Blog - Social media for small to medium businesses

How to improve your social media marketing – words that convert

Creating effective content for your social media marketing is a key challenge for any small to medium business. Whether you are crafting a post for your social media page or developing an advertisement, the words and phrases that you use need to provoke interest and compel the reader to take action.

In this great infographic, Uberflip dives into the emotional and psychological side of words and shares the ones that are most persuasive and effective at getting people to take action.

It is interesting to note that things have not really changed since the 60’s. We still love an element of exclusivity, scarcity, power, and to feel secure which is why its worth keeping this in mind when preparing content for your social media marketing.

If you’d like help with preparing effective content for your social media marketing then please get in touch.

Why you should set social media goals for your business

by Focus SME | Social media, Strategy

One of the most common mistakes small to medium businesses (SME’s) make when it comes to social media marketing, is failing to set specific social media goals. In today’s age where platforms like Facebook boast 15,000,000 monthly users in Australia alone, it’s even more important to develop a clear strategy with specific aims if you want to achieve effective growth.

A key part of using social media to build your brand is setting targeted goals and developing your social media strategy with a clear direction. Winging it with non-targeted content is often going to be a waste of time and money. Taking the time to identify a clear goal will help you get the most out of social media. Below are five of the most common social media goals for businesses:

1. Brand awareness

With over 2.7 billion people now using social media, this channel has become one of the best places to promote your brand and make a name for yourself. As such, if you want to build your reputation and get attention on social media, then brand awareness should be your social media goal. Yet developing content that can cut through all the clutter and connect with your audience is an ongoing challenge.

To build brand awareness, your content needs to be high quality and valuable enough for people to want to share it with others. Providing tips or information that is useful or enjoyed by your audience is the key to building brand awareness on social media. Competitions can also be effective, as people love to win something for nothing.

The best way to measure your brand awareness is to look at the reach, followers, shares and mentions of your posts on social media. Although they are separate social media goals, brand awareness ultimately works hand-in-hand with engagement, if you want people to see your brand, then you need to create engaging content.

2. Engagement

Building engagement is a very important social media goal as it encourages brand building, generates referrals, and determines how your content is prioritised and how many people you will reach. On social media, the engagement of your audience is measured by how many likes, shares and comments they make on your posts. In other words, engagement provides an insight into how effectively your content is capturing the interest of your audience.

If your goal to increase engagement, you should design a strategy to produce content that provides maximum value to your customers. For example if you run a real estate agency, you could post or share an article on “5 tips to increase the sale price of your home”. In this example, the content is providing an informative checklist to help the agency’s target audience.

3. Lead generation

In many cases, boosting engagement isn’t enough and you might choose to make lead generation the primary social media goal for your business. Lead generation is where you reach out to, and entice new customers to enter your sales funnel. If this is your goal, all your efforts on social media are used to prime them for a sale or conversion.

In order to achieve this you need to run customer journey and nurture campaigns to persuade them to do business with you. With a lead generation campaign you’re playing the long game, and nurturing your prospects. The best metrics for assessing your progress are subscriptions, downloads, clicks and conversions.

4. Website traffic

When it comes to online presence, your website is your HQ. As such, driving traffic to your website is another common social media goal for SME’s. The more prospects you get onto your website, the more you expose them to your brand proposition and targeted content like blogs or newsletters. As a bonus, driving traffic to your site will also improve your search engine ranking.

If driving website traffic is your goal on social media, you need to make your page easy to find. Including call-to-actions (CTA’s) in every post you make will help to boost your click-through rates and drive traffic to your site. To measure this goal you need to use Google Analytics.

Google Analytics will help you to determine which social media platforms your customers are coming from (traffic per channel), the quality of the customers being sent and the quality of content on your site (bounce rates), and which messaging resonates the most with your customers (clicks). Reviewing this information will help you determine areas for improvement so you can refine your strategy accordingly.

5. Customer service

Finally, if you’re looking to provide a higher standard of service for your customers, setting customer service as your social media goal could work for your business. Providing full customer support on social media can greatly enhance the experience of your customers and increase your overall revenue. The best way to achieve this goal is to respond to customer enquiries quickly and listen to what your customer’s are saying to see where you can exceed their expectations.

In order to measure your standard of customer service you want to look at your response time and minimise it as much as possible. Likewise, it’s a good idea to keep track of how many queries you receive and their accompanying conversion rate. You can track these manually or use one of the many social listening tools available for businesses.

Small to medium businesses need targeted social media goals

If you want to get the most out of your social media strategy, it’s important to set targeted social media goals. Specific goals allow you to develop highly targeted content that increases your results. However, it’s important not to fall into the trap of trying to achieve everything at once. Instead, concentrate on breaking down one goal at a time until you’ve delivered clear returns.

If you’d like help with setting up and executing effective social media goals for your business then please get in touch.

6 social media strategy tips for small businesses

by Focus SME | Social media, Strategy

With over 3.196 billion active social media users, its no surprise that social media is one of the best ways to reach your target audience online. However, many companies find it difficult to build a cohesive social media strategy, and all too often, proceed without a plan. Unfortunately, this ad hoc approach tends to result in poor engagement and a waste of valuable time.

It’s one thing to create a page on Facebook or Twitter, but it’s another to consistently engage your audience. Yet with a little bit of preparation you can greatly increase your chances of building your online presence in your industry. We’ve come up with six ways you can improve your social media strategy to help build your brand.

1. Define your social media goals

Before you do anything, you need to outline a plan. From the moment you start posting content you should have clear goals in mind. Whether your looking for lead generation, engagement, sales awareness or web traffic, you need to be tailoring your approach to this end.

For example, if your goal is to increase engagement then you need to develop a social media strategy tailored to achieving this. In order to achieve this goal you would need to post content that provides value to the reader and provokes conversation. Providing value in this way would get people commenting on your posts, and actively engaging with your brand.

2. Choose the right channel

There are many different social media channels but some of the most popular include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. However, not all social media channels are the same so you need a different approach for each channel. What works on one channel may not work on another because they may be comprised of different demographics or geared towards a particular type of content.

For example, Twitter is notorious for the 280-character tweet limit, which means that you have to be very direct with any content you post. In terms of audience, LinkedIn is more suited to the business-to-business (B2B) market whereas Pinterest is more consumer-focused. Every platform has different strengths, so tailor your social media strategy to each channel!

3. Create a killer profile

Your online profile is the centre of your social media account, yet many businesses neglect their profile pages in favour of pushing out content. This is a mistake. When you create your page the first thing you want to do is to add some great images, flesh it out with some engaging and professional copy and optimise it for keywords. Although it might seem like a simple profile page, it is often the first point of contact for potential customers so it should reflect your best brand.

You should also be encouraging your audience to click through to your website. Using basic call-to-actions (CTA’s) such as “click here for more information” is a good way to start driving traffic to your site. By taking the time to tweak your profile you’ll provide a good brand impression and be able to guide your prospects down your sales funnel when they come to your page.

4. Post quality content consistently

When it comes to content on social media, posting consistently is key. Every post, whether it’s a short sentence with a CTA, a picture or blog post, should offer something in terms of entertainment or informative value. In your social media strategy, you should be aiming for 80% quality engaging content and 20% promotion.

By providing quality content, you keep your audience coming back for more, and it also helps you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Producing content that prioritises value over promotion serves your customers much better and makes them want to do business with your brand.

5. Start conversations

One of the keys to social media is starting conversations. Your social media page is not just a marketing platform but also a direct point of contact between you and your customers. As such, customers are going to be coming to you with their questions. Answering their questions and engaging them in conversation is a great way to build a relationship.

It’s also a good idea to connect with other businesses in order to maximise your reach and increase your contacts in the industry. By positioning yourself amongst the competition you get yourself on more people’s radar.

6. Revisit and refine your social media goals

No matter what your social media strategy is, it’s important to regularly revisit and refine your goals. If you set a goal, periodically reassess your progress and consider how your strategy could be refined. For example if your goal is increasing engagement, consider how you’re measuring that goal. You should be looking at reactions such as likes, comments and shares.

If you aren’t getting the reactions you want, you need to refine your strategy. Changing the format and style of your content will help to improve your connection with your audience.

Preparation is key

To effectively use social media, preparation is vital. Developing a plan for your social media will provide a much better result. Without a clear social media strategy and well-defined goals, your progress will be poorly targeted and slow. Even if your plan is basic, it acts as a starting point that you can add to, or take away from over time.

Social media is constantly evolving, so if your strategy starts falling flat and your content fails to engage be ready to change it up! If you test out enough content you’ll find a strategy that sticks. Ultimately, so long as you commit to understanding your audience and providing value, you will always find a way to engage them.

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5 reasons why SME’s should be on social media

by Focus SME | Social media

In the past few years, the online market has grown in staggering proportions. And, as more and more businesses incorporate digital marketing into their strategy, social media platforms are becoming more important than ever before. For small to medium businesses (SME’s) with low budgets, social media has become a great way to build brand awareness and develop meaningful relationships with customers. Below we look at why SME’s should be active on social media.

1. Building relationships with your customers

At a basic level, social media is an effective strategy for directly engaging your target audience. At the touch of a button, your audience can like, retweet or follow your content and engage with your brand. Likewise, you can respond to customer comments and engage in organic conversations very effectively.

No other traditional advertising medium offers you the opportunity to engage in a direct conversation with your audience. Fostering relationships with your target audience not only assists with driving sales, but also develops brand loyalty. The more your customers feel connected to your brand, the more they come back for more.

2. Developing customer insights

One of the best things about social media is it allows you to develop a deeper understanding of your target audience. Everyday you’re active on social media producing content and engaging with your followers, you generate a mass of data about your audience. Every online interaction provides you with valuable information.

When your audience reacts to a piece of content you produce, it tells you a ton about what their preferences are and the relationship they have with your brand. You can then utilise this information to tailor your social media strategy towards your target audience. The better you understand your audience, the better you can produce content that resonates with them.

3. Less expensive than traditional marketing

An added benefit of social media, particularly for SME’s with low budgets, is that’s its free to setup a business page and start communicating with your existing and potential customers. If you choose to incorporate paid advertising, the costs are substantially less than traditional marketing and the high targeting ability and large reach provides an attractive return on investment (ROI). This makes it easier for small businesses to compete with global brands thereby providing a more level playing field.

Whilst having a page for your business is important, with the ever-changing algorithms on social media, and in particular, the new Facebook update, it’s becoming increasingly important to use paid advertising alongside your organic social media campaigns. Organic (free) social media is a great way to build brand loyalty, however it is a long-term strategy so paying for advertising on social media is recommended if you want to build brand awareness quickly.

No matter what your strategy is, make sure you’re posting content that provides value to your target audience. In doing so, you will benefit from a reach that dwarves that of traditional advertising.

4. Build brand awareness and reputation

It’s no secret that social media is one of the most cost-effective mediums for building brand awareness. Statista notes that Facebook alone boasts over 2.2 billion active monthly users, and according to a report in The Drum it influences over 50 per cent of consumers purchases. Other social media sites such as Instagram boast 800 million active monthly users, as reported by Statista. In other words, there are plenty of potential customers available on social media for SME’s to start connecting with.

Regularly posting on social media enables you to build a direct relationship with your audience, and establish yourself as a credible brand within your industry. It provides you with a platform to connect with your target audience and demonstrate your expertise. The more your brand awareness and reputation increases, the greater chance you have of customers wanting to do business with you.

5. Social media improves the customer experience

In an age where customer expectations are higher than ever before, having a social media page provides you with a platform to meet customer expectations. Rather than trawling through your website to piece together an answer, if a customer has a query about your brand or a product, they can simply go to your page and ask you directly. Providing a swift response creates the impression that you care about your customers, and go the extra mile to provide a quality service.

In summary, social media is the most cost-effective tool for building your online presence and developing a wide network of followers. Long-term engagement with your followers will not only nurture leads, but also build meaningful relationships with your customers. The better you understand your customers, the better you can service their needs.

If you’d like to know more about how social media can help take your SME to the next level, get in touch here.