Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools for small businesses. There is no charge for signing up to most of the main social media sites, and you can start talking Business directory to your customers right away. Different social media sites attract various demographics, so it’s important to start off by understanding who your customers are. A brand with a younger demographic might find they get better results using TikTok or Instagram, and if you’re pitching at an older age group, perhaps Twitter or Facebook will deliver better results. Here’s a quick run-down of the main free social media channels, and how to get the most out of them.
Facebook is the original large social media site, with around 3 billion users around the world. It’s quick and easy to set up a business page, and Facebook can also help you develop a targeted advertising campaign, advertising only to people of a certain age, in a specific town, or similar. Create content that gets likes and comments from your followers, but doesn’t overwhelm your followers’ feeds. An update or post every other day is plenty.
There are over 500 million tweets sent out on Twitter every day, and the wide international nature of the site makes it easy to put your brand in front of a global audience. Always use an image on your tweet as these get much higher levels of engagement than posts with text only. Twitter users expect to see posts more often than on other channels, but the downside to this is that keeping Twitter updated and responding to posts can become a full-time job.
Instagram is owned by Facebook and offers a lot of the same advertising tools and techniques. Products and services can be tagged directly from posts, and you can add music or effects to your posts for additional impact. If you’re not sure about how best to exploit Instagram, take a while to look through the feeds of competitors or other similar companies to see what sort of thing they are doing.
YouTube
YouTube is the best place to upload video content, perhaps in-depth guides about how to use your products or interviews with key members of staff. The main drawback of YouTube is that users expect highly professional videos with slick production values, and if you’re new to the world of video, it can be hard to pull this off. A billion hours of content is watched on YouTube every day, but it’s perhaps the trickiest one to get going with.
Social Media Manager?
If social media sounds like too much of a foreign language, then the other option is to get an expert in to do the work for you. Here at Free directory we can help you firstly work out which social media channels are most important for your company, and then help you develop a strategy to use the sites which fit in best with your brand and your customers.
