Social Media Marketing is the best friend of small businesses

A staggering 90% of small businesses are not doing Social Media Marketing. Are you one of those 90%?

Having an account on social media like Facebook or Twitter and posting links to your products or service isn’t social media marketing. If you know that, then thumbs up! If you don’t, don’t worry, I will explain to you how to do social media marketing. Grab a pen and paper and let’s create your marketing plan!

Who are you?

Before even starting a marketing campaign, you need to define yourself: Who are you? Why should people care about you? The best way to do that is by asking yourself three simple questions:

• Why did I start this business?
• How do I present myself to the world?
• How would people describe my business?

After answering these questions, you will have a clearer view of who you are as a business and if you need to change something in order to be more consistent. Now you can craft your story, the one you will spread to the world. Because the story you tell is what defines you. It is what interests people. If your story is boring you won’t be remembered.

Los Angeles moms Liane Weintraub and Shannan Swanson were struggling to find organic and tasty food for their children, so they started to make their own products. Today, they’re co-founders of Tasty Brand.

George Vlagos is the son of a Greek immigrant who was cobbling shoes to support his family and secure a better future for his son. After George helped his father during weekends, he started to enjoy the world of shoes and he saw an opportunity to make great, quality shoes, handmade in America. This is how Oak Street Bootmakers was born.

→ With a clearer idea of who you are, you can create a new headline for your website and a new “About us” page.

Who are your customers?

A successful business needs customers, and to make sure our marketing campaign will attract the right people who will buy, we need to define a target customer. A little while ago, I hosted a dear friend of mine on my blog. Fran, who sells lapel pins on Etsy, was asked to share her experience on finding the target customer for her business. She starts with her definition:

The target is that group of people for whom your product is made for, a subset of customers having all the right characteristics to like, and we hope, to buy what you make.

I have listed some questions below to help identify your target customer.

• What do I imagine about the person buying my products? Woman or man? Skinny or fat? Elegant or casual? European or American? etc.
• Why should he/her buy my product?
• What benefit will he/she have by buying it?

→ Read Fran’s post here for additional tips on how to find your ideal customer.

What social media best spreads your voice?

The fact that there are dozens of social media out there doesn’t mean you need to be on each of them. You need to choose where to be and where not.
The choice depends mainly on your target customer and on who you are, so you now have all the ingredients to choose with caution.

• Facebook: By the end of 2013, it boasted 1.23bn monthly active users, 29.7% of its users are aged between 25 and 34, making it the most common age demographic. It’s for sure the biggest social network out there, but at the same time it has become more and more difficult to reach people if you don’t use paid advertising. I suggest you use it if your target demo is elderly because it’s difficult to find them in other social networks. Have a look at this page for other statistics about Facebook.
• Twitter: It’s my favorite social media because after you understand how it works, read this post if you don’t, it’s very immediate and simple to engage and to get noticed. If you sell to businesses or to professionals, tech guys, marketers, you should be here.
• Pinterest: 70 million users are on this social network and 92 percent of Pinterest Pins made by women. Those statistics make this social network perfect for targeting women. Other statistics can be found at this link.
• Instagram: I love Instagram as well because it gives me the possibility to share with the world my love for traveling and photography. It’s a growing social network with more than 200millions of users. All kinds of people are there, so depending on what you share, you will target one or the other. It’s a must if your target demo are teens or are looking for travel-related things.
• Youtube: It’s more than a social network, it’s also a tool to help you publish your videos on the web. Whether or not your target demo will find you will depend on what you publish. If for example you make tutorials about how to do crochet, you will find people learning that technique. I suggest you open a YouTube account if you want to create informative videos or tutorials.
• Other: There are other less popular social media but I only recommend them if you are certain your target market is there. At this link you can find a list with the most popular one.

What do I post on my social media accounts?

Now it’s time to create a marketing strategy for your business.
You have to think about the content you are going to share regularly on your accounts. You need a strategy to keep you focused.

There are three types of content:

• Content who links directly to one of your products on sale or to your service homepage
• Content that talks about you, (about your company culture, what you believe in, in general they share your story). Like a post talking about what you’re working on this week or your photo thanking your customers, etc.
• Content interesting for your target market. Let’s say your target market are sportive women because you sell women’s yoga/Pilates/fitness clothing. They are interested in new yoga techniques, fitness video tutorials, diets, etc. That type of content can be produced by you, through your blog for example, or you can look around the web for good content and share it.

It’s also important to use a variety of content. I’ve drawn a little graphic to demonstrate.

Volume of each type of content you should share by its proportion in the triangle.

So now you need to figure out what content your target market wants and start posting it.

Last things to keep in mind

Social media marketing is not an exact science. This means that the results that may come can vary depending on the market, quality of the campaign and the products promoted.

To get higher conversions rates keep in mind to:

• Post regularly. Regularity is key. Think about when you meet a new person. If you don’t keep the contact regularly it’s difficult for you to become friends. The same thing happens here. If you don’t follow and interact with people, you won’t create any relationships with them.
• Follow your accounts. Reply to comments and mentions.
• Invite people to follow you. At the beginning, it is difficult to build your fan base. Ask your friends and family to help you out by sharing your page. Ask your customers to follow you to receive interesting content and discounts in their next purchase.
• It takes time. Your fans and your sales won’t explode after the first day. You need to be patient and persistent.
• It takes efforts. After applying the aforementioned strategies for some time, you need to see if they work. If some don’t, then change the strategy and make them better.

Were you doing social media marketing this way?

→Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, you can reach me by email or by twitter.

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About me:

My name is Nicoletta Donadio. I’m an Italian graphic designer and social media strategist. I enjoy everything related to the word “create” from cooking, art to fashion. I’m the co-founder of Fanchimp, a tool to help small businesses do social media marketing right.