The Importance of Social Marketing for a Small Business

A person using a mobile phone and laptop simultaneously on Facebook

Use Social Media to Get Your Business Rolling

As days go by, the social media industry is rapidly inflating. Every year we see new platforms, new fame, and what seems to be an infinitely increasing amount of content on the platforms. Another important thing to keep in mind is that social media is constantly changing. The algorithm for all social media platforms is very complicated and is constantly under the works to better suit the user to increase UX.

At the time of writing this article, Facebook has roughly 2.89 billion monthly active users worldwide. While not all posts on social media are exposed to all users, you can get a large portion of users to see your content; this is very good for exposure and retrieving new customers.

Facebook is not the only platform that can be used to excel your brand awareness. It is also possible to use social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter. Whilst each of these platforms has its pros and cons, they are all great for social marketing and increasing your brand awareness.

Brands use social networking to expand their exposure daily. If you were to start a business, 99% would agree that the backbone to growing an expanding market is via social media. It is such a powerful tool of persuasion that is used daily by most if not all, high street names such as WHSmith, New Look, and Primark.

Having a social media presence is only half of the story. To become successful via social media you will also need an excellent marketing strategy. In terms of strategy, the main things you need to know are your target audience, know how to take advantage of social media management tools, and have a social marketing approach. This is to not only save time but also to make sure that your digital marketing efforts are successful in the amount of exposure you receive.

You can make this process easier in multiple ways. For example, you could create your social media content and create an original marketing strategy. You could copy a similar business’s social media marketing strategy. You could also hire specialists to design and create social media posts for you.

Our sister company (Be My Social) offers cost-effective options for content creation and we branch into different platforms where we can post content such as Instagram stories.

What Social Media Platforms Should you Use?

There are plenty of social media platforms that you could use for your business and even though you could use all of the platforms you may benefit more from using specific platforms depending on your business. For example, a company that specializes in selling clothes may benefit from using Facebook over using other social media accounts.

Another great example is if you were a student in social sciences and you wanted to blog to increase your chances when job seeking by documenting your experiences, you may be best using multiple social channels such as Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook, which is where automation and management are helpful.

You don’t even need to use social media just for brand recognition either. Some companies have gone as far as using social media as a customer service platform. For example, some companies like to use Facebook messenger to help resolve problems. That is because of its amazing response assistant feature which is used for sending instant replies for anyone who messages your page.

If you are using social media for brand recognition then you need to keep in mind that most, if not all, platforms for social media have an algorithm to monitor and sort their content. This is so the content most relevant to you is going to appear at the top of your page and the spammy, no good content will end up at the bottom.

How do the algorithms work?

In this article, we are going to describe briefly how different platforms’ algorithms work so maybe you can kickstart your business to get some recognition.

Facebook: Facebook’s algorithm is based on engagement. Facebook has revealed that they account for 1 minute of every 6 minutes people spend online, and that’s with the giant user base of more than 2 billion active users. Every day they are looking for user habits while also looking to analyze what people like, share and comment on during their presence on the website.

Facebook uses factors and signals to determine the updates which are placed in each user’s News Feeds and look into the interactions a certain post gets from all its active users. If a post received great feedback or a large amount of engagement, it’s more likely to show at the top of your timeline.

Instagram: In the past, Instagram was about taking photographs of real scenarios with no filter or set. However, this has changed. Now people just post whatever they want, most of which are staged images that seem perfect. In simple terms, the algorithm is used to maximize the attention they get from you. For example, if someone follows a lot of fashion accounts and consumes fashion-based content then Instagram will show them fashion-based posts so the best way to expand would be by following trends and clearly stating your content.

Twitter: Currently, this platform’s timeline highlights the top tweets you haven’t viewed previously. Similar to the other platforms, Twitter chooses the tweets the user sees based on the accounts they interact with most. Occasionally you will come across posts unrelated to the people you follow. Twitter users that engage with you in comments or directly are more likely to be exposed to your tweets.