Marketing on social media works completely different than traditional marketing. You can’t just post advertisements and other information about your business and expect people to want to patronize your business. This is known as talking “at them” rather than having interactive conversations with them.

Social media for business is about engaging and interacting with others to build trust in you and your business.  How do you do that?

Getting Started on Social Media

Social media marketing is an essential avenue for marketing your small business, but before you dive right in and start using social media for marketing, you should have a few things in place, first.

A brand (logo, tag line, etc.) and a user-friendly, responsive, search engine optimized website are must-haves.  Social media will bring people to your website and if it isn’t finished or hasn’t been updated in years, you’ll drive people away instead of pulling them in.

Your brand should be consistent. Use the same logo or picture for your website and on all social media accounts. Make sure the profile information on each platform is consistent and complete with all pertinent information about your business and products or services.

Many small businesses make the mistake of not filling out the profile completely, including not adding logos and pictures ,and not listing all the details about the business.

Don’t make this mistake for your business.

Which Social Media Platforms are Best for Your Business?

There are so many social media platforms. Which platforms are best for your business?

The answer to this question depends on the type of business you have and your business goals. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter,  and Instagram are usually staples no matter what type of business you have.

YouTube, Tumblr, and Pinterest may be good platforms for your business, depending on your goals. There are other social media platforms to consider, as well.

Blogging may also be a good fit for your business. Blogs are a great way to market your business and build a consistent (potential customer) following.

The key to social media for business is to be consistent; consistent in your interactions and engagements with others and consistent with social media profiles. Use the same profile picture or logo across all platforms so your business will be easily recognizable.

Building Trust through Social Media

As mentioned above, social media marketing is about interacting and engaging with others to build trust. If all your tweets/posts are about your business and/or if you tweet/post all the time but do not like, share, and comment on others’ tweets/posts, you will never build trust in your business through social media.

The rule of thumb with social media marketing for business is to spend 80% of your time (or more) liking, commenting, sharing others’ tweets/posts, and sharing funny stories, memes, etc. that have nothing to do with your business and only 20% of the time (or less) posting about your business.

The more you genuinely engage others where they are, the more you will build trust in your business.

Another crucial part of building trust on social media is being consistent.  Don’t tweet/post two dozen times in one day and then not tweet/post for weeks.  Instead, space out your tweets/posts to be more consistent.

There are several apps that will allow you to schedule tweets/posts ahead of time and we highly recommend you do this. That said, don’t schedule them and forget about them.  You still need to be on social media engaging and interacting with others’ tweets/posts daily.

Social Media Ads

Unfortunately, in 2020 and beyond, it is much more difficult to succeed with strictly organic engagement so paid social media ads may be necessary to grow your following.

How to create effective social media ads is a whole other topic but it’s worth mentioning here that paid ads will likely need to be a part of your strategy- at least in the beginning and at strategic points along the way.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line when it comes to social media marketing is consistency, quality content, and genuine interactions with others.

It takes a lot of time and work to do social media marketing right but it will pay off in the long run.

It is important to understand that social media marketing will not bring you customers overnight. Maybe not even next week or next month. But, over time, it will.

To paraphrase a famous quote “If you build it, they will come.”

If you would like help with your social media marketing strategy, contact Carmik Design.
We offer free consultations.