Small businesses and social media often fail to intersect due to some common pain points. We all know how valuable social media is for today’s business growth regardless of the size of the business. Your competitors are everywhere thriving to capture the maximum emphasis of your potential customers. One single missed opportunity of yours may lead to a greater advantage for your rivals. Today, you might be a small business owner. In this article we will talk about 7 small business pain points social media.
I believe, at some point we see ourselves reaching the top tier. High quality social media for small business strategy is mandatory for your prospective growth.
Why Does Social Media Matter so Much?
Total social media users around the world: 4.89 billion ( Oberlo 2023) 6.5% increase from a year ago.
Global sales through social media platforms: approx 992 billion U.S. dollars ( Statista, 2022)
Per day social media users time spend: 2 hours 31 minutes ( Techjury )
By 2030, the social commerce market is predicted to be worth $7.07 trillion ( GlobeNewswire, 2022)
One of the many benefits of using social media for small businesses is that it’s free. You can reach a large audience without making any investment except by building some robust strategies that can support your goals.
Now, that is the difficult part - building strategies. The competition in social commerce is so high that even top-grader marketers struggle to build a sales funnel. However, most small business owners like to manage their social media platforms by themselves.
The DIY techniques does not always succeed unless you know how to sink small businesses and social media together foor greater benefits.
Small Business Pain Points Social Media
We have listed only seven out of many small business pain points social media. Don't worrry! As said Robert H. Shuller - "Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines." Small business on social media just has to follow the strategies given along with the pain points.
1. Choosing The Right Social Media Platform
There are approximately 200+ social media platforms on the internet. You have to select the ones that fit your business best. Some famous social media platforms are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, etc.
According to Statista Facebook is the biggest social media platform with approximately 2.91 billion Monthly Active Users ( 2022). You have to do some homework on your targeted audience for the rest of the social media. For example, if you want to target youngsters, you may need to focus marketing on Instagram and TikTok. If you're looking into professionals, LinkedIn is your option. The first pain point of a small business on social media is selecting the right platforms.
Ask yourself these questions to select the right social media platform
Who is your target audience?
Which platform does your target audience spend most of their time on?
How to connect with your audience through the selected platform?
Will this social media help you to grow your audience?
Is your product or service relevant to social media?
Once you have all the answers, you will be able to choose the right social media platform for your business.
2. Creating Social Media Business Profiles
Showcasing a small business on social media might be challenging due to the fact that each network has its own uniqueness and set of profile guidelines.
Remember, your business profile is the first impression among your social media audiences. Fill out the details first that you want to showcase on your SMM. I will recommend you start with Facebook.
Things that you need to prepare before creating social media business profiles,
Prepare company description. All social media has a section where you need to put your company details. This section has very limited word capacity. You have to make sure that you adjust all the necessary information within that capacity.
Design some basic graphics for your social media like cover images, display pictures, daily posts, etc.
Learn about the code of ethics. Make sure that none of your content violates the laws and regulations of social media business platforms.
Small business and social media has high potential of simplifying the rest of the processes once the business profiles are set correctly.
3. Understanding The Target Audience
To build a successful brand, it's extremely important to first understand who you're trying to reach. It is the engine that powers successful marketing campaigns build up consumer awareness of a brand, and boosts sales.
Audiences vary from platform to platform. For example, there is a big difference between the audience from LinkedIn and TikTok. Your business should be well-defined enough to capture the target audiences from these platforms. Then, you have to gather some behavioral data to target the audiences properly through your social media marketing.
Things You Have to Know to Understand Your Target Audience
Where do your target audiences live?
What are the common product/ service challenges faced by your target audiences?
What is the financial status of your target audience?
How many hours do they spend on social media platforms?
Once you start social media marketing, try to get feedback from your audience, and read their review so that you will be able to understand them better for future campaigns.
4. Unique Selling Proposition ( USP)
What sets your product or service apart from the competition is known as a unique selling proposition (USP). Unique selling points distinguish your company from competitors and offer customers value.
The goal of social media marketing should be to increase conversions by setting you apart from the competition, and a USP is a great way to do just that. Your social media bio should clearly display the unique selling point of your business.
How to find a unique selling proposition ( USP) for your business
Conduct competitor analysis. See the products that your competitors are offering, how you can provide better for your customers and how you can promote them through your social media marketing.
Talk to your audience to learn what they actually want.
Try Evergreen content: Make a draft of an exclusive content strategy. The contents should be fresh to the target audience. After testing them practically, you will find out which content works best for your targeted demographics. That will be your unique selling point.
5. Engaging Content Planning
Another massive small business social media pain point is content planning. Preparing social media content in advance not only helps you stay on top of things but also reduces stress and ensures that your social media profiles will continue to be updated even if something unforeseen happens.
You have to think from the consumer perspective while content planning, then only you can get the attention of the audience.
Tips for social media content planning
Set goals for your content
Pick a time for content distribution when most of your audience will be online.
Select the format of the content. For example, the content can be a live stream, blog share, infographic, poll, etc.
Find trending and relatable topics
Try to tell a story through your content
Plan content where your customers can participate. For example, a Q/A session
6. Creating Content for Different Social Media Platforms
When it comes to social media marketing, one size does not fit all. Each platform has its unique characteristics, audience preferences, and content formats. To maximize your small business's reach and engagement, it's crucial to create content tailored to each social media platform.
Firstly, let's consider video content. Videos are highly engaging and have become increasingly popular across social media platforms.
However, it's important to optimize your videos for each platform's specifications. For instance, Instagram prefers square or vertical videos, while YouTube and Facebook favor landscape videos.
To ensure your videos load quickly and don't compromise quality, utilize a reliable video compressor. By compressing your videos, you can reduce file sizes without sacrificing resolution or clarity, ensuring smooth playback and faster loading times on various platforms.
This not only enhances user experience but also helps conserve data for viewers with limited internet access.
In addition to videos, each platform has its content preferences. Instagram thrives on visually appealing images and stories, while Twitter emphasizes concise and timely text-based updates. Facebook caters to a wide range of content types, including images, videos, articles, and live streams.
LinkedIn focuses on professional networking and industry-specific articles. To effectively create content for different platforms, start by understanding your target audience and their preferences.
Adapt your messaging, tone, and visuals accordingly to resonate with the platform's user base. By crafting content that aligns with each platform's unique style and user expectations, you can enhance your small business's visibility, engagement, and overall social media success.
7. Regular Content Management
Now that you have the content plan, the problem may arise when you have to manage regular content distribution. Only posting is not enough. Your customers expect you to answer their queries instantly.
Remember, if you are a minute late to engage your customer back, he/she might move to your competitor. Your rivals are waiting for you to drop one crack they can dive into. Schedule your content on time. All the social media platforms have their own post-scheduling feature which might be exhausting to do individually.
Note: As small businesses have budget constraints, I highly discourage using paid tools for social media management.
Some content management tools for your social media.
Buffer
You can manage multiple social media at once with the help of Buffer. It will also enable you to get detailed analytics and engagement data from potential clients.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is an awesome software that helps with social media content management. Additionally, you can get proven ROI, and data-driven insights from your social platforms using the software.
SocialPilot
SocialPilot automates content planning and marketing for social media platforms.
7. Tracking Measurable ROI
Last but not least, tracking the return on investment of your social media marketing platforms is a major pain point for small businesses. Metrics from your social media efforts are significant because they show you can evaluate the efficacy of your campaigns. Measuring the ROI is as troublesome as maintaining the entire social media.
Steps to measure social media ROI,
Step 1: Determine your social media campaign goals.
Step 2: Specify your goals in measurable terms.
Step 3: Plan your campaign and budget for the costs associated with it.
Step 4: Run your advert
Step 5: Track the success of your campaign in relation to the goals.
Step 6: Prepare your campaign's ROI report
If you do not get the expected ROI from your social media campaign, you have to plan again differently with a better strategy.
End Note
This whole social media management for small business is a bit tacky. Small businesses especially suffer to balance their time between handling social media and planning the growth of their emerging business. Hiring a full-time employee solely for the purpose of social media management is also extravagant.
I recommend you to outsource your small business social media management to ensure it is handled properly by the experts, gets high engagement, and fulfills your expected ROI. Overcome all small business painpoints social media. Contact us to find out more.