Small Business Social Media & Content Tips

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Why Use Social Media to Promote Your Brand?

As a small business, if you aren’t on social media, you are losing out on a great tool that can help you to reach so many different business goals, including:

Engaging with clients & potential customers
Developing leads
Demonstrating your brand values & story
Creating brand awareness & reach
Social media advertising based on specific target demographics

Siva Creative, along with around 50% of small business owners in Canada, use social media platforms to promote their brand. We help clients from all types of industries market their business using social media and other marketing tools. Our clients are in industries like landscaping, skincare, Insurance, Real estate, health foods and so much more. Check out our other blog, as part of Portfolio of Positivity to help uplift our clients in various industries during these difficult times. Plus, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube & LinkedIn for more tips, & resources and to keep up with what’s new & exciting at Siva Creative!

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Keep reading for these small business social media tips:

What Social Media Platforms to Use
How to Plan Social Media Content
Creating Social Media Content
How to Manage Social Media Messages
Developing Social Media Strategies

What Social Media Platforms to Use

What social media platform you use, depends on your business and what your goals are. However, it never hurts to build profiles across multiple platforms and focus on the ones you find work best for your brand.

Some profiles like Twitter are more for users to interact with each other. This platform is used less by brands for advertising, especially small businesses. Twitter is great for learning about current events and interacting with other individuals. Although, it is more for personal profiles, so if you are your brand, Twitter may be a good way to show people who you are and what you believe.

Different platforms are used for different types of audiences, content and ways of engaging. For example, LinkedIn is used to develop and engage with your professional network, access job opportunities and business insights. LinkedIn is great for small businesses looking to connect with other businesses or looking for new employees.

Other platforms like Facebook & Instagram, are great for small businesses to engage with potential customers and clients, and give them a way to easily find and reach you. You can also advertise to targeted audiences on Facebook & Instagram through Facebook Business Manager. If you want to start advertising on Facebook, you need to create a business page.

Not sure how to create a business page? Facebook has helpful articles to show you how. You can also contact us at Siva Creative, to learn more about our marketing services and how we can help to set up your business profiles.

How to Plan Social Media Content

Planning out social media content can be difficult. You want your content to be relevant, up to date, and consistent. In order to make sure you have consistent content ready to post, you can create your posts and schedule them ahead of time. Use a third-party scheduling tool like Hootsuite, which has a free trial option. Other scheduling tools for social media exist like, Later, Loomly, Buffer, and more. At Siva, we write, design and schedule out all our clients content the month before on Agroapulse, to ensure they all receive content to post over the month.

Creating Social Media Content

Good social media content should be even parts, promotion, engagement and helpful, relevant information, tips and tricks that your audience will find helpful. This way, your followers will not feel like they are being pushed to buy your product or service and will receive value from following your account.

What your social media content includes depends on your brand, the platform you are using and what your goal is. Before starting your content writing, think about your goals, and research your audience and topics that are relevant. Make sure that if you are planning your content ahead of time, that it will be relevant and up to date when posted. You should also try to demonstrate your brands values, beliefs and brand story to your audience to gain relevant followers and establish trust.

Different types of platforms require different content. For example, Twitter only gives you 140 characters of text and hashtags are less common. Facebook allows you to write long copy, post stories, events and more, while Instagram requires a image to post and no more than 30 hashtags.

At Siva Creative, we like to use hashtags, emojis, locations, links, stories, contests, promotions, events and more to help clients create engaging content that helps them reach their goals. Contact us to find out how we can help your small business to manage your social media content.

How to Manage Social Media Messages

Managing social media messages is something you need to do for all your platforms. Messages could be anything from someone inquiring about products, needing customer services, or reviews about your company.

Many scheduling tools we mentioned contain message notifications and managing as well. However, messages can still slip through and you want to be sure you have replied to every message you can. For example, Instagram puts messages from people you don’t follow into a separate inbox called requests. These messages need to be accepted manually and won’t show up in your primary inbox or often won’t show in scheduling tools. So, you should try to check your messages as much as possible and at least once a day.

Developing Social Media Strategies

A campaign strategy helps to organize and plan out your goals and marketing tools so that your efforts provide results. Planning ahead saves time and effort, but you should also be posting live on stories and including real content from your day when you can.

At Siva Creative, we plan out our clients campaign strategies including the social media plan and all other marketing tools, a year in advance. We want to make sure you have a solid plan moving forward to help you reach your goals. Creating these strategies and campaigns includes having a big idea, meeting specific goals and targeting the correct audience. We plan out our strategies for 1-3 months and relate them to current events and seasonal holidays.