Is Social Media Right for Small Businesses?

If you’ve been waiting for the right time to get started with social media for your small business, this is it. Most of the larger social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) have been around for years. It’s no longer a fad or just for teenagers. Small businesses have been watching and waiting to see if social media would work for them or just didn’t have time to try something new.

In this article, I want to share why social media is right for small businesses and how you can get started. 

In the past, you’d need to hire someone to create marketing materials for you, find a public relations person to write a press release for you for big announcements, and maybe an advertising specialist to create ads. While you still need to find these people on occasion, social media can do the job of many of these specialities and reach people in a much more personal way.

 

Diversify your marketing with social media

Social media is a combination of sales, marketing, PR, and advertising for your company. Using online communication methods for your small business can help you grow locally and globally depending on your goals.

“44 percent of local businesses said they depend on social media to generate brand awareness, and 41 percent depend on it to drive revenue.”

In traditional marketing, would you limit yourself to only one marketing outlet? I can’t imagine the answer is yes. Likewise, don’t box yourself into a corner with social media. Spread your wings, try something new and determine what works best for your business.

By mixing social media with online advertising and PR efforts, you will be able to expand your business further than you ever imagined.

If you’re a small, local business, you might want to take out ads in your local Shopper magazine or newspaper to reach your community but you could also connect with them with a Facebook post or ad. If you look around in your shop, the grocery store, and even walking around in your neighborhood, you’ll see many people have their heads down looking at their smartphones.

The bottom line is that people are on social media

You need to reach people where they are spending their time. So, yes, social media can absolutely help small businesses with their marketing, PR, communications, and customer service by actively being a part of the digital landscape.

There’s no one better suited to tell the story of your company and help people who have questions about your business or in your area of expertise.

Using social media can reduce your marketing costs by providing exposure to you from new people who find you through your social media posts.

 

How social media can help small businesses

1. Reach more people
2. Smaller budget than traditional marketing
3. Target local customers
4. Tell your story
5. Highlight your customers
6. Join your community online
7. Support local partners

 

Social media works for local small businesses

Betsy, owner [and my amazing hair stylist] of B & B Style Salon, started posting on Instagram with the goal of sharing her salon and reaching more people. Betsy loves doing wedding parties and posted wedding photos on Instagram. She was contacted by the local newspaper for a featured interview in their annual Bridal Guide which resulted in thousands of dollars of free advertising for her business.

If you’re wondering how they found her, notice the hashtags at the bottom of the above Instagram post. Betsy used #bridalparty, #weddinghair, #weddingmakeup, #keene, and #keenenh which are all searchable in the Instagram app. When the reporter from the Keene Sentinel was looking for information on Keene and weddings, B & B Style Salon’s post popped up. Being strategic with her social media posts helped the right people find her post.

From Postplanner, “As you learn more about how to use social media for your small business, the social sites you should be on will become almost obvious to you.”

If you don’t have a clear understanding about which social networks to be on, here’s how a few of them can work:

• Facebook (be sure to setup the geotargeting)
• Instagram (excellent for small business)
• LinkedIn (like an international Rotary Club!)
• Twitter (listening to the conversations on Twitter will provide valuable insight)

The good news is that you don’t have to jump on all these social media platforms at once. Pick one that seems most likely to be of interest to your current and prospective customers and focus on learning how to use it.

 

Instagram works for small businesses

Instagram is very hot right now with huge grow rates on the platform. If you’re not sure where to start, Instagram might be a good start.


Once you decide which social networks you’ll use — be sure to cross promote that content in your other online marketing and PR pieces also!

http://pegfitzpatrick.com/social-media-small-businesses/ 

5 Reasons People Share Content

What makes people share content?
I’m not the only person to ponder this question. The New York Times conducted a study ‘The Psychology of Sharing: Why People Share Online’ with a group of self-proclaimed heavy online sharers, who revealed what motivates them to share with others.

• 85 per cent say reading other people’s responses helps them understand and process information and events
• 73 per cent say they process information more deeply, thoroughly and thoughtfully when they share it

So we could conclude that as humans the act of sharing helps us to comprehend more deeply, but the question still remains… why?
The study concluded that “sharing is all about relationships” and “trust is the cost of entry for getting shared”. According to the research marketers should “appeal to consumers’ motivation to connect with each other — not just with your brand”. They recommend that we “keep it simple…and it will get shared…and it won’t get muddled” and we should “appeal to their sense of humour” and “embrace a sense of urgency”.

But how does this really help us when it comes to creating content that motivates people to hit the ‘share’ button?
Perhaps a study by the University of Pennsylvania can help unlock the puzzle. For six months, researchers studied The New York Times' list of most emailed articles, checking it every 15 minutes. The study revealed that readers preferred to share positive rather than negative articles and upon deeper analysis researchers concluded that there was an element of ‘awe’ that seemed to permeate the shared articles.

The Penn researchers defined the quality of awe as an “emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self”.

They used two criteria for an awe-inspiring story: Its scale is large, and it requires “mental accommodation” by forcing the reader to view the world in a different way. “It involves the opening and broadening of the mind,” writes Dr. Berger a social psychologist and a professor of marketing at Penn’s Wharton School and Dr. Milkman, who is a behavioural economist at Wharton.

So is it possible to inspire awe in our audiences? Perhaps that is a lofty ambition, however, there may be something to be learned from these studies.

In his analysis of The New York Times study social media guru Jeff Bullas claims there are five reasons that we share content with others:

1. To bring valuable and entertaining content to others
2. To define ourselves to others
3. To grow and nourish our relationships
4. Self-fulfilment
5. To get the word out about causes and brands

Rather than focusing too narrowly on creating ‘shareable’ content, perhaps as marketers we should be looking to connect more deeply with people’s emotions. If trust is indeed one of the core values we need to foster with our audience, then it makes sense to spend time developing sincere relationships with our communities.

As we know, developing trust takes time but the benefits can be huge. By helping communities develop their own sense of identity we can hope to share their emotional motivations and tap into the fundamental nature of ‘awe’ – that “feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self”. If we are less focused on ourselves and more focused on earning the respect of the group we may just become awesome and in doing so, become eminently shareable.

https://wearesocial.com/uk/blog/2015/07/reasons-people-share-content