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5 social media struggles for SMBs in 2022 and how to tackle them
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Discover the powerful combination of a simple tool and expert coaching with Willow.
Book a free demoSocial media has taken the world by storm and revolutionized brand communication. You’ve realized the importance of having a strong brand presence on the social platforms but your team is small and you’re hard-pressed for time. Additionally, you might not have grown up with the social sphere at your fingertips and so venturing out into the social media land might be more than a little daunting.
Sound familiar? Not to worry! To help you navigate this dynamic landscape, we’ll help you overcome some of the most common struggles for SMBs in 2O22, namely:
- How to select the right social platform for your business
- How to conjure up creative content ideas
- How to captivate your audience with engaging content
- How to create content that generates leads & drives conversions
- How to measure return-on-investment
Ready to jump on the social bandwagon? Read on to gain some valuable tips you can use right away to boost your business on social media.
Why invest in social media in 2022?
Social media is here to stay. Worldwide, the customer base is diversifying as the first Millennials are approaching their 40s and the number of Gen Z’ers with purchasing power is steadily growing and taking over the market. Gen Z’ers are the younger generation, the true digital natives whose natural habitat is the virtual sphere and more specifically, social media.
Regardless of generation, all customers have become more demanding. They’re expecting your business to have a strong social presence so that they can interact with you via their favorite social channels. This includes the ability to explore your service, make a purchase or post a query. Social media itself is continually evolving to meet user demands and is offering more opportunities for businesses like yours to increase brand awareness and drive commerce.
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How to harness the power of social media to boost your business
You’ve recognized the opportunities – and the pressing need – to strengthen your brand presence on social media. That’s great! But how do you effectively go about creating content that captivates your prospects and drives conversions?
1. Selecting the right social platform for your business
First and foremost, it’s important to determine which platform is right for your business. You don’t need to be present on all social media channels. In fact, it’s better to focus on just a select few. This way you can really optimize and tailor your business communications to those platforms, rather than trying to be present everywhere and spreading diluted messages that fail to charm your audience.
So how do you know which social platform is best suited to your business? Every social channel has a distinct style and purpose. For instance, if you offer B2B services, LinkedIn is probably your best bet as it’s geared towards professionals and industry news. If your business is all about services that are best promoted using inspiring imagery, you’d do well to use visual platforms like Instagram or Pinterest.
Last but certainly not least, it’s crucial to take into account your target audience. Take a deep dive into your customers’ behavior, find out which social channels they prefer and meet them there.
Not sure where to start? Willow offers guidance and trainings to give you a little nudge along the path to social media success.
Get in touch with our experts.
2. Conjuring up creative content ideas
On social, your business will perform better if you post regularly and consistently. That being said, it’s not always easy to keep thinking up original content ideas. Fortunately, you needn’t always reinvent the wheel. Here are some tips to ensure you get a steady stream of content going.
Create content in bulk & ahead of time
Set aside some time to create enough content to cover the next week’s – or if possible, 2-3 weeks’ - worth of social media posts. By strategically planning your posts and creating them ahead of time, you’ll give yourself some margin to come up with new ideas for the next quarter of social media content.
Too tight on time to do it all yourself? There’s always the option of social media outsourcing. Read our blog post to find out more.
Use the methodology of the content pyramid
Use the concept of the content pyramid to easily repurpose content in various formats. At the top of your pyramid, you’ve got your longer-form content materials, like a video interview, an eBook or a webinar. You can then re-use this content by selecting a few topics and rewriting them in shorter formats, like a blog post. At the bottom of the pyramid, you repeat this process by extracting snackable content for social media, like a quote from an interview, a fun fact or statistic from a blog post or a video snippet.
‘Copy’ and creatively adapt
Take a look at what content your competitors are distributing on social media. Just to be clear, we’re not encouraging you to plagiarize! You can’t simply copy paste something written by someone else, but skimming your competitors’ social media might give you some inspiration or offer some fresh perspectives.
Content curation
Content curation is an easy-breezy way to quickly generate some social media posts that are of value to your prospects. When you curate content, you refer to an article or post that’s been written by someone else. Brownie points if that particular someone is a credible authority on the topic. The best way to curate content is to share their post or link to their article, but be sure to add your own thoughts or some key takeaways.
Still running out of creative steam to generate more ideas for social posts? Plug into Willow’s platform and get inspired. We’ll provide you with thought leadership articles catered to your business.
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3. Captivating your audience with engaging content
Social media is a unique platform. It’s all about interaction and striking up a conversation with your prospective customers. Organic business posts will thrive if they’re of interest to your followers and better yet, elicit engagement. Engagement is a broad concept which varies from likes and comments to shares. Did you know that comments create up to 8 times more impact on engagement compared to a like? It’s therefore best to focus on the higher forms of engagement, like comments and shares, to maximize effectiveness.
There are several ways in which you can enhance engagement. You could, for instance, add an emotional or personal element to showcase the human face of your brand. People, after all, want to connect with other people, not with a company. Another option is to invite your followers to share their opinion by asking a question or posting a poll.
4. Creating content that generates leads & drives conversions
Creating compelling content that’s helpful to your prospects is excellent. But at the end of the day, these posts need to play their part in generating more sales for your business. As such, it’s paramount to include a CTA or call-to-action in your social posts. A CTA essentially encourages your prospects to take an action, for example to visit your website to find out more about a service you provide, to sign up for a newsletter or even download a free eBook.
When it comes to writing CTAs, it’s okay and even recommended to be very clear and direct. It works best when you literally tell your prospects what it is you want them to do, what’s the next step that you want them to take.
5. Measuring return-on-investment
At this point, you might be wondering whether a few social media posts will make an actual difference to your revenue. While the process might seem a little abstract and hard to measure, social media has been proven to increase brand awareness and drive conversions.
Your prospects usually need about 10 touchpoints to gradually warm up to your business before they’ll make a purchase. By incorporating social media in your marketing strategy, you’re effectively reaching your customers 24/7 through additional touchpoints . As a result, when they’re ready to buy, they’ll think of you.
One way to measure social media return-on-investment is to assess the cost in terms of time spent versus a specific, measurable goal, to be achieved in a certain time period.
Possible goals might include:
- A specific number of website visits that originate from click-throughs on your social media posts
- A specific number of newsletter subscriptions that were generated, again, due to clicks on a social media post
- A specific number of followers gained on social media
Still a bit too abstract for your liking? We’ve written a blog post, especially for you, where we get down to the nitty gritty on what social media success looks like.
The bottom line
In conclusion, social media is a powerful tool which will continue to stay relevant and gain popularity in our digital savvy society. Moreover, a smart social media strategy is a relatively low-effort and cost-effective way to reach your prospective customers and grow your business.
Ready to get social? At Willow, we’ve got you covered with our savvy social tools and solutions.