Five ways small and medium-sized companies can get more from social media

Small and medium-sized business owners and managers often don’t have the resources or time to spend their day on social media. And yet social media is where more and more consumers are making purchasing decisions.

With this in mind, here are five ways business people can manage an active presence on social media:

1. Become a master of one network

Trying to manage a social media presence on multiple networks is time consuming. And coming up with original content for each network and engaging with multiple groups of followers is a real challenge.

Instead, businesses should cultivate a strong presence on one social media network. This way, it’s easier to keep track of competitors, engage with followers and create content specific for your chosen network.

Are you unsure about which network to pick?

Find out where your competitors and customers are most active online.

2. Allocate a set amount of time each day for managing your social media presence

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the other major social media networks are all excellent at alerting users about updates and activity throughout the day.

Unfortunately, responding to these notifications and alerts can quickly become time consuming and can even prevent business people from concentrating on other tasks.

Instead, put aside 20 minutes each day to respond to your followers and post new content. During this time, you could even use a social media automation tool to schedule your social media posts for the day.

This way you can keep active on social media and go about your work.

3. Make social media part of your customer relationship management strategy

Hassell believes that customer service is everyone’s responsibility. Because of this, 15Five ensures that all employees are well-positioned to create a positive customer experience.

Social media rewards business people who use it as a tool for managing existing customer relationships. For example, lots of businesses use Twitter to provide customer service to customers and handle queries about their products and services.

This kind of public engagement can influence conversations about your brand, and it shows potential customers you are a company that listens. Remember, your best customer tomorrow could be your current customer today.

4. Think digital

Social media posts that include pictures and links generally perform far better than wordy, text-only updates. You should include pictures of your team, product, services and satisfied customers.

If you’re struggling to find pictures, consider taking some with your smartphone or using Creative Commons Image Search to find free images that anyone can use. Or you could encourage customers to send you pictures of them using your product or service and reward those who do with discounts

It’s also important to end social media posts with a call to action encouraging followers to read, share, click, like, comment or engage with your posts.

5. Measure and adjust your content

All the major social media networks have built-in analytics for businesses. At the end of the week or month, take a few minutes to explore these analytics and determine which of your social media posts performed best.

Consider:

• How often was your content shared and liked?
• Did your social media posts attract many new followers?
• How many readers followed through on your call to action?



You can use this kind of information to decide on what type of social media content to create next and to tailor your message and calls to action accordingly.

About the author

Bryan Collins writes regularly about customer relationship management and online marketing for Sage.

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