Social media is an incredible marketing tool for smaller businesses. It can help build brand awareness, generate leads, gain audience insights, and so much more. Thanks to viral posts and videos, platforms like Instagram and TikTok can propel a business’s presence overnight. And when compared to traditional and digital advertising, social media is often more cost-effective.
At the same time, social media can be daunting for smaller brands with limited resources. It can be easy for smaller teams to quickly burn out from everything they are expected to manage on top of social media. Here are four ways that small businesses can leverage social media for growth without burning out.
1. Schedule Posts in Advance
As a small business, you may feel you’re constantly being pulled in various directions. While you may intend to create an educational post for Instagram, you may run out of time during the day. However, inconsistency on social media won’t move the needle for your business growth. A regular posting schedule can help with brand awareness, engagement, and loyalty — three factors that are essential for any small business.
Thankfully, there are different software applications available to assist in scheduling your posts ahead of time. Marketing automation for small businesses makes it easier to manage all of your social platforms on one comprehensive dashboard. From this dashboard, you can create posts and schedule them accordingly. With this type of system in place, you’ll likely find that you’re posting more consistently and reaping the rewards. Posting during peak times will improve your posts and your follower count will grow.
2. Create Valuable Content
Everybody can be a content creator these days. For small businesses, this means that you’re competing for attention from just about everyone with a social presence. Bigger brands and well-known influencers have the budgets to attract and capture larger followers; however, it’s important to remember that smaller businesses are in the same arena. With the right type of content, you have an equal shot to gain attention and grow your follower count.
This is why creating valuable content is so important. When you provide information that is educational, your audience will view you as a reliable source. After learning something new, they may return to your profile for other similar learnings. While engaging and entertaining content can be beneficial for growing your loyalty base. This type of content has a high chance of being shared, boosting likes, comments, and overall engagement rates.
When creating content, think about the purpose of it. There is a time and place for more informational and entertaining content. See what types of content currently perform the best, and experiment with similar content. By analyzing what is working, you can continue to lean into the areas that your audience has come to expect from your social page.
3. Engage With Your Audience
As a small business, engaging with your social media audience is just as important as posting valuable content consistently. Dedicating an hour each day for engagement can have tremendous benefits. Engaging with your audience builds trust, loyalty, and a sense of connection to the brand. You’ll also learn more about your audience’s needs and better understand the challenges they are facing. This can help with product ideation, improved customer service, and a stronger brand presence.
Engaging can look like having someone respond to comments, answer questions, and like followers’ messages on your posts. When others see that the brand is communicating directly with followers, it shows that you care. You’ll build stronger relationships, which is especially important for e-commerce brands that don’t have the option to build in-person relationships.
4. Cross-Post and Repurpose Content
Creating new, innovative social media content isn’t easy. It can be time-consuming, especially for small businesses that don’t have a dedicated social media team. Cross-posting and repurposing content is one way to overcome this hurdle.
Cross-posting is the act of taking content from one social platform and adapting it to fit another platform. Doing so will save you time and effort while also maximizing the content’s visibility. With over 100 million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram daily, it’s easy for even your most dedicated followers to not see one of your posts.
To cross-post successfully, you need to understand your audience on each respective platform. Those following you on TikTok may be looking for something different than those following you on Facebook. Also, adapt the content so it best aligns with the platform. If you’ve created a long-form video for YouTube, chop it into segments for Instagram Reels or TikTok videos. Remember, you may need to change your tone to match the platform and specific demographic.
One last tip on cross-posting: Avoid overdoing it. A brand that shares similar or the same content across all of its social media platforms can be seen as repetitive. Instead, choose posts that performed well on one social site and find how to repurpose them for another one. But don’t expect a viral Instagram Reel to perform just as well a month later on TikTok. Timing is everything, especially in the world of social media.
Conclusion
Social media is a critical component in today’s marketing ecosystem. For smaller businesses, social media can boost brand exposure, increase brand presence, and generate larger audiences. Follow the above tips to grow your brand without burning out your team.
