What Small Businesses Need to Consider in Their Growth Journey

Social media helps small businesses grow in many ways! It provides a platform for business owners to get feedback on their products and services from people who use them. Social media gives small business owners the ability to monitor and study their competition and learn what they are doing to see if doing the same would be beneficial. It is an effective place for opinions and reviews. This allows customers to let others know about their experience and helps them decide if they want to keep the business. Marketing using social media can be done easily. Let’s take a look at six ways social media helps small businesses grow.

Keep Your Customers Informed

Real development lies in the ability to inform customers. This is the key to ensure customer satisfaction, but also to increase trust and customer loyalty

Create a schedule for your social media that includes reminding you of your hours and changes to your normal routines.  

 Connect With New Customers

Social listening is the act of monitoring specific topics and keywords online to ensure we find important mentions of your brand or related topics.  

Responding to comments and being helpful online can lead people to explore your website and what you do. This is where social listening is a great tactic. 

Many social media planning tools have social listening built in. 

 Social listening can help you find frustrated people in your industry who need solutions. Create hashtag or keyword searches to connect with people who could turn into grateful customers down the road. You can do this through Google Alerts and the app is free.

Offer Customer Service

Monitoring your own social media accounts and Google alerts may reveal some customer service questions or issues. Make sure to reply to messages publicly and then take them directly to a message and/or a phone call to make sure you’ve covered everything.  

Businesses don’t see customer service as a high priority on social media. Instead, they prefer social media as a marketing function and a way to reach new customers. When asked “what’s most important” on social media, most businesses ranked providing innovative social content as most important. 

So, while you focus on creating award-winning campaigns and making content go viral, your customers are looking for a great customer experience. But adding a customer service dimension to a social strategy can be challenging when resources are already limited. Alternatively, virtual chatbots for customer service, Chatbots, could be the solution you’re looking for for quick responses on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. They can be available after hours for a seamless customer service experience.

Build Trust and Credibility in Your Business

Brand24: “Trust is the currency of the 21st century”. Consumers trust the recommendations of family and friends. They seek opinions about a brand, product or service and base their decisions on research. Brand awareness campaigns help you build consumer trust.” 

Trust and credibility build your positive brand awareness and foster loyalty. Sharing customer reviews or testimonials shows your audience what people think about your products and services.

Keep An Eye On Your Competitors

When was the last time you checked your competitor’s social media?

If you have ever wondered how Competitor Analysis is done; You can get information by reading our article “How to Do Competitor Analysis on Instagram?” (ADD LINK HERE). 

When doing social listening for your own customers, look for questions you can answer. According to HootSuite, it is also important to “know what people are saying about your competitors”.

For example, following your competitors can reveal pain points with their products or services that you can reach out to address, and win new customers in the process. 

Monitoring the competition on social media also means you’ll know when your competitors are launching new products, running promotions and publishing new reports or data.”

This doesn’t mean focusing most of your time on social media on the competition, but it’s good to keep track. HootSuite , Sprout Social, Agorapulse. Brand24 is a powerful tool for monitoring brand reputation with great alerts and reports. 

Create a Community Spirit 

As humans we need connection and a sense of belonging: a community.  The word community is derived from the Latin term communitas,  meaning “common, general, shared by all or most”.  We are looking for people with the same beliefs, interests and sense of humor, in person and online. Building your community online is important for growing your social media.

Here are a few ways to grow your community:

• Ask a question on Twitter or Instagram Stories
• Use live chat on your website
• Answer questions on social media and in your comments
• Provide helpful resources
• Listen to what your community says
• Share what you are passionate about in your work
• Join community conversations

We hope these six ways social media can help you grow your small business and have given you ideas and inspiration to create content and build community.

If you are also a Small Business looking for ideas on social media management, please contact us.