Most big corporations recognize the benefits of having Facebook and Twitter accounts, but it is less common to find small businesses using these sites.
One reason for this may be the time investment that social media requires. It takes times to blog, publish, and update social media accounts. Since most small business owners feel they are too busy to post, they never get around to setting up accounts.
Other business owners feel they don’t need to establish a web presence, and fail to see a direct correlation between online networking, and increased sales.
However, this is a mistake. In today’s tech-saturated world, it’s becoming increasingly important for companies to have a web-presence. Is it absolutely necessary? Nope, not at all, many small businesses still function without a blog or a Facebook account. But is it helpful? Yes!
Having a well-established web-presence adds credibility to your company, and is a great way to boost publicity, allowing customers to find you easily. When done correctly, social networking can even led to increased sales.
It’s important to post interesting content, in order to gain followers and keep people coming back.
So what are some ways that small business owners can be sure they are providing content worth following?
Know What Your Customers Want
Know your customer. Think about what goals your product can help them meet or which of their problems that your product can solve. Simply advertising your products by talking about their features isn’t enough; they have to have a value to your customer.
Provide Interesting Content
Provide content that customers care about and are interested in seeing. Provide likeable, easy to share content that they would enjoy commenting on, or sharing with their friends.
Ways to Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines
Create Relevant Topics and Keywords
Knowing what your customers are interested in allows you to optimize your site for search engines. By creating topics based on customer needs, and including keywords that potential customers are likely to search out, you can increase the traffic to your account.
Update Consistently
This doesn’t mean you can only publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it does mean you should try to publish content on a regular basis.
Blogs should be updated, at least once a week –more often ideally. In fact, according to hubspot.com: 92% of companies who blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog.
Social media sites need updated often as well. On average, your Facebook status updates only make it to about 16% of your followers– meaning that only 16 out of every 100 of your followers will actually see your status updates. Consistently publishing content is an important way to ensure you are seen.
Set a schedule for link building, this includes blogging, and all social media activity. I find that if it’s not scheduled, it’s less likely to get done.
Tips for Gaining Followers
Keep it Professional
It’s great to be friendly and maintain an approachable social media account, it’s equally important to keep it professional. That means having a separate business page on Facebook, and keeping the friendly banter with friends and inside jokes on your personal one.
Keep it Consistent
People follow a blog or social media account, because they know what to expect from it. Blogs that publish a mishmash of unrelated information on a wide variety of topics won’t attract followers. Keeping the stream of information on topic is important.
Keep it Real
Set goals for your account, but keep them realistic. When some businesses set up a blog, they expect it to bring in floods of new customers. When this doesn’t happen, they feel they failed in their social media strategy. Other businesses join only because ‘everyone else is doing it.’ This peer pressure mindset is a common reason that people find themselves dissatisfied with the returns their social media accounts generate. Knowing what you want to get out of a social media account is important for gauging your success.
Taking small steps can help ensure that you are consistently providing interesting content; the kind that people want to read. Keeping up to date on your customer’s needs and showing your online readers how your company can help them meet those needs can go a long way towards boosting your online hits, and ultimately is what makes you, worth following.