We are seeing more and more small businesses getting involved with social media.

It seems like the majority of small business owners know they need to be using at least Facebook and Twitter somehow in their small business. However, it also appears that once most business owners get involved with social media they have no idea what the heck to do with it.

This article will give you some great advice on how to leverage social media for you small business. Not only for marketing your business but also for maintaining your customer relationships, disseminating information, and monitoring the pulse of your business reputation.

Small Business Social Media- Now What:

Once you get your business on a few social media sites then what? Let’s start with your plan…

You need a plan and then you need to be consistent with that plan. We see too many small business owners that think they can get their social media presence setup, run some PPC ads and then just let it roll. If they post statuses they are not posting consistently, they might post like once a month and never engage back with the fans.

You have to understand what social media is to your small business!

Social media is about being social. You’re only going to actually get conversions and sales if you are consistent with your posting and replying to your fans when they have comments or questions about your products or services.

Once you have your social media platform setup, we highly recommend setting up a social media management system like HootSuite. HootSuite is a platform that you can link all your small business social media sites to and monitor and run them from this one platform. It is a great tool for monitoring your social media presence and staying on top of the conversations your followers have about your business.

HootSuite allows you to manage your posts too… You can schedule a months worth of content and arrange for HootSuite to post the content at scheduled intervals. Most small business owners are not constant with social media because they say it takes too much time. Well HootSuite takes away that excuse. You can now schedule your postings and quickly check in say twice a day to make some replays to fans.

Small Business Social Media-Once I Automate It What Do I Post?

What content should you be scheduling monthly is another popular question. You need to be adding value for your followers.

If your small business is a marketing firm you need to be posing marketing tips, tricks and inspiration. Then we would suggest some soft sales postings. This is again where a lot of small business owners go wrong.

Many small business owners post content using a Hard Sell approach, such as “Buy Our Marketing Pro Pack Now and Get 20% OFF!”. They do this posting every so often and expect social media to magically work for their small business. This approach does not work and our recommendation is to refrain from this hard sell tactic.

Our suggestion would be to schedule 6 posts daily to run within your social media management system. Make 5 of the 6 postings pure value driven posts, things that will help your target market.

Then at least 1 of the postings can be a soft sales post. Something like a client testimonial about how much your small business services have helped them grow their business.

Using a soft sell approach to your marketing will provide a much better potential for sales. Avoid “In Your Face” marketing tactics as they seldom get the results that you are hoping to achieve from social media.

Again be consistent and get creative.

Small Business Social Media-This All Makes Sense But I Don’t Have Time:

Now that we have provided you with some helpful small business social media tips take action and implement these ideas for your business. Don’t have the time?

If you feel like you don’t have time then outsource your social media marketing. Consider hiring a Social Media Marketing Expert that can assist you in getting your small business started with social media and maintaining your presence for you.  Most good social media experts can get your social media presence setup, manage it, run it and interact with your fans on social media for you.

We hope this article has provided you with some ideas for getting your small business working with social media marketing.

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