As rewarding as it can be, running a small business isn’t easy. You have to keep an eye on everything from sales and customer service to HR and operations, not to mention thinking about innovation and staying relevant in a quickly changing world. When you’re being pulled in so many different directions, it’s no wonder if social media management for small businesses feels like a chore.
However, rather than thinking of it as just one more thing to worry about, it’s time to start looking at social media as a valuable tool that can win you customers. Social media provides small businesses with the opportunity to directly communicate with prospective and existing customers like never before, so it would be a mistake to neglect it.
Before you start dreaming up creative posts to promote your business though, you might want to take a look at some of our thoughts on managing your own social media strategy. These tips will help you manage your small business’s social media as efficiently as possible so you can spend more time on other aspects of the business.
Choose your social media channels based on your audience
Some social media management for small business services makes business owners feel like they need to be on every platform, which can be overwhelming. Trying to manage multiple platforms can quickly turn into a nightmare, especially if you’re trying to handle it on your own while running a business.
But the truth is, you don’t need to be on every platform. Your goal is to make it easy for people to find you online; being active on one or two platforms will look much more appealing to your target audience than having inactive accounts on every platform available.
Choose which platforms you want to focus on by studying the demographic of people using each platform and go with the platforms that best match your target audience.
It’s worth noting that certain cities (like Nashville, TN, with 2,576 social media influencers) are more social media-savvy than others, making them prime markets for social media campaigns.
Narrowing down your focus to the platforms that your target audience is likely to use will make managing your business’s social media more doable. Plus, it will help you focus on persona-based marketing rather than outdated transactional marketing techniques that don’t take the customer base into account.
Use free social media tools
When planning social media management for small businesses, it might seem like hiring social media consulting services is the only realistic way to do it. After all, social media marketing companies have access to fancy tools that allow them to create attractive posts and keep the posting schedule organized.
But what a lot of small business owners don’t realize is that there are plenty of free social media management tools designed especially for small businesses.
- Creating social media templates: Canva or Adobe Spark
- Scheduling social media posts: Buffer or Later
Making templates for your social media posts is an excellent way to help them stand out while saving you time in the long run. Once you take the time to create the initial template, it’s just a matter of plugging in new text as needed.
Scheduling tools like Hootsuite or Later can take social media management for small businesses from impossible to efficient. These tools allow you to set aside a specific time every week or month during which you can schedule forward-dated posts – no more feeling like you have to be actively posting on social media all day, every day.
Create social media post types
One trick that social media management for small business companies uses when it comes to post ideas is separating posts by type. You’ve probably already seen recurring post themes on your social media feed:
- Monday Motivation
- Throwback Thursdays
- Caturday
This strategy of regularly occurring posts can help you post more often without having to reinvent the wheel every time.
Don’t feel like you need to use an existing post type – tailor your post themes around your business. Does your used book shop get new donation shipments every Friday? Consider a weekly “Sorting Saturday” post that highlights some of the cool new inventory finds. Is your business based in Nashville, TN? You might try “Tennessee Tuesdays,” where you highlight points of pride in your city.
Break video content into shorter video clips
Many social media consulting services include creating video content that either creates brand awareness or educates your target audience about your products or services. Often, a lot of time and money goes into these videos, but business owners don’t get as much use out of them as they could.
An excellent way of repurposing existing content is to break longer videos into smaller clips that you can share on social media. That way, you can:
- Stress less about creating content by using what you already have
- Save money and time by using existing video instead of paying for new ones
- Raise interest in the longer videos on your site
Updating existing content is one of the easiest ways to make the most of your content and drive traffic to your website.
Provide something of value to your audience
It’s easy to get bogged down in the nitty-gritty of your business’s social media strategy, but it’s important to keep in mind that your posts need to add value if you want people to engage with them.
Make sure your posts offer your audience something, whether it’s:
- Advice
- Information
- Entertainment
- Giveaways
There’s no point in posting if no one’s interested: you need to give your audience a reason to stick around and engage with your posts. If you can give them a reason to tell their friends by creating shareable content, even better.
Get in touch with one of Nashville’s top-tier social media marketing companies
Need help with social media management for small businesses? Our social media consulting services, based in Nashville, TN, can help you get on the right track.
Contact us to schedule a risk-free discovery meeting.
