Take a look at your phone, tablet or recently visited web pages.
Do they include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or LinkedIn?
Yes, Pinterest is social media. So is YouTube.
83% of adults are on social media in the UK.
32.5 million people aged 18–54 use Facebook. The fastest growth is in older users, if your customers are 55+ Facebook is the place for you.
“Facebook gets used more than once a day by around 44 percent of the UK online population. Only 21 percent of UK adults that go online don’t use Facebook at all.” Stastista
Being Social
Social Media is exactly that, social. Yes there are stories about trolls and hackers — but these are in the minority and as for data scandals, Facebook is cleaning up its act and the stories haven’t turned people off social media, it is still growing.
There’s an art to social media marketing. Imagine being in a room of friends, chatting about your shared interests and sharing stories that you know everyone will like, people get involved in the conversation and you feel that warm glow that comes with healthy social interaction. That’s social media at its best. Now imagine blurting out something you think is boring, you didn’t really think about before saying and you get a tumbleweed response. That’s how a lot of social media is handled, one sided posting without much thought to how you can engage your customers or audience.
Customer Service
“Whatever!” you may say, “I don’t need social media marketing!” That’s fine, even if you don’t want to promote or actively market yourself or business on social media — social media accounts are useful places for customer interactions.
Say you run a baby massage class, it’s very successful, you’re fully booked thanks to word of mouth.
Social media IS word of mouth.
Imagine missing out on all those people who have heard of you, via a friend of a friend, but searched for you and found you have no presence online? Or the people who spend most of their social media time on just one platform, say, Twitter. They want to connect, they want to find out more but there isn’t even a Twitter page they can contact to ask about class times, or if you’re planning to run the classes next year?
The same goes for Facebook. It’s the most used platform. 79% of people who are online, are using Facebook. Many people now expect to get the same information on a Facebook page as they would on a website, eg, opening times, phone numbers and crucially, the ability to contact the business.
And how about feedback? Reviews? Facebook offers these options — no need to sign up to Trustpilot or ask people to leave a Google review (although that’s good too!), if you’re good at your job or service, you can set it up so the reviews can be the first thing people see when they land on your page.
No Website? No Problem!
A small business doesn’t even need a dedicated website anymore. No paying fees to update it, no maintenance, no code. All the information you need to give customers can be done via one or more social media platforms — and it’s free.
Fresh!
Having said that you don’t need to actively promote your business on social media, there’s nothing sadder than a dormant Facebook or Twitter account. If you’re not posting, even semi-regularly, it can make you look like you’re out of business.
An easy way to keep your feed looking fresh is to log in, every so often and retweet or share other people’s relevant posts. Add a pinned post to the top of your feed so it’s the first thing people see. You can even direct them to your website or other social platform if you have a preference, for example, you can use the information on your Twitter profile and in a pinned tweet to send people to your Facebook, if that’s where you are most comfortable.
If you’re comfortable with posting but don’t have the time — schedule. Twitter and Facebook both offer free scheduling services (tweetdeck, FB scheduler) and you can cross post to instagram from FB to save even more time. There are some great options for third party scheduling too including Buffer and Hootsuite, both of which offer a cheap or free level of service as well as professional level.
Competition
Lastly — remember your competition. If your competition is online and searchable across social channels and you are not — who is your potential customer going to find? If you’re the discoverable one on social media, you’ll have the edge over the competition.
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to get social!
If you like what you read here and want to know more check out www.digitalbeth.com