These days, having an active social media presence is crucial for local businesses. It helps you to connect with your existing customers, attract new ones, and increase your profits.
The trouble is, building up a social media presence isn’t always easy. It takes time and effort to develop a strong online presence. Knowing what to post can also be an issue, especially when you are busy running your business.
Many local businesses don’t utilize social media for the simple fact that they think it will be too difficult. However, it might be easier than you think.
Here are some of the easiest, smartest ways to get more from your social media posting…
Research relevant hashtags
When you post on social media, hashtags help your content get seen. If you want to get maximum exposure, you need to make sure you are using the right hashtags.
You’ll want to make sure the hashtag you use is popular, but don’t forget to throw in some more specific hashtags too. Think about what your audience would type in to find your post.
On Instagram, you can add a long list of hashtags into the comment section of your post. However, to keep them spam free, it is recommended you only use a maximum of 3-5 hashtags per post.
Gather and use soft content on your channels
Get into the habit of collecting soft content that you can post on your social media channels. Examples of soft content include:
- Case studies
- Testimonials
- Employee announcements
You’ll notice these types of posts receive more engagement than standard sales posts. It shows your audience how you can help them and gives them an insight into your business.
Keep your posts simple
Local businesses tend to try and make their posts stand out with over-the-top visuals. Yes, you want your posts on social media to look good, but too much will turn customers off.
Keep your posts simple and use relevant graphics. If you are posting an image, don’t overload it with text. Instead, aim to have no more than 20% of text on the graphic.
Encourage engagement in your posts
When you post on social media, an algorithm decides how many people see it. Generally speaking, the algorithms used preference posts that have the most engagement.
There are lots of ways you can encourage your fans and followers to engage with your content. Asking a question at the end of your post, publishing sharable content, and responding to comments are all effective ways to boost engagement.
You could also run competitions and giveaways, asking your audience to like, comment, and share your post for a chance to win. This greatly boosts engagement, getting your post in front of a wider audience.
Focus on one platform
It’s tempting to try and build up a presence on all social media platforms. However, this doubles, if not triples, your workload.
Instead, focus on just one platform to get started with. Look at where your customers spend most of their time. Are they on Facebook? Or maybe they are professionals on a site such as LinkedIn? Whichever social network your audience use the most, start there.
Once you have mastered one platform, you can then look into expanding onto another one.
Utilize automated posting
Without a doubt one of the biggest social media challenges for local businesses is time. It is well known that if you want results from social media, you need to be posting regularly.
The more you post on social media, the more engagement you will receive. Customers like businesses to be active on social media, so if you are posting at least once a day, you’ll attract a wider audience.
So how do you find the time to keep up with social media? Well, you could hire a social media manager to do it for you, or you could utilize automated tools.
Automated tools include the likes of HootSuite, SocialBee, Sendible, and Loomly. You can schedule your posts to publish on specific dates, as well as control what time they are posted. After scheduling them, they will post automatically.
These are some of the best ways to make social posting work for your local business. It does take a lot of time and effort to build up a social media presence, but the tips above can help to speed things along.