You, as someone who has put in effort to start a small business, know the hard work that goes into building an enterprise. From raising start-up capital to finding customers and clients to growing your business, the ability to put in the work is extremely valuable to you as an entrepreneur.
Sadly, hard work doesn’t always equal success. For many entrepreneurs, the dreams they worked toward achieving for years have crumbled before their eyes. However, this doesn’t have to be the case for you and your small business. In fact, knowing how to channel your effort can make a world of difference in your entrepreneurial journey.
In today’s world, one avenue that all small business owners should be using to reach success is social media. Learning how to utilize social media to find small business success is key to being an entrepreneur in our rapidly changing and evolving world.
Here is harnessing the power of social media to propel your small business forward.
Cultivate a Following
Each business is different with its own unique values and approaches. In many categories, these differences have a monumental impact on how consumers view some businesses as better than others.
While you may be confident that your small business has the best products or services, in today’s increasingly digital world, being the best isn’t always enough. This is especially true if your competitors find it easier to convert and connect with the consumers you intend to market to.
Social media, however, is a tool you can use to convey your small business’s unique charm to a wide audience. Specifically, you can use different social media platforms to build a following that feels a sense of loyalty and connection to your brand.
Businesses that do this well are the ones that highlight their idiosyncrasies and show consumers that they can help them solve their problems. Whether this is with a new innovative product or with a tried and true service is irrelevant. What’s important is that you use social media to highlight what makes your small business special in a way that makes more consumers want to connect with you.
Some key approaches to keep in mind when using social media to cultivate a larger, more loyal following are consistency and creativity. By sticking to a schedule and presenting consumers with creative content that they enjoy consuming, you’ll be able to grow your small business like a pro.
Convert Customers
Business owners can use social media to their advantage in a couple of different ways. In the case of growing a following, businesses utilize brand pages on different social media platforms to carve out a distinct brand identity that consumers can connect with.
Another potent way businesses utilize social media is as a marketing funnel. While this can be done through social media posts, it can also be done with social media ads or promoted posts.
In these situations, you get to take advantage of the fact that many people spend several hours on social media every day. Specifically, you have an opportunity to catch someone’s attention and lead them through your marketing funnel.
Often, social media ads or promoted posts will highlight a specific product, service, sale, or promotion that a business is offering. As a small business owner, this gives you a way to pique consumers’ interest and lead them straight to your business’s website.
When done well, this process will lead to a percentage of consumers completing their consumer journey with a purchase of one of your products or services. In addition, social media platforms have become more sophisticated over the last decade and allow you to market directly to specific types of consumers who are in your target market.
At the heart of most, if not all, businesses are the act of making sales. Social media is a great tool to improve your sales and market directly to the types of consumers you want to target.
Find Clients
One of the most difficult obstacles for service-providing small businesses is finding clients. Beyond finding potential clients, convincing them of the value of your small business can also be a difficult and taxing feat.
Fortunately, social media can be a powerful tool for businesses looking for clients. This is because social media offers small businesses like yours a variety of ways to connect with potential clients.
To attract clients, you can leverage content on your social media pages or utilize social media ads to target specific types of users. If you’re intent on doing everything in your power to enlist new clients for your small business, doing both can be extremely effective.
For example, if you have a career coaching business, you probably want to target a specific audience with your ads. This might be engineers who are looking for a change in their work life. To attract this type of consumer, you can make a post about alternative careers for engineers or an ad that specifically targets engineers who feel unfulfilled at work.
By leveraging social media, you have an opportunity to craft and disseminate specific messaging that speaks directly to your target consumer. Consequently, social media acts as a powerful tool that can make it easier to convert clients and propel your small business forward.
Do Market Research
First-time entrepreneurs often discount the importance of market research. Instead of feeling compelled to test their ideas, many new business owners mistake their conviction to succeed for proof that consumers will want to buy the specific products or services they’re selling.
As any veteran business owner or entrepreneur will tell you, failing to do market research is akin to setting your enterprise up for failure. However, when you take advantage of this incredibly valuable process, you have the power to grow your business to heights you never thought were possible.
In today’s world, social media has made market research and the ability to gain insight into consumer preferences easier than it ever has been. While in the past you would have had to set up focus groups or pay services to provide you with research results, these days you can simply peruse your social media pages.
By taking time and exploring what your business’s social media followers are saying about your brand and its products or services, you can gain incredible insight. You then have opportunities to utilize these insights to improve your offerings and your approach to marketing your business.
Taking advantage of the social media feedback loop is especially valuable if you’re trying to scale and grow your small business. This is because consumer feedback offers you guidance about how your business should grow and the areas of your small business that are the most apt to capture the interest of an ever-increasing audience.
Social Media is the Key to Small Business Success
Today, the digital landscape is ripe with opportunities for visionaries and entrepreneurs such as yourself. In particular, online spaces are incredibly powerful avenues for taking small businesses to the next level.
To take advantage of all of the amazing opportunities the internet has created for small business entrepreneurs, social media is one of the most effective tools. So, if you’re ready to propel your small business to the next level and find success as an entrepreneur, capitalize on the benefits of social media and watch your enterprise thrive.
About the Author
Ryan Ayers is a researcher and consultant within multiple industries including information technology, blockchain and business development. Always up for a challenge, Ayers enjoys working with startups as well as Fortune 500 companies. When not at work, Ayers loves reading science fiction novels and watching the LA Clippers.
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