Social media marketing is valuable for businesses of any size – big or small. There is more likelihood of customers buying from brands that they follow on social media – so, especially for small businesses, social media needs to be considered as the key channel for growing customer base as well as revenue. That said, there is so much that small businesses can do there to engage with potential customers and convert them.

Social media is not just about bulk scheduling and blasting out posts. If you have a publishing-only strategy, it’s not going to go well with the social networks – nor with your customers. Being too promotional is one reason why customers end up un-following your brand on social media.

The idea of social media is to engage with your customers across every step of their journey from awareness about your brand, to consideration and final decision to convert and even beyond – when they make that purchase and are inspired to recommend you to others. So as a small business who endeavors to expand and gain greater footing in the market, here are a few Social Media tips for you to ramp up your marketing:

• Identify your social audience – before you begin, understand your audience demographics. It will enable you to understand what they want and what kind of social media engagement you must share.
• Build relationships with engagement – Actively reach out to your audience and remember to reply instantly. Timely conversations (even on social media) matter!
• Create a social content calendar – Plan your social media activities or you will end up scrambling to find content. Your content is what will engage your current audience and attract new.
• Post your content at optimal times – This is different for different social media and different for different businesses. So, find the optimal time for your business and maintain that.
• Find the best hashtags to use – Find the most relevant hashtags to use with your posts. This will enable greater reach.
• Create great visuals & Videos – Images and videos – the more engaging they are, the better potential they have for attracting new customers and keeping the existing ones.
• Combine organic with paid – Select a few posts and pay for a boost. Boosting a post allows you to select a narrow demographic of customers that you would like to target it to so that you get more reach.

Well, social media is a great way to find new customers and build long term relationships with the old ones. It’s no different for small businesses than it is for large enterprises. In-fact small businesses can leverage these networks for expansion into unknown and potential customer bases.