750 words – 5 minute read
Want to leverage Social Media?
As a small business you likely have a small budget for advertising. So optimizing your ad spend is a critical investment decision. In this article we’ll look at the top three social media sites that you should look at for reaching your target audience.
As of 2017, daily social media usage of global Internet users amounted to 135 minutes per day, up from 126 daily minutes in the previous year. 21 percent of U.S. online time is spent on social media content and 60 percent of users access via a smartphone (2016). Thus, it’s very likely that your target market can be reached effectively online.
The top 3 social media resources that you need to consider are Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
As of September 2017, Instagram had over 800 million monthly and 500 million daily users. It is one of the most popular social media sites in the world. Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012, so the two apps now have better integration for sharing content across the platforms.
To be effective on Instagram, you need to post compelling images. Text-based messaging can be a part of your post, or included as text over the image, but you’ll need to have a steady stream of images to build a following on Instagram. Product or lifestyle photos are an effective imaging strategy on Instagram. Here are the two keys to developing a following on Instagram:
- Use relevant hashtags on every post
- Post often
TIP: If you’re looking for a good source of free stock photos, check out these online sources. You can download an image and then edit it as necessary to fit your marketing needs (like adding quoted text over the image).
LinkedIn is the primary social media tool for business to business and it is especially useful for B2B marketing. With 500 million users, 40% of which login everyday, LinkedIn can be a great resource for reaching targeted business users.
There are a couple of strategies for getting started with LinkedIn:
- Create a company page (free)
- Post/share relevant product and other content on your company page and in your personal LinkedIn feed
- Create and use LinkedIn ads
TIP: LinkedIn Groups are a feature that enable LinkedIn users to self identify their passion and interests. It’s a good tactic to join relevant LinkedIn Groups and share relevant content there. Each group moderator can set the rules for posting in a group, be sure to follow those rules or you might find yourself forever banned from the group.
As of the third quarter of 2017, Facebook had 2.07 billion monthly active users. Over 1 billion of those users visiting the site every single day.
Facebook just announced a change in their news feed algorithm. The result is intended to reduce the number of business related ads which will show up in your personal Facebook feed (a good thing if you’re a Facebook user). The direct result is that any Facebook ad is going to get fewer eyeballs on it. This is why I ranked Facebook as number three in the top 3.
Facebook Pixel is the advertising tool used by businesses to setup and managed ads on Facebook. You’ll need to setup a Facebook Pixel account before you can post an ad on Facebook. Facebook Pixel is still a powerful tool for targeting and tracking ads placed on the site. Targeting ads with Facebook Pixel is a paid feature of Facebook.
TIP: At a minimum, you’ll want to setup a Facebook page for your business, so that Facebook users can find you on the site. You need to have a personal Facebook account to create a business page, however customers visiting your business page, are entitled to see what’s on your personal page, unless you connect with them as a friend. Once the Facebook company page is created, you can share admin rights (i.e. the right to post content) to anyone else in your company. Creating and sharing content on your company Facebook page is free, and it’s a simple way to get started building an audience on Facebook.
Sharing content
The key to building momentum with social media is to setup and use sharing buttons on your website. Once you have the social media accounts created for your business, be sure to setup the social media sharing buttons on your website and include them on each page and blog article that you publish. This will enable visitors to quickly share the content on their personal social media sites and drive traffic back to your site.
TIP: Every FIRE Website Builder template includes social media sharing buttons. You’ll need to configure them in the admin console, but then they will automatically be displayed for your visitors.