5 Tips for Small Businesses to Get Started in Social Media

Social media can be a great way to grow brand awareness, increase website traffic, engage your target customers, and more. In today’s digital world, however, it’s not enough to simply have a page on a social media platform. Succeeding on social media requires a creating a strategy, sharing relevant and engaging content, and understanding how social media plays into your larger business goals. Want to get involved with social media but not sure where to start? Here are five tips for small businesses to help you get started with social media.

1. Set Goals

Decide what you want to achieve through social media. Are you trying to increase your brand awareness? What about selling more products or services? Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? How about increasing engagement with your target customers? Setting goals will make it easier to create a plan for your social media efforts.

2. Create a Content Plan

Before posting to social media, create a content plan. Your plan should outline which social media platforms you’ll use, how often you’ll post content, what themes or topics you’ll post about, and other helpful information. Having a plan in place helps ensure you’re being strategic and that your social media efforts will help you achieve your goals from tip #1.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Create pages on the social media platforms that your target audience uses.

• Don’t feel pressure to be on every single platform, especially when you’re starting out.

• Maintain a consistent schedule when posting to social media.

• Think about what your audience will find helpful, valuable, or entertaining.

3. Experiment with Different Types of Content

When starting with social media, try posting different types of content to see what resonates with your audience. Depending on the platform, you can share videos, photos, live streams, infographics, links, polls, and more. Whatever you choose, be sure to create content that provides value to your audience and keeps them engaged. Some ideas you can try include informative articles, how-tos, customer testimonials, behind-the-scenes looks, product or service highlights, product demonstrations, Q&As, industry information, user-generated content, and more. See what content types and topics perform well, then include more of that in your content plan. When creating and publishing content, be sure to also focus on quality over quantity.

4. Review Analytics

How do you know what’s performing well and what’s not? By reviewing your analytics on a regular basis. Social media platforms and third-party tools provide information on post engagement, reach, likes, saves, and more, so you can see which posts your audience liked best. By tracking metrics, you can evaluate the performance of your content and make data-driven decisions moving forward.

5. Use Helpful Tools

When it comes to planning, creating, and posting content, there are a variety of tools designed to make your job easier. For example, Canva can help you create visual content, AI tools like ChatGPT can help you brainstorm content ideas or write captions, and content scheduling platforms like Later and Planoly allow you to schedule posts to publish at certain days and times so you don’t have to manually publish posts in real time.

Want even more help with social media? Healthy Dash of Social assists with social media management, content creation, project management, influencer marketing, and much more. Contact us today to learn more.