How to Use Social Media for Your Small Business - Cazbah
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How to Use Social Media for Your Small Business
The main principle of a strong SEO strategy has always been to create high quality content that draws in readers, and encourages them to interact with your website. Now, social media is one of the most powerful tools available in the world of SEO. Entrepreneurs need to take full advantage of these resources and learn how to use social media to benefit their small businesses. With social media, small business are better able to promote their products/services, connect with their audience, and increase awareness for their brand.
The Power of Social Media
Social media has been a contributing factor to search algorithms for many years now. The more places your business information is indexed, the better chance you have of increasing your SERP rankings. Many of my clients are still hesitant to create and use various social media to promote their business and brands. There are usually two main reasons for this: 1) they don’t see the benefit of using social media or 2) they aren’t familiar with how to use and engage with various social media platforms.
We’re going to address both of these concerns so all your reservations are satisfied.
First, let’s talk about the benefits and how social media promotion can directly impact your business processes:
How Social Media Benefits Your Small Business
Think of social media platforms as free advertising for your business! Having social media accounts don’t cost money and you have access to a huge audience you can tap into to share your message. Maybe you’re thinking you’re target audience isn’t on social media, so this section doesn’t apply to you. Well, you’d be wrong.
Social media is insanely popular! More and more people are creating accounts and engaging with it multiple times per day. Maybe it’s true that your current, target audience members aren’t frequent users of social media, or don’t use it at all, but this isn’t a good enough reason to not invest in effective social media marketing. If you want your small business to be successful over the long term and acquire new, long term customers, you need to branch out. Small business longevity is all about gaining younger and new loyal customers. And guess where those younger generations spend a great deal of their time? That’s right, social media!
Here are 3 main ways social media helps small businesses:
1. Connect with Prospects, Customers, and Your Target Audience
When someone joins your online community (or has a public profile) you gain instant access to them. You have the opportunity to engage in an ongoing dialogue with potential customers, find out their demographic information, their likes and dislikes about your company, and potentially your competitors. Comments, personal DMs (direct messages), and group messages are all ways you can connect with your audience online when it’s convenient for them. Online conversations are also a great way to start building connections with prospects and maintaining good relationships with already existing customers as well.
Social media can increase the number of impressions of your content with no cost. You receive repeat exposure, sharing, and traffic which are a great way to build your brand. Social media is a great way to connect with your prospective clients and start building their association with your small business. By using social media, you can influence your company’s business reputation online. Social media also helps you to increase your authority in your industry and market. You can start to position yourself as an industry expert through educational and entertaining blogs, useful videos, in-depth infographics etc.
Think of your social media pages as extensions of your website. With thousands of people active on social media platforms, your pages are simply another way for users to find your business (helping with your search optimization). An effective social media marketing strategy can drive a steady stream of visitors to your website. By creating posts with hyperlinks to pages back to the original web page, you can increase your interactions on your social media accounts, and your readers can click the hyperlink so they visit your website as well.
How to Use Different Social Media Platforms
There are a variety of social media platforms you can use to help promote your small business online. But, you need to have a social media strategy in place to help you manage it all. You can have either a personal account that you can use for your business or you can create an account for your small business specifically; however, it won’t hurt to have both. The most popular social media platforms you can have are: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And depending on your market and what types of products you sell, you could also look into using Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube as well.
Let’s break down the most popular social media sites:
Facebook is easy to use and still has a large following, making it still a great way to connect with people. On Facebook, you should create a business page , so you can post pictures, videos, updates, and your company info. To do that, go to www.facebook.com/business and click “Create a Page” in the top right hand corner. Once you do that, you’ll be prompted to start building your business page by categorizing your small business, adding photos, adding business information and so on.
You can build your Facebook community by seeking out your employees, co-workers, and existing clients who also have Facebook profiles. Once you start to build your connections, start regularly sharing interesting information in the forms of images, videos, and article links. Research shows that emotional (especially funny) content performs the best on Facebook and gets the most interactions.
Twitter is a bit of a different ball game than Facebook. Depending on your goals for your social media strategy, you’ll want to either post continuously all day or a few, specific times. More on that HERE !
Like Facebook, it’s easy to create a Twitter profile , but their are specific differences with this platform. You need to have a knowledge of how to use hashtags (#), tag other profiles (using the @ symbol), and be able to limit each tweet to 140 characters (characters mean each letter and each symbol). With Twitter, you have the opportunity to latch onto trending hashtags to help your tweets gain more traction and increase their reach. Twitter is all about the short ‘n sweet and posting about what’s popular right this minute.
Lastly, we have LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the biggest professional, social media platform in the world, comprised of professionals from all across the globe. Your connection and networking potential is seemingly endless on this platform! On LinkedIn, you can create a personal account and a company page that you can link to your personal account. This is extremely beneficial to you and any of your connections because they can learn all about your business without having to log off on LinkedIn and visit your website. Having a company account for your business that’s linked to your work experience section of your profile makes you seem professional and trustworthy.
You also have the ability to either create or join professional groups on LinkedIn. While rules and etiquette differ between groups, this is yet another area for you to share and connect with others in your target audience.
All these social media platforms (and others) offer small business the ability to broaden their reach online and better connect with their audience. If you want to see your small business succeed in the long-term, you need to utilize all that the internet has to offer!
Small businesses constantly struggle to compete with their big name competitors. Thanks to social media, marketing small and local business has become easier than ever. The only cost- your time and effort; Give it a try and you’ll see that it’s worth it.
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Garth H McDonald
18:47 06 Dec 17
In today's digital age, sometimes it hard to know where to begin when searching digital solutions such as websites and marketing. Cazbah set themselves apart in some key factors. Taking the time, after a very difficult with a different company we had very specific goals. We shared these goals with our final three candidates. Chaz was the only one that took the time to respond to each goal with specific details on how to meet those. The served us before we were customers. We were in desperate need of High-Resolution Logo's. Mentioning it to Cazbah, they were more than happy to assist us in an extremely quick time frame, at an unbelievable price. Lastly, they delivered on their promises. Its hard to say everything, but I am been impressed at every turn on the quality of service we have been provided. We look forward to our continued partnership and hope that you will too!
Tom Stortz
20:56 12 Dec 17
We have been with Cazbah for over 7 years and they provide us the web based tools for our small business to compete and grow. With their guidance, and our drive to succeed, the relationship continues to get stronger as the years go on. I've not once questioned their professionalism and trust their wisdom from all of their experience. They provide the backbone for our web growth. I would recommend them to small businesses who are looking to get support moving to a more e-commerce company.
Roland Vollman
21:51 06 Dec 17
We have been with Cazbah for 9 years and are quite pleased with their knowledge of the web & was does & does not work. Everyone on the Cazbah team is knowledgeable as well as approachable. We will probably staying with Cazbah for the next few years at least.
Cate Bell
22:46 12 Dec 17
As one of Cazbah's early e-commerce clients we have grown our on-line business and continue to benefit from the team's knowledge, expertise and specific recommendations for driving sales. One of the most beneficial points is their dedicated account manager structure so that at least one experienced professional learns the ins and outs of your business and your web site, features and SEO efforts which means a fast response time when things need to be addressed. Hosting / server reliability have improved over time to be extremely reliable and the rare glitch is quickly addressed and resolved.
Dean Davis
23:24 14 Dec 17
Chaz and his staff are GREAT. Been with this company for going on 10 years. Yes we have had a couple of bumps in the road. No issue though, you call the owner directly and its fixed just like that. They do what they say and then some. A great resource for myself and my company. We keep in constant communication, share ideas and create great results.
Stef Cappel
15:49 19 Dec 17
Our family-owned-and-operated stores have been in business since 1945. Our evolution to include internet services began in 2004. We started working with Cazbah in 2009 and have remained a customer ever since. As in any long-term relationship, there have been a few bumps, but we are thrilled with the service we receive from Jeff and his team. Jeff acts proactively to ensure our site is safe, functional, and profitable and is always willing to respond to issues in a timely manner. I feel like we are a priority for him, even though I know he has many plates to spin! The 5-star rating is based on service, cost, and the return we see on this investment.
Showmark LLC
15:14 22 Jan 18
Cazbah has become a key part of our Marketing Team. Their professionals are always on top of the ever changing requirements and methods needed to have an effective online presence. They constantly give us new ideas for our website and push us into other social media campaigns with positive results that are reflected in our sales.
Phil Roser
17:10 20 Mar 18
Cazbah has been doing and awesome job for us. Mike Ingersoll is great to work with and he knows his stuff and gets it done.
T lucas
14:38 21 Dec 17
Attentive, proactive and on point. when issues arise they are responsive and rectify them quickly. Lots of analytics, good customer service , solid marketing partner for multiple years.
Glenn Jackling
16:34 13 Mar 19
Working with Cazbah has given us the opportunity to improve our website and overall web presence. With a dedicated account manager, we get personalized insights and recommendations through every stage of the process. They have been a great resource for our marketing team, and provide support on a number of digital marketing initiatives. I would recommend Cazbah to anyone in need of improving their website and overall digital presence.
David Skeldon
16:03 30 Apr 16
Internet Marketing tactics from Fortune 100 companies, applied to small and medium business. With hundreds of happy companies growing from their marketing and advertising insight and consulting, these guys are a brilliant and innovative team. Looking forward to seeing them help Rochester Boom again!
Doug Turnbull
15:54 11 Dec 17
Turnbull Restoration has been working with Cazbah for over 10 years now and they have helped to keep us current with our SEO as well as given us incredible input to what works as well as, more importantly what we need to drop in the marketing side for us. Advertising is the single most expensive area that we have (besides labor), and having information to direct the funds in a know manor is a tremendous benefit to Turnbull. Be it print, electronic or promotional they can help you in how you track the various ways you try to get the word out.They are fair in their pricing and I would continue to use them as we move forward with the many promotional and tracking of our advertising projects we have as we continue to grab the top ranked spots on Google searches as well as many other search engines.Doug Turnbull
