If you are a small business owner you’ll inevitably face the challenge of creating and maintaining your presence in social media. Social media presence is a must to promote your business and stay in touch with your customers. However, people will not find you and won’t follow you in social media if you don’t have regularly updated content – you have to communicate with your customers regularly and find the ways to engage them.
Services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus offer you a great chance to promote your business through social media. You can even do this without a dedicated website as social networking sites offer you a surface to carry your content themselves. You just need to fill these channels with engaging content and this may require some time, and of course, resources.
The most important question is what to write and update about. This may be the most demanding part of the job because as an average business owner, you may not be prepared for creative tasks. As for the writing and updating, it is a good idea to look for the help of professionals or find someone in your staff who is familiar with writing. The ideas described below can help you come up with compelling content for your social media channels.
Updates About Your Business and Products
If you want to make your communication valuable to your followers, you should share important updates about your business. Think of anything that can provide useful information to your customers: write about new and existing products or services, describe their advantages and help them choose amongst them. Share details of sale or promotion you are running and encourage your customers to take part.
It is also a good idea to make this kind of communication personal. Feel free to add your insight and personal experience on your products. If you are selling something, why are you selling it? Why do you recommend it? If you are running a restaurant, what is your favorite recipe? Try to pick a topic or product from time to time and talk about it – this way you will have your own voice and you can make your communication more appealing.
Share and Comment on Industry-Related News
You can write about industry related news – news articles from industry related blogs are a great resource to share or comment on. It is of course better if you can give your own insight or analysis, this way you can further improve your credibility. You don’t need to do this on an hourly basis but it is a good idea to summarize important happenings from time to time. If you are a local business, you should follow and share local news and events as well.
Participate in Local Events
Make sure you participate in local events happening in the community. You can run a local marathon, go to local festivities or participate in charity events. Whatever you do, don’t forget to tell your customers about it – you can advertise the event in advance and share your experience afterwards.
Manage Feedback and Address Your Customers’ Needs
Your online communication will generate a lot of feedback. You have to respond to customers’ needs and concerns and manage your reputation by engaging with them. For some this can be very demanding, but worth it.
The benefits received from two-way communication are significant. Listening to what your customers say can give you new ideas. You can always summarize the most common questions or concerns people have about your business, products or industry for the benefit of all customers.
Think Out of the Box
These are just the vital content ideas for an average business, but you can always think out of the box and get more creative. Capture images of new products on the Smartphone and post them on Instagram. Create short but catchy videos for Instagram or Vine. Run a Tumblr blog about industry related news or pin inspirational or product images on Pinterest.
No matter what you do, do it on a regular basis. Find out which tools and content ideas work the best for you and stick with them. This way you can create a very distinct, easily recognizable online media presence that can aid in achieving your marketing goals.
Yodle.com specializes in small business marketing. If you want to know more about it what they do for small businesses and how, check out the featured questions about Yodle on their website.
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