Managing Social Media for Small Business Owners
Whether big or small, its imperative for any business to have a social media marketing presence. Social media marketing allows companies to have a digital footprint. Thus, with that footprint, businesses can better promote their products and services at a global level. Social media marketing allows companies to develop a more content-heavy, editorial marketing approach. Through this approach, they can better highlight their offerings. But most importantly, for small business owners, social media marketing allows businesses to market their product to a much broader customer base, at a relatively low cost. Social media for small business owners is imperative for increased sales, visibility and opportunities.
Unfortunately, small business owners often wear many hats. Whether it’s administrative duties, product/service development, or the task of expanding one’s team — it can get difficult juggling many duties. What shouldn’t be difficult, is implementing a small business social media marketing plan. Keep reading for 5 tips for managing social media for small business owners.
Develop Social Media Marketing Goals
The first step in managing social media for small business owners is to set goals. In order to be a successful social media marketer, you need to understand where you are on social and where you want to go. To do that, you must set smart goals. So, sit down with your team, whether its a team of one or a team of many, and get thinking!
What are “smart” goals you ask? Smart goals are:
Specific
, they are clear and are well defined on what needs to be achieved.
Measurable
, they can be evaluated as to whether or not they were achieved.
Attainable
, they are realistic in nature.
Relevant
, they are important to the business and will have an impact.
Time-based
, they are set to a specific timeframe.
An example of a smart social media goal: We will increase our Instagram follower rate by 15% in 8 months’ time.
Create Social Media Content Calendars
The thought of creating an entire line up of social media content for your small business can seem daunting. You may be asking yourself: when should I post? What should I post? and where?! Luckily, content calendars are the perfect resource for managing social media for small business owners. Content calendars are content schedules that layout exactly when, where, and what will be posted. Whether its a google spreadsheet, calendar app, or in InDesign, your social media content calendars will take the burden off of social media marketing. When creating your calendars, it’s imperative to align your content with special holidays, the seasons, cultural trends and any company-specific events. Launching a new product? Having a big sale? Make sure you create content and ensure all of your company happenings are leveraged on social!
Create Content Efficiently
Another important tip for managing social media for small business owners is to ensure that you keep a steady stream of content. But, that doesn’t mean that you have to create a plethora of new content. Instead, regenerate your existing content to new formats with the Issuu Story Cloud. The Issuu Story Cloud is a suite of digital publishing products for businesses, brands and creators of all types to create Issuu Stories, magazines, marketing collateral and more, then share to the web and social.
The Issuu Story Cloud streamlines content creation and distribution by transforming your content into exciting Instagram Stories, AMP Stories, Link Stories and more. A few helpful Issuu resources for small business social media marketers include:
Create once and share your small business content everywhere with Issuu. The Issuu Story Cloud makes it simple to convert content into new formats for sharing on websites, as mobile Issuu Stories on social and across the web. From brochures to lookbooks, any small business content can be revamped into Stories style. Slick scrolls, vivid imagery, and enticing large text will make your business content pop. Thus, making it extremely shareable and highly engageable on various social platforms.
Start making Issuu Stories today >
With Issuu’s end-to-end digital small business solutions, brands can market their content to social with ease. Visual Stories allows users to share their content to Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, Snapchat and more in an impactful way. By downloading the Issuu iOS App, Android App or the Issuu Adobe InDesign Extension, anyone can now effortlessly turn their existing content into mobile and social optimized formats. Let impactful quotes and strong imagery grab the attention of viewers with Visual Stories.
Discover our Free Instagram Story Templates >
Post, Interact + Analyze Your Content
Now that you’ve created your content, it’s time to post! By leveraging social scheduling tools like Tailwind and Sprout Social, you can easily schedule your content to post over a series of time. Once your content goes live, it’s imperative to interact with it. Be sure to monitor who’s liking and commenting on your feed. If followers ask a question, answer them! If you see other businesses following your page, be sure to follow other brands that align with yours. And once you have enough content to analyze, start to understand your content and followers. Make note of the times your content gets the most interactions, and what type of content it is. From there, be sure to develop new content with your findings in mind.