Small Business, Small Budgets, Big Ideas. How To Make Your Social Media Campaigns Work For You!

Social media today drives the internet. Naturally, it is the preferred channel for businesses to reach out to consumers, generate brand buzz, and achieve business goals. Businesses big or small, all have social profiles and are working towards making their presence felt on social media. Here are some tips I recently came across on how to crush social media marketing while optimizing limited resources.  
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Social Media marketing becomes more difficult if you are on a shoestring budget. But if you are thinking about it – you are on the right track. Let’s find out how you can optimize and effectively utilize your limited resources for an effective social media marketing strategy.

Before You Start, Look At The Big Picture!

You have to be economical, which means you cannot splurge to experiment widely and see what works. So, start small. Conduct a simple survey to understand who your potential customers are, where they are spending most of their time, and what kind of content they like to engage with. You cannot target everyone, but narrowing down your options will help you use your resources more concretely and effectively.  To get the most out of the process, follow these simple procedures:

Identify the right audience:
Use surveys and gather feedback to understand what your customers want, which target audience is most likely to find value in your business, and what their preferences are.

Determine the right content:
Audience analysis helps you determine the type of content your target audience would prefer consuming. Would they prefer quizzes? How about story form content? Which contest are they more likely to enjoy: the one that gives them free passes to a book launch or the one with a discount coupon on their favorite sports gear? Pick the content that fits your brand persona. For example, does your product need demonstrations? Video content might be the answer for you.

Ascertain the right social channels:
Once you have identified whom you are targeting, you can figure out which social channels they use the most. If you are in the travel industry, Instagram and Facebook may be the best channels for getting engagement. You need not spread your eggs across all baskets, a strong presence and a focused approach on a couple of channels will be more effective.

Set Your Social Media Goals
It is essential to have realistic expectations from your social media campaigns. You should have clear, attainable and measurable goals like:
Creating brand awareness
Lead generation
Boosting engagement
Customer service
If you have identified your goals, you would be able to align your business decisions with them. Remember, social media is most apt for creating brand awareness and establishing brand relevance.

Plan Your Strategy
Once you have set your goals, you should devise a strategy to achieve it. You could be on a low budget, have a small team, have basic tools at your disposal, and little experience. But if you are creative and systematic, things will fall into place.
Create customer profiles based on your surveys.
Create your brand persona by creating a brand personality
Devise a posting strategy to determine the number of posts per day, the type of posts, time of updates, etc. Of course, it won't be fixed, but there should be a pattern which your audience can identify with.
Relevant Value Proposition: Tell your prospects what’s in it for them. It makes you stand out from the competition if the customer feels you are offering some value to her.
Analyze Content Performance: Test what content performs the best, and the one that is lagging. Is it the content or the content format that is making the difference? Is the audience moving towards videos rather than blog posts? Do they prefer educational content over a story form? Measure and tweak your content strategy accordingly.
Use Videos: Marketers swear by videos as they are more appealing, grab attention, are easier to recall, and communicate more information in less time. Include videos for demos, tutorials, how-to, customer experiences, etc.
Go Interactive: Interactive content is more engaging and informative for customers and helps you capture good data for your marketing.

 Hire a Good Social Media or Marketing Professional

If you can possibly make room to invest in professional help, do so. This will speed up the process, and you may end up saving resources.
Hire Professionals that have proven experience, and that can give you a head-start. There are many small but creative agencies, which will not charge the earth but will help catapult your social presence, hence delivering ROI. However, stay clear from those who promise big numbers in a short time.
Influencers are a great way to reach out to your target audience. You need not chase big names. Try teaming up with local influencers. They may fit your budget and have a niche following which is well suited for your following.
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There are plenty of content creation and social media marketing tools that are free and easy to use. These tools can help you design, curate content, automate, track and analyze performance. Social media marketing cannot be ignored as traditional channels are losing their steam. Whether you are a big brand or a small upstart, you need to leverage social media to reach out to your target audience. Allocating time, budgets, and teams becomes tricky for businesses with limited resources, but if you have clear goals and a focused approach you can establish an effective social media presence that will keep giving you dividends
-Roy

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Tags: #social media #branding #marketing #advertisng #small business