Session 16: Starting social media for small business

In session 16 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss starting social media for small business. How to get started, some of the basic strategy behind your social media, hint it’s about community. I also talk abut what you need to have in place before you get started with a social media strategy and what your daily social media routine should include.

Session 16: Show Notes

Initial Strategy

Understand your audience – and know where they are.

By now you should be on top of this one, but as it pertains to social media understand which social media channels your audiences uses, as well as how they use those channels.

Focus on a single social media channel to being with – it’s ok to setup the main ones, but focus your efforts on one channel initially.

Your main focus should be to build a community – not gain followers.

You might be thinking how can you have one without the other, well you can’t, but what I’m meaning here is work to develop a community by being engaged and posting great content, and helping your followers solve problem. As opposed to spamming click bait content and paying for followers.

Why?

In the long run you’ll have a community that not only buys your product/service, but helps you develop your business in a way that delivers maximum value to your customers. Because your community will provide you with honest feedback.

Where as a community full of purchased followers may not engage with you at all.

Resist the buy your followers urge. Quality over quantity. Every. Single. Time.

Is your small business ready for social media?

This is an important question because wanting to do social media and being ready to do social media are two different things.

You need to have the following under control to be ready:

* Time and budget

* Understanding of your target audiences (where they are and how they use social media)

* A solid brand voice

* The ability to implement a process to manage your social media

* Commitment – it’s not going to work without it.

Daily Routine

Build social media engagement into your daily routine. Give yourself a block of time to look through your specific channels that you manage, reply to comments keep your community engaged.

Also, have a look at your competitors. See how they are using social media dn what they are doing that you can riff off, or even do better!

Post new content – post at least one new piece of content a day. Is this a do or die rule – no – but it will keep your feeds fresh and active. And that just may be the biggest element of being successful on social media – fresh and active!

A handy tool I like to use to manage my social media – and do so for AMP is Hootsuite. It’s totally free to get started and manage up to 4 social media channels. It literally is your one stop shot for managing your social media – Get started with a FREE for life Hootsuite account now!

Setting up social channels

Before you can start posting content and building communities you need to setup your social channels. I’d suggest setting up accounts in the big ones:

* Facebook Page

* LinkedIn Page

* Twitter Account

* Google+ Business Page

Then determine if you need to create other accounts such as:

* Instagram

* Snapchat

* Reddit

* Etc etc etc

You should only use these if they align directly with your business.

Refer to the small business digital marketing setup checklist for the elements you need to be able to setup ...