There’s no doubt about it – if you’re a small business, you need social media. It’s important, and everyone is doing it so of course, you need it, too!
A social media presence attracts new buyers, builds relationships, and increases loyalty to your brand. Most importantly, it’s a direct line of communication to the people who keep your business afloat…your customers!
As a small business owner, however, it’s safe to guess that you are short on time. This is where automation tools can help. So what are the best social media management tools for small business owners?
How to Use the Best Social Media Tools
These tools will help you create awesome profiles and start helping your bottom line with shiny, happy new customers!
Set up social media profiles
Before you start implementing your tools, you first want to make sure your social media profiles are set up for success. While it’s not rocket science, there are a few tricks to make it more successful when promoting your business.
Facebook – Make sure your About page is complete and includes keywords. Use a professional cover photo, preferably with an outright call to action, or at least implied.
Twitter – There isn’t too much to worry about here. Definitely, include an on-brand cover and profile picture. The rest is up to you – when you show up on Twitter and engage in the conversation, you will see success.
Instagram – Instagram used to be for fun vacation photos with cool filters. Now, it’s become a critically important social network. Again, a strong, interesting profile that is a business account, has an on-brand profile photo, and a solid CTA telling visitors what to do when they visit your URL.
LinkedIn – For B2B business owners especially, a LinkedIn profile is key to attract attention from your professional network. According to the career experts at Harvard, the most important pieces that make up a strong profile is a professional headline and About summary. It’s the first thing visitors see and can get you noticed and open up professional opportunities.
Now that you’re set up on the 4 major networks, let’s look at how tools can help you optimize those profiles!
Find new followers
The truth is you won’t have too big of an ROI without a decent following. The key to achieving success on social is to acquire the right followers. However, by no means, DO NOT BUY YOUR FOLLOWERS. That strategy is so 5 years ago, and the general public is not into it. AT ALL.
If you want to grow your follower count, there are a few key tips you can follow:
- Fill out your profile completely (mentioned above)
- Share a link to your social media profile on your other networks and in your email (including your signature)
- Place follow links on your website and blog
Twitter, for example, offers a ‘follow me’ embed code, but there are many plugins or widgets that do the same thing. You can easily add this functionality to your website, and it is one of the best tactics for gaining new followers.
You will also gain new followers by following relevant accounts yourself. This is a popular way for new accounts to gain traction to building an interested, engaged audience.
Finally, using relevant hashtags is a way to increase your awareness and attract an audience. You can use hashtags to search new accounts for you to follow first, or you can use researched hashtags in your content to attract new followers to you.
Share great content
Once you have followers, you need to educate, inspire and entertain them. No, you don’t have to learn how to juggle, but you do need to find and share great content!
Don’t worry, when you’re deep in your business and networking within your industry, sharing good content will not be too hard.
However, if you need ideas, a tool like Buzzsumo will help you find the best performing content to share or give you ideas of what type of content to create yourself. Buzzsumo is pretty pricey, so a cheaper way to gain insight on what to share is to use a keyword tool like Ubersuggest to see what people are searching for.
Create good content
Now that you’ve figured out what content to share, it’s time to think about creating your own too. Depending on your business, you may have a list a mile long of things to talk about. However, it’s important to consider what your future customer wants to know.
Again, a keyword tool is helpful here. You can again refer to Ubersuggest, but another free tool called Answer the Public is an awesome resource to get keyword ideas. As you type you are presented with an aggregated view of the questions and therefore a hint of the motivations of the people behind each search query.
Once you have a keyword phrase that strikes you, create a piece of content that incorporates your business and share, share, share!
Social Media Management
As a business owner, you have very little time to waste. For many people, social media drops to the bottom of the to-do list simply because there is no time left in the day to do it.
Here is when a social media management tool comes into play. While you will invest a little time on the front end, with a social media management tool, you can plan and schedule your posts for weeks or even months out. With that said, these tools can also be helpful in discovering content, sharing it and also managing conversations.
An easy, affordable tool to start with is Buffer, but when you are managing multiple profiles, and are looking for more technology, our favorite is eClincher.
Post Planner, as well as Quuu, is a great option to serve up suggested content based on popularity and the number of shares.
Hootsuite offers the tools to listen to your social media followers and respond on a timely basis.
Before you say, “I’m not tech savvy!” Don’t worry! We have tried many social media management tools at GreenCup Digital over the years and can tell you that these suggestions are very user-friendly and intuitive. Most business owners will not have a problem learning how to use a tool.
The Skinny on Social Media Tools
There you have it! It seems like there are endless ways that you can market your business on social media, but it’s best to start simple and learn as you get more and more comfortable. These tools will help you get started. Pick one and make it part of your day. Once you’ve mastered it, move on to the next one. Before you know it you’ll be making connections and finding new customers!
If all of the above sounds reasonable, but there’s no way you have the time or inclination to get started, we offer Social Media Services to our clients, too.
As a small business owner, we know you’ve got a lot on your plate, leave the internet to us!
