Which Social Media Platforms Are Best For Small Business?
Social media presence is no longer an option for small business. Posting, writing blogs and sending newsletters is a must. Our packages give you a presence, fresh website content and a newsletter.
Clients expect to find you, validate you, engage with you and be engaged with you online. Facebook is an important channel for relationship development, brand visibility, and it is favored by search engines for SEO if you use it to engage and link back to your website. As a business, you will typically need to promote your page and posts using Facebook Ads but the good news is that they are so targeted they can be cost effective. Our plans provide you with a combination of curated posts (relevant content from expert sources to share with your followers), links to your events and content from your website and the blog entries you write. We’ll write each post carefully for you and not just copy/paste titles.
Google loves Google My Business and you want Google to love your brand so claiming your real estate on Google and creating content is important, even if you aren’t ready to actively engage on this channel. Creating a Local Google My Business page is huge and allows people to see your location, hours, business information and photos. It is what appears in Google Search (used to be maps) and we can help you to update it…especially since Google can be rather creative in creating categories for you and pulling in information. We can also post to your Google My Business page, which we have seen drive more traffic to our clients’ websites.
While many companies are using Twitter for customer service and chat, others are simply using it as a platform to share helpful information and build a following. Many of your current and potential clients check Twitter daily for updates, share and look for company reviews, seek deals and share their interests. Savvy businesses follow what users are tweeting about them, check out their competitors, build brand awareness and loyalty, monitor consumer trends and engage in conversations to increase sales. But here’s the thing. Twitter is a much more active channel than Facebook. Think of it like an online chat. If you’d like to just maintain a presence there because you have an account we have packages to do so, but to really work Twitter you need to be active on it constantly.
If you sell to other businesses, or your target clients are professional men or women then you simply must be on LinkedIn.
POSTS: Many businesses tend to find higher engagement posting on this channel due to the open, networking culture of its followers. The LinkedIn crowd tends to circle in anger around brands who overtly try to sell via this channel. However, sharing valuable knowledge, promoting events, sharing successes, tips and inspiration are all encouraged.
BLOGS: Many of our clients also blog on LinkedIn. While LinkedIn limits website links as “no follow”, meaning that while users can see them the search engines can’t, despite not helping SEO, blog posts on this channel to tend to get higher visibility and so we recommend either posting one of your monthly blogs to LinkedIn and the others to your website or rewriting a website blog to post on LinkedIn. Remember that Google will flag duplicate content and as LinkedIn is likely to be indexed more quickly than your website, it is important to either rewrite blogs as original for LinkedIn posting, or else post first to your website, wait until it is indexed and only then post to LinkedIn.
Although Pinterest became popular as a platform for sharing recipes, crafts and pictures of our cats, it has quickly evolved into a viable social media channel for business. Here are some tips:
- Make sure your website has an “on hover” button over all images to allow for easy pinning.
- As with any social media channel, it is social, so begin by following others and re-pinning interesting pins.
- Make sure you’re using a Pinterest business page
- Create different business-specific boards according to likely follower interests
- Add meta tags to your website to create rich pins
- When someone engages on Pinterest, respond to their comments and questions to encourage further engagement
- Images are more likely clicked on when formatted vertically. The ideal size for Pinterest is 736 x 1128
- Create a group board and invite others to contribute
- Infographics tend to be popular business pins – be informative. Inspiration also wins big.
- Include keywords with hyphens in your image names
- Mix it up – use audio, video, slideshares and images
- Incorporate hashtags (check what’s trending) and SEO optimize your page and use keywords in your board titles
- If you have a board with fewer followers, repin to boards with more followers
Create a board for your business events and post comments
Like Pinterest, Instagram has also become a viable business social media platform. If your target is teens through Millennials, you simply must be here, but even older followers view this as an important channel. According to Forrester, Instagram delivered 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter. Most successful large brands post 1-3 times per day on Instagram. Good content to consider includes, your services or products, lifestyle images associated with what your service or products deliver, staff members, offices, as well as the interests of your followers (you need to follow them to find out). Think about selecting a phrase that expresses something about your business, and use it as a company hashtag. Be sure to enable push notifications so you’ll know when followers engage so you can engage back.
Original or Curated Posts?
Curated: Curating posts for social media is like curating content for an art gallery. We will monitor news releases and content in the public domain to create posts across your channels that are relevant to your business and will help to reinforce your position as an industry expert. Each month we’ll hand select posts and schedule them for you.
Original: Curated is good but original is always better. We work with you to get a feel for your style and the topics you would like us to research for you as well as acceptable sources for us to use. Your original content will include tips, quotes and news. Since images have been shown to capture more attention in social media streams we’ll develop a set of attractive backdrops to use for your posts. Typically your post will include the image, text and your logo. We can either use images you provide or stock photos. These are available for a few dollars each from a variety of providers and we’ll make some recommendations and even manage your account for you. Plus we’ll be sure to share any blog entries we write for you each month.
Social Media Original Post
Social Media Post Linking Back To Your Website
Social Media Curated Post
Social media video directly uploaded to Facebook
Social Media YouTube Post