Small Business & the Social Media Landscape of 2021
As a small business, how can your company effectively use the proper social media channels to leverage your offerings to your audience? Are the popular channels the best for your company and industry?
Social media has become a large driver of how businesses can attract, engage, and convert their consumers. It can also be very overwhelming on what channels and tactics are most efficient in delivering great results. Since the beginning of the world-wide pandemic, more users have migrated to social media and general use of the internet. Knowing you have a large engaged population all being active on the internet becomes a double-edged sword for companies.
According to Statista, in October 2020 over 60 percent of the population is on some form of social media and spends more than 1.56 hours in the United States on social media every day, which means they are on their phones ready for engagement and have saved credit card information at the ready for purchases.
The pandemic has brought forth many challenges for everyone, but how can your business adapt and rise to the occasion? Social media marketing offers an extraordinary opportunity to small businesses of cheaper and effective strategies to reach a larger number of consumers.
However, there are hurdles with social media, from not only choosing the right platform can cause reputation problems for your company, but basic understanding of each platform and the amount of content creation needed to keep up with a 24/7 cycle of the world can cause issues for connecting to your audience in the most effective way. Below, we take a look at social media platforms, ways to utilize their functions, and new products that have been launched in aid of businesses during the pandemic.
TikTok
Has become the popular platform in social media with over 800 million users and downloaded over 1.5 billion times, this channel is not going away any time soon. Although the main users steer towards younger, it is quickly growing its base and offers a chance for small businesses to reach millions where they are active with unique video content.
TikTok Business allows for creative video ads developed by your business that highlight your brand and products in a fun, high energy channel. The Creator Marketplace allows for businesses to find the best influencers for your company based upon data collected from top TikTok users. This will help your brand align with the right people for specific needs.
If your team has the capacity to create videos to be promoted and shown on TikTok, take this opportunity to not only increase loyalty from already loyal customers, but use as an acquisition tool from its large array of users and interests. TikTok reels are also shown on Instagram – so even if a consumer is not on TikTok, they still may see content associated with your company through 30 seconds of video edited from TikTok to fit Instagram.
With over 2.8 billion people on Facebook and 1.6 billion connected to a small business on Facebook, this is the biggest social media channel on the planet and should be utilized by your business regardless of industry. Completing your business page, will not only give you substance as a company, but will allow for greater interaction. Taking advantage of well-crafted posts, photo uploads, and stories about company or product updates, event announcements, and even random fun, will generate engagement and excitement for your company.
Facebook has recently launched an online ecommerce, Facebook Shops, which gives small businesses the tools to create a virtual store that can help boost awareness and sales. It offers free tools that help your business find customers and drive traffic.
By having a Facebook business page, you also have access to advertising analytics, which will help you build your digital marketing strategy. Ads have become an essential part of all user’s daily feed and in how we learn more about businesses. Facebook ads do not have to cost very much and the creative doesn’t have to be extensive, as limitations are set on copy and design. Facebook Ads will help increase conversion rates of specific actions including: app installs, website conversions, video views, shop orders, etc.
Organic posts that have been posted directly to your business’ page, you have the ability to ‘boost’ those posts that you deem important to a campaign or company update. A ‘boost’ can be accomplished by targeting those who like your page and their friends or by a specific list. Boosts will help your company increase more engagement centric activities like page likes, comments, shares, and brand awareness.
What needs to be considered is your audience – who will you be advertising to? Are there specific traits or demographics you wanted targeted? Or are you retargeting an audience? The ability to test different segments to understand who your audience is and what they like to see will allow for your strategy to evolve.
This is a visual storytelling social media channel and is also owned by Facebook. All posts come with an image or video to convey the message versus just text. The channel is used via mobile users, which are mainly in the millennial generation and makes them highly engaged.
With how visual Instagram is, the best type of companies do advertise and participate on Instagram are those that offer visual products (clothes and accessories, food and drink, furniture, etc.), service-based businesses (restaurants, landscaping, marketing agencies), and tech companies (that specifically sell hardware).
Similar to Facebook, not only is running an ad cost effective, there are specific design and content restrictions on advertisements that will help guide your creative development. Finalizing the data choices will be the time consuming aspect.
Instagram’s intense inclusion of the hashtag, which helps guide what topics are ‘trending’, is a tactic that your company can incorporate in to the posts and ads your company will run. Utilizing a hashtag, will increase awareness and attract customers to your pages.
Instagram has also latched on to the explosive success of TikTok videos to create Instagram Reels, for individuals and businesses. Short, 30 second videos that can only be edited TikTok videos, but are largely original creations. Although TikTok may skew to the younger crowd, Instagram holds in the millennial and older age groups for audiences. Age demographics must be considered for what content is placed on each platform.
While it is not the best site to use to attract customers, it is the best website to attract the best talent for your company. This professional networking community allows for your company to post jobs and information about the company culture. There is also the opportunity that if a user is following your company, your company can share business-related updates without being “too promotional”.
Being part of specific industry related LinkedIn Groups will provide you with new ideas and answer other’s questions, as well. By being an active member on LinkedIn, it will increase your brand awareness from others in the industry, showcase your expertise, and drive online traffic to your company’s website.
LinkedIn can become a great to conduct business if you are a B2B company with specific messaging and audience targeting of product and company information shared to followers of companies who use your goods or services.
With the pandemic keeping many working from home and in-person seminars and events are cancelled, LinkedIn Events was launched. Networking events, conferences, town halls, and targeted audience events are great examples of how the tool can be used. Engagement tools before, during, and after the event are embedded in the product to best interact with participants through polls, chats, and video streaming. Pending on your industry and need for new talent and professional development, this could be a great tool for small businesses to become leading experts in their fields and attract targeted audiences.
This bird is the most controversial social channel out of the ‘big 5’. With an expanded character limit, of 280, companies are allowed a little extra freedom in what they post.
This channel should be considered carefully on if it’s the best use for your company. How often do new and exciting events happen at the company? Are you known for humor? How widely known is your company and the products and services you offer? As of September 5, 2019, just over 5,787 tweets are put out per second – that’s a lot of chirping! How can your company fly through all of the clutter?
Multiple tweets per day will help boost organic awareness and engagement, but utilizing Twitter paid ads will help gain traction where needed. Again, as long as your company feels a need to communicate with your audience in this avenue due to its offerings.
YouTube
When considering using YouTube as a potential social media channel for your company, it’s important to analyze the main uses of YouTube versus what your company wants to use the channel for. Do you offer tutorials on your products? Interviews with influential people within the industry? Use promotional videos as a consistent marketing strategy? These are just some questions to consider on if this platform is where resources should be allocated.
Now, YouTube does have the benefit of being owned by Google, so access to Google’s advertising, is available and can help rankings by the use of Google AdWords and analytics.
There are additional social media channels that can be important to your strategies, such as, Pinterest and Snapchat. A major consideration for these channels should be how fast-paced does your company move and is it “exciting” enough to grab the attention of the users? Pinterest is very lifestyle and creative oriented with a heavy majority user demographic of females. Very specific content, industries, and companies will be more likely to succeed on this channel.
Keep in mind that within all social media channels that your company chooses to participate on, being cognizant of your keywords and tags that are associated with your posts and ads, will only help increase awareness and conversion on the specific action you wish your audience to complete.
At Colleen Eakins Design, we will consult with your company on your social media strategy to determine the best creative resources to execute cohesive and visually engaging promotional materials.
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