It can be really difficult for small businesses to get started on social media. Either they do not have time or ressources required to post regularly either they are not yet convinced that social media can increase their revenue and will bring a true return on investment over time.
At this point, they might have 3 choices, the first one would be to give up and continue to run their businesses without a social media presence. The second choice would be, if they have money to invest, to outsource campaigns to an agency specialized in ads and social that will help them launch their brand on digital platforms. And finally, the third choice, if they want to give it a try but don’t have much money, would be to try by themselves. This is what this article is about. We are going to describe how small businesses can get started on social media with no money and no experiences.
Choose the right social media platform. (Not all of them)
Especially if you are the business owner yourself. Your time is valuable. Do not try to animate social communities on every social media platform (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, etc…) There are too many platforms and if you wish to grow an audience, it is not the quantity of platforms that matters but rather the quality on the one you chose. Although you can simultaneously manage an Instagram growth tool and a Facebook growth tool to boost your reach, we strongly recommend you to choose only one platform to start, choose the one that makes sense for your business.
Let’s suppose you are a maker, you sell your hand-made products. Well, maybe it makes sense to choose a photo-based platform such as Pinterest or Instagram. If you are a writer or a poet, maybe Twitter will be better to emphasize your work and share your kind words.
To make sure you will find the best social media platform for your company, try to search for competitors on each platform to see what are their posting strategies. How frequently they post? Based on which kind of topics? How many followers do they have? And so on. This little trick will guide you without a doubt
Experiment to define a posting strategy
Everybody struggle to clearly identify what to post and which topics will attract an audience. Be aware that each of your competitors had the same issues when they started. You can be inspired by competitions to find what is working for them, of course. But otherwise, you have to find your own posting strategy on your own. And to do so, there is no better way to start experimenting during a couple of months with different type of posts.
Start brainstorming to write down a list of post ideas, between 5 to 10, will be a good start. It could be posts about your values, your missions, your services or products, promotions, your happy customers, your history, etc… You will find additional ideas on social media if you want to.
Create a posting schedule (post on social media regularly)
If you do not have personal accounts on social media, be aware that the key to succeed to build and maintain a community of satisfied customer is consistency. Meaning it is important to post frequently.
You should create a posting schedule and automate notifications on your smartphone to remind you to post regularly. The idea behind a posting schedule is to choose predefined posting topics for each day of the week. For example you could post about your values each monday, your new features or products each tuesday and so on. Try to post at the same hours again and again and again. Consistency will create a trust-based relationship between your brand and your followers and they will become addictive to it without noticing it.
Prepare your post in advance.
One other little trick we can give you to make sure you post frequently. Let’s suppose you are the owner, you are a busy man, right? and even if you receive a notification reminding you to post. We are pretty sure that If you are in a rush or working on something else that you find more critical for your company, you won’t post and will forget about it 10 minutes later.
You won’t post, because it is costly and difficult to take the time to search for post ideas and search and prepare them just five minutes before the moment you scheduled a new post.
Therefore we strongly recommend to prepare the most posts as possible (Graphics, texts, etc..) in advance. Maybe the Sunday evening for the coming week, maybe first thing in the morning when you arrive at the office. Find your favorite moment but keep in mind, that it will be so much easier to just have to copy/paste and post in two minutes when you will receive a reminder than to take at each reminder 15 minutes to post.
Conclusion
Don’t forget to start small, choose only one platform, not 3. Post regularly but remember that you don’t want to spam your followers. You have to find the right balance and learn by yourself the ideal frequency that attract and retain your followers.
And Give before you ask. Give before to sell. Don’t try to sell and increase your revenue to quickly, start offering gifts, goodies, promotions to your followers, build a strong community and then you will be legitimate to sell more.
Hope this blog post has been useful to you. If you need an app to create social media graphics to emphasize your products, we strongly recommend you to use Pixelixe Studio. It is 100% free and you don’t even need to create an account to use it. Test it now at https://studio.pixelixe.com/
