. This practice helps increase the return on your social media investments.
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