Small Biz in A Digital Age: Social Media
Monday, November 10, 2014
The world of business is moving faster -- hyper fast. Small businesses face the challenge of trying to keep up and innovate their business to create an advantage.
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This week, GoLocal brings you a guide to understanding the impact social media has on your target market and how to be effective with your marketing on a social platform.
Social Media
Small businesses are beginning to see social media as the final frontier of marketing, AdAge reports that 74.5% of small businesses now use social media for advertising and promotional purposes. This is up from the reported 71.7% of businesses using social platforms last year. Small businesses are also spending more on social media campaigns than virtually any other medium; print and outdoor media advertising accounts for only about 18.5% of what the small business market spends compared to 21.4% for social media.
Social media companies themselves are also seeing the value in growing businesses through their technology, "If you have a mobile phone and you have a Facebook page, you have a mobile marketing strategy," says Dan Levy Facebook's Director of Small Business. Facebook estimates that over 30 million small business owners have their own active pages on the site.
Creating Unique Content
Social platforms have a great reach and are effective at communicating a brand image unique to that business - the key is understanding what content goes where.
"Don’t post the same information in the same way on all social media platforms," says Forbes' Small Business Expert Ilya Pozin. "[... T]here is a magic formula of what to post where. The simple answer — maintain the same brand voice across each platform, but recognize different types of content work better for different platforms."
The message here is that small businesses need to be practical when they post: visual content of a new product or shop tableau belongs on Instagram, quick, textual information - such as a new sale or discount for students - belongs on Twitter.
It is simply not enough for a small business to be active on social media, you also have to be nimble, timely, and unique with any post or content you create for your platforms.
Discovering your own formula for creating unique content on social media will only help your business succeed and extend your reach to more potential clients.
But most importantly, be engaging and have fun - it is a social platform after all.
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