Let’s take a moment to talk about Telegram, an instant messaging app that you may not know about just yet. Why? Marketing on Telegram may be the next big thing!

At first glance, Telegram is just another chat app with messaging, calling, and ephemeral chats. Telegram is not widely known in North America, but it is a leading messaging app in Russia (despite being banned there) and is wildly popular in Brazil. Telegram has 400 million monthly users, and counting!

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts in the U.S. and Canada may also be familiar with the app thanks to the recent craze of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), whose participants have opted to use Telegram to communicate with other prospective token buyers.

Why talk about Telegram?

After all, there are countless messaging apps on the already saturated market. Whatsapp and WeChat lead the way in Europe and Asia, respectively, so what’s another competitor to the giants?

Telegram is an interesting case because of its serious focus on privacy and end-to-end encryption that Russian authorities are having such a hard time with.

More importantly, Telegram is independent — it is not beholden to Google or Facebook. Last year’s rumours of Facebook merging its family of apps into one super-messenger show that privacy is a big sticking point for Facebook. You will find a lot more people starting to look for an alternative for their go-to messaging app.

A lot of them will land in Telegramland. And you should already be there when it happens. Marketing on Telegram may be new to Canada/the U.S., but it is not news to the markets where the app has already taken hold.

Telegram is a powerful marketing tool that can connect you directly to your audience — with no distractions or fees involved.

Did I get your attention now?

Telegram and Its Main Functions

Telegram is a messaging app ideal for 1-1- communication. You can send direct messages to your contacts, attach files, share photos and videos, including short videos and audio clips that you can record right in-app. There is cloud storage, folder functionality, and desktop support.

There are regular chats and secret chats. You can start both with any of your contacts, but secret chats also offer an optional ephemeral function. You may set a self-destruct timer that would remove every message after it was opened. The timer is flexible, offering ranges from 1 to 30 seconds, 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day or 1 week. Secret chats are not synced to the cloud, so they are only available on the device you have set them up on. Furthermore, secret chats do not support message forwarding!

But, fun secret chat functionality aside, a huge part of Telegram is its groups and channels. They are what you need to care about the most for marketing! Because Telegram is ad-free and always will be, organic posting on Telegram is the only way to engage your audience, although there are multiple paid ways to build it.

Telegram is a powerful marketing tool that can connect you directly to your audience — with no distractions or fees involved.

Telegram Groups and Channels

Blog posts about Telegram have been appearing on the web, and some of them even talk about marketing on Telegram. However, so many of them fail to address the crucial difference between Telegram groups and Telegram channels.

Telegram groups are essentially group chats, whose every participant is able to send messages to the group. Groups can be public or private, have multiple admins with varying levels of privilege, and grow to up to 200.000 participants. That’s one big community right there! Read more about the group functionality straight from the source.

Telegram channels are broadcasts, one-way communication tools. Telegram channels are public and have no restrictions on the number of subscribers. Some of the most popular Telegram channels worldwide boast millions and millions of followers. This stat holds for the most popular channels in English as well.

Both Telegram groups and channels serve a valuable purpose, but they are distinct tools that can be employed to reach different goals. Plus, a variety of bots that anyone can build make managing channels and groups easier. Bots may help with post scheduling, group chat moderation, sticker creation and more.

Marketing with Telegram

So why bother with yet another communication channel? Is marketing on Telegram worth it?

Think about your audience’s communication goals. Do you:

• want to build a news-like feed to broadcast to your customers (that’s not email)?
• need to get time-sensitive updates to your network quickly?
• start a casual chat that’s not annoying or data-harvesting, like Facebook?
• plan to build a content-rich resource with compelling storytelling in a format that is fresh and hasn’t been done before?

Telegram is a fantastic tool for all of the above.

Telegram group chats are great for engaging your customers, allowing them a platform to reach you directly and ask questions. When organized right, group chats may serve as community forums where users help each other, with minimal involvement on your part.

Telegram channels are great storytelling opportunities. You can construct narratives, build information bases, showcase products, share customer testimonials, and so much more. Some channels publish updates several times a day, while others focus on long-form pieces weekly or even bi-weekly. It is all about finding the right cadence to connect to your audience.

Both Telegram groups and channels serve a valuable purpose, but they are distinct tools that can be employed to reach different goals.

Telegram’s Big Advantage

A major marketing advantage of Telegram is its 100% audience reach. That’s right, you heard me. When it comes to channels, every published post is visible to every subscriber. Every. Single. One. Unless a subscriber mutes notifications, they also get notified about every post. Talk about content delivery! (Whether they choose to read the post or not is another story, of course.)

When it comes to choosing between a Telegram channel or group, be extremely specific about your goals. Choose wisely, and the decision will pay off with careful audience building and solid content creation. As a seasoned marketer, you will know best how to engage your audience and make them want to devour every piece of content you produce.

In conclusion…

With more people looking for alternatives to Facebook-dominated social and chat tools, the likes of Telegram will only grow and spread in popularity.

Marketers inevitably follow the consumer, and Telegram is one of the frontrunners in this race  — get in on it early to reap the rewards. Consider becoming an early adopter of Telegram in North America and start building the following for your brand before anyone else. Your competition will jump on the bandwagon sooner or later anyway.

Would you like to learn more about using Telegram as an individual and as a business? Let us know and stay tuned!

The post Marketing on Telegram: The Basics appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

In the first week of the pandemic closures in Toronto, I lost all of my clients. Every single one. The circumstances were somewhat different, but the underlying reason was the same: their business models were vulnerable to the absence of foot traffic, and the marketing budget was the first to go. I could understand and sympathize as a business owner, but I also relied on the same businesses to make *my* business work. Losing income was scary, alienating and left me feeling cornered.

I’m sure this feels familiar to you too. Small business owners are the hardest-hit by the pandemic. Non-essential retail is bust. Restaurants can’t afford exorbitant rents. Small businesses are the first to go. Statistically speaking, yours may easily be one of them.

It’s natural to be asking, “What now?”. As a marketer, I know that the most important question is actually, “What’s next?” The way your business adapts and hopefully survives the 2020 coronavirus will have everything to do with how you do business and market your company once the world opens back up. The point of this article is not only to provide tips on how to survive right now but also on what to be ready for once it’s over.

TL;DR: Skip to The Future to see how your marketing will be different once the pandemic ends.

The Now

We have an incredible lifeline at our disposal that today, more than ever, can be the difference between our businesses’ survival and death.

The Internet.

Online presence and smart engagement are more important than ever. As consumers, we have all been on the receiving end of hundreds of newsletters and social media posts by businesses we may have forgotten existed. Whether their messages were heartfelt, cheesy or tone-deaf, they all did one thing right. They harnessed their existing platforms to stay connected, find ways to survive, and build more connections on the way.

When the shutdowns in Toronto began in earnest, nothing should have changed for me on the surface. I’m used to working from home, after all! But the anxiety about lost business, the constant news updates, the worry about loved ones were new. Not going to lie: I struggled. I was not being productive. I spent hours on Twitter.

It didn’t feel right to publish SMM Headquarters’ social posts and articles as if it was business as usual. It was impossible to pretend I didn’t need time and space to process what was happening. I had an inkling that I could channel this vulnerability into producing something informative that would rely on my usual marketing expertise but also address the fact that a pandemic was on and the world was not OK.

Here is what I did in mid-March:

• Hastily wrote and published a short recommendations list on crisis communications for small businesses;
• Made several Instagram posts that indicated I was taking a break yet still staying connected;
• Started offering free marketing consultations to anyone who wanted them. Mainly small businesses, yes, because this is whom I serve and this is who was the hardest-hit, but I happily accepted bookings from other people too. It was all about connection. And it worked.

While my business has always been run mostly online, a lot of small businesses aren’t. This pandemic is teaching us all how to transition to the internet as the primary selling, servicing and working tool.

1. Digital-first

Non-essential businesses have to go 100% digital-first. With offices, retail shops, cafes, gyms, studios closed, businesses have to communicate, serve and deliver goods using the internet. Businesses have to make money over the internet. Brick-and-mortar businesses feel this the most acutely. Those with no prior online presence are in the sink-or-swim, adapt-or-die kind of situation.

2. Delivery-first

Switching to delivery-first was the first step for many food and beverage businesses serving the public in Toronto once restaurants weren’t allowed to offer dine-in service. Food and grocery delivery exploded. The pandemic propelled many family-owned, independent stores to launch online stores with delivery options. Many restaurants kept busy with takeout and delivery, albeit at diminished volumes.

As Martin Zechel, the chef and co-partner at Pearl Diver, a beloved oyster bar and seafood restaurant on Adelaide St E in Toronto, notes, delivery is not a solution for each and every restaurant out there. He cites setup costs, high delivery commissions charged by popular services, and, most importantly, the specifics of what makes Pearl Diver so popular:

We are very much a “live” restaurant. I think the thing that initially gets people in the door more than anything else are the oysters and that is just not a practical food for delivery.

Martin Zechel, Chef and Partner at Pearl Diver

However, if delivery is a viable route for your business, the pandemic only underlined the need to get in on it already.

3. E-commerce first

Directly connected to the point above, the switch to e-commerce worldwide has been unprecedented. E-commerce stores in France saw spikes in traffic no one could have predicted pre-COVID. The leading all-in-one e-commerce platform Shopify is hiring because they can’t keep up with the flow of new store owners signing up.

The reason? Offering even just gift cards online could mean the difference between life and death for businesses with no foot traffic. (In fact, selling gift cards is the number one tip on the Shopify blog for boosting short-term retail revenues.)

Here’s Martin again, providing insider information on how gift cards helped him and Pearl Diver:

[We] initiated some gift card sales on our social media platforms and then established an online gift card store. I think the personal sales of gift cards on the phone was great. We got to touch base in a very personal way with our customers and they got to show their love and support by taking a leap of faith and buying our cards.

Martin Zechel, Chef and Partner at Pearl Diver

Businesses with an inventory to sell that are already set up as an online store are at a huge advantage right now, but it doesn’t mean other businesses cannot catch up. The most important thing is to get on it.

4. Less marketing spend?

The time for penny-pinching is now, so, as usual, marketing gets the short end of the stick. Businesses are cutting their marketing spend, especially when it comes to digital marketing.

Yet we both know that now the exact opposite should be happening. The businesses succeeding right now are going all-in on their marketing, and I don’t mean ads, giant spend or anything crazy:

• Lots of social media activity!
• Lots of value (free classes, discounts, offers, charitable donations)
• Affordable shipping rates and/or lowered shipping minimums
• High-quality product photography
• Fun contests and giveaways.

These businesses are heeding the three principles of the above: digital-first, delivery-first, e-commerce-first. They add value, are constantly in touch with their customers, and utilize social media to impressive results.

How local businesses are succeeding during the pandemic shutdowns

Lindy Hop Revolution began filming dance lessons for mini-online courses shortly after the pandemic began. They offer do-at-your-own-pace online courses for many dance levels, with May sign-ups in full swing! 🕺

Ascari Hospitality Group launched a weekly for-pick-up care package of delicious groceries that sells out weekly.

Bandit Brewery threw all of its resources into beer delivery that gradually expanded to cover all of Toronto and now parts of Mississauga too. They sell out of beer on the regular!

Pilot Coffee Roasters lowered their free delivery minimums to be able to serve coffee lovers who normally buy small bags of coffee beans in-store.

Not being an insider for these businesses, I cannot comment on whether all of the above is making enough of a difference for their bottom line. The key here is that they are trying, adapting, and getting a positive response from customers. Still going strong 💪

Will they survive? Remains to be seen. But they stand more of a chance than others who went quiet. Because it’s the businesses I stopped hearing from that concern me the most. The businesses that haven’t tried anything at all.

Surviving is Key

You probably know what I am getting at already, but in case the examples above didn’t drive the point home, survival right now is key.

The time to adapt is now. There is no waiting. You might be afraid to fail, but failure is 100% guaranteed if you do nothing right now.

How, you may ask. I got you with some tips!

1. Social media is your friend

Yes, yes, you’ve heard it before, social media is where you should be. If your business has taken a while to get on board, now is the time – and it’s okay to admit you’re late to the party!

Better late than never: the world is literally living online, all the while striving for connection, so provide it, while building rapport with your customers who miss you.

First steps on social media: A guide for small business owners

Post about the challenges COVID-19 brought to you, but more importantly, post about how you’re dealing with them. Offer your products and services in such a way as to respect safety and social distancing (more on that below). Ask your customers for input! Solicit ideas, feedback and see how you can work with it. You will be surprised at what you learn.

2. Create an online store

Whether you offer tangible goods or not, you will benefit from creating an online store. Why? Because you want to give your customers an easy way to give you money. As simple as that. Make it super-duper-easy for them to support you and trust me, many will.

The online store is there mainly for customer convenience as we had to create very specific times to call at first to reach us for a mail-out card. Now they can be purchased anytime. We took in some money and put it towards our rent and outstanding bills.

Martin Zechel, Chef and Partner at Pearl Diver

Shopify is one of the obvious choices for novice e-commerce operators. It has generous COVID-related perks and discounts. It also understands the needs of beginners and addresses them with a variety of free courses.

You can save money by playing with other setups (say, WordPress + WooCommerce, or paid appointments on Calendly with Stripe), but if you’d rather not get technical, look for an e-commerce platform that would do the heavy lifting for you.

3. Sell and provide value

What do you sell online?

The answer is obvious for some small businesses and far from obvious for others.

If you have tangible goods, great! Your challenge is marketing them online and figuring out shipping or delivery.

If you sell services, think about how you can deliver them remotely. Perhaps you can do the same thing that Lindy Hop Revolution did, and take your service offering online.

Perhaps, you are a consulting business like me, in which case, your challenge is shifting to video conferencing and booking business remotely.

If your business relies on hands-on expertise (literally), you can pivot slightly to start teaching people to do some things themselves. Offer paid webinars or online classes on the subject to complement the free content.

The bottom line: no matter what you do, offer paid options for your customers to support you. You have to provide value, yes, but you need to ensure they can pay you back if they want to. Again, many will, and that will make a difference even post-pandemic.

When I lost all of my clients, I had to swallow whatever anxiety I had and reach out to folks I work with occasionally to see if they had any projects on the horizon. I was frank about the fact that I needed it. Lo and behold: some of the leads came through and yielded short-term projects that I’ll probably write about in my 2020 year-end blog post!

In line with the principle of getting my services online, I *finally* set up the SMM Headquarters website to accept consulting call bookings with a real-time schedule. Several prospects have already used it!

Big win.

4. Give back to the community

The COVID-19 pandemic is a big crisis. Unprecedented. And while staying alive is the first priority of a business, helping others around you should be priority number two. Put your mask on before helping others etc.

However! If you’re in a position to support other businesses, community services, volunteer teams, DO IT. Financially or otherwise, do it. Think about the customers who offered to make a donation for your livestreamed free webinar and be that customer for someone else.

I offer free marketing consults to businesses. Free, no strings attached. I try to make it very clear that it’s not a sales call or a prospecting exercise, but a sincere attempt to pass on some of my expertise. I wish more businesses took advantage of the offer!

On a personal level, I also keep a spreadsheet of businesses I donated to or plan to donate, buy a gift card or service. It’s private, of course, but it exists to remind me that I am in a position to support others right now. (Also helps me keep track of what I spend online!)

5. Experiment. Don’t be afraid!

Here’s a good thing, if there ever was one in times of disaster like COVID-19: no one expects you to be perfect. There is a lot of goodwill around, especially for businesses that are actively and positively engaging the community. This means that your customers are way more forgiving.

Let it be your call to move fast, experiment and maybe even break things a little. Your customers will understand. There is a dang pandemic going on, after all.

You can try offering a product or service that doesn’t work and then ditch it completely.

You can try offering a product or service that doesn’t work and then modify it to work:

Take Pilot Coffee Roasters from an example above. They offered to grind their beans in any way a customer would want. Weeks later, they were swamped with orders and couldn’t maintain their grinding standards, so they established one grind level for all, no exceptions. Were some customers disappointed? Sure. Did they complain? Not really. Pilot continues delivering amazing coffee to its devotees.

You can iron kinks as you go, like I did! When putting booking links on the website, I screwed some of them up and didn’t notice until a client pointed it out. How embarrassing. Did it cost me? Maybe. Did I flog myself over it for weeks? No. Link issues happen. Glad I caught them on time. Ish.

While trying all of the above, keep in mind…

• When the world is back to business, you are likely to have less competition because not all businesses will survive.
• The online services you start right now can and WILL complement your main business when the pandemic ends. Even if it’s something you didn’t do right (or think you got wrong), the learning process was there, getting you ready to continue the digital journey of your business. The hunger for digital-first will not end. I promise.
• Today, right now, is the best time to double down on your best practices. My business’s values have always been overcommunication, overdelivery, and flexibility. I never wait for a client to contact me first to ask how things are going, because I’m on it before they think it (yes, I’m proud of that!). If things aren’t great, I brainstorm solutions to offer before they find out there is a problem.
• You can do the same. If you anticipate issues, tell your audience about them. If something isn’t working, communicate. Apologize if you feel you need to and keep trying.
• It goes without saying that treating your employees well should be always one of the best practices. Take care of your people the best you can and they will help you adapt.
• Do not slash your marketing budget completely, for goodness sake. If you don’t have one, now is the time to at least start thinking about it, learning Google Ads at least. If you do have one, throw it at expanding your reach and closing sales right now, to help your business’s bottom line. Once the pandemic is over, you will be ready.

The Future

Okay, no one knows what the future holds. This pandemic will be over eventually, and even though we don’t know when that might be, it will happen.

Here are my five predictions on how the world will emerge from the pandemic and what it means for marketing, specifically small business marketing.

1. A lot of small businesses will not bounce back.

Time and again we brought this up. Many businesses are already folding. Many will fold soon.

2. Survivors have all adapted or pivoted.

Those who survived will have survived because they kept their customers and their business going. End of story. Whether they did it by adapting, pivoting or both, the world changed and they did alongside it.

3. E-commerce is here to stay.

In-person shopping will return very slowly, so e-commerce will continue to be a business-sustaining practice. It can become one of the revenue streams that you can grow and nourish at a manageable pace.

4. Digital-first is here to stay.

Truer than even e-commerce, digital-first will continue to be the mantra. With more resources allocated to marketing, online ads will be more popular than ever.

In fact, I see this already. Prospects reach out about Google Ads. I see a lot more meaningful advertising on Facebook. This is call for me to use this time to try out new things and continue learning.

5. The customers will remember who helped and who didn’t in a time of need.

Remember that part about giving back to the community and putting your best foot forward? Businesses small and big will reap what they’ve sown, both good and bad.

Companies forced employees to come into the office instead of working from home. Small business owners participated in anti-quarantine protests. A certain ticket seller attempted to pocket the refunds from concertgoers.

At the same time, countless others extended a helping hand, fundraised, volunteered, campaigned, supported their staff.

Both of the above are newsworthy. People who buy stuff from you will remember the good and the bad. I personally want to make sure my business is remembered as being one of the helpers. And so should you.

In closing

The uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic is tough. It is especially tough on small businesses operating on thin margins and relying on revenue channels that have been cut short or eliminated during quarantine.

If your business is to survive (and I hope it will!), you are already adapting to the best of your ability and making use of many opportunities the internet offers. Digital marketing has never been more important, so keep trying and learning. Check out my guide to Facebook, ideas on getting started with Twitter and pointers not to get banned by Google Ads.

Then take what you’ve built along the way (an online store, a new product, super-strong customer loyalty) to survive and then strive in the post-pandemic world.

I wish you perseverance and the best of luck 💜

The post The Future of Marketing After COVID-19: How the Pandemic is Changing Small Businesses appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

From the point of view of a marketing professional, there is a lot to be learned in times of uncertainty and news changing by the hour. Small businesses managing their own digital marketing, this is for you!

Pause all marketing automations

If you haven’t already, go and pause ALL of your automations right now. This includes, but isn’t limited to, scheduled social media posts, newsletters, transactional emails intended to advertise and/or upsell, online ads (Facebook, Instagram, Google) and anything else you prepped before the COVID-19 crisis hit.

Review all of your messaging

Go through each planned piece of content one by one. Look at it through your customer’s eyes. Does it need to be communicated right now? If yes, does it acknowledge the tough situations everyone is in without coming across as opportunistic? Review your messaging carefully for sensitivity and appropriateness. Now is the time to be human (and humane).

Decide on the next steps

Depending on what content you’ve got planned, you may want to:

• save the content for future use;
• edit it to reflect the current situation;
• create new content to reflect the new reality;
• pause all marketing communication entirely. It’s totally okay to do.

If your business is in a position to adjust to the difficult conditions we are all facing right now, you’re probably already on it. Best of luck and please reach out for advice.

If you’re in a position to help others, please do so. Stay safe!

The post Communicating in Times of a Crisis appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

It was disorienting even then. No cover photos, no custom URLs, absolutely no post boosts. There was a WALL. And thumbs up icons for likes. The very idea of having a page for a private company, not a celebrity or a soccer club, was new!

Today, every business needs to be on Facebook, but small business owners feel just as lost as I did back in 2011. The platform keeps evolving at a lightning speed. Do you feel like you can’t keep up so you delay getting started? I sure do know the feeling.

Odds are your competitors are on Facebook. If you still have not jumped on the Facebook bandwagon, you’ve probably been plagued by equal parts FOMO and arguing that your business does not need it 🤔

Do small businesses need social media anyway?

The truth is, yes. For branding. Trust. Recognition. A platform to share. These are valuable things that social media presence provides for businesses of all sizes, even those with no deep pockets.

Yes, there are considerations on how to choose a social media platform. Yes, your target audience may not be hanging out on Facebook exclusively. But if your business needs a social media plan of action, Facebook, being the largest and the most versatile of platforms, is an obvious choice to get you started.

There are a couple of reasons why Facebook, in particular, is good for business.

• It offers you opportunities to build a beautiful communications stream with a narrative that you control.
• It gives your customers an easy way to reach you that may be less stressful for them ☎️
• An active Facebook page shows prospective customers that your business is active and striving, so visiting your page may seal the deal. (This has been demonstrated time and again with my clients — the number of inquiries and calls shot up after they revived their Facebook pages.)
• Brand building will accelerate. If your business is new, brand evolution is inevitable and posting on Facebook may help.
• You will get to know your customers. Connect with them; learn about them; serve them better as a result.

But only if you put in the work! 💪

Getting Started with the Basics

Facebook business page set up is straightforward. Remember a few things:

• You need to have a personal Facebook profile to create a business page.
• Your name will not be shown anywhere in connection to the page unless you choose to add yourself as a Team Member.
• You do not need a second profile “for business purposes” — that’s against Facebook Community Standards.
• Do not use your profile to promote your business, as very useful marketing functionality such as Facebook Insights is available only to pages.

Detailed instructions on how to complete the setup of your Facebook business page are here.

All done? Great! Now you need to come up with a plan.

Kate Smalley, a marketing communications consultant specializing in fintech and finance (not the easiest industries to market!) does not mince words about going in blind.

Posting into the ether doesn’t work.

You need to start by thinking through what your page is for… [and] who it’s for.

Kate Smalley, www.katesmalley.com

Having an idea of what you want to say and to which audience is enough at the very beginning. But do sketch it out once your page is created, so you aren’t posting random things just for the sake of “Social Media Presence”.

Posting on Facebook

Posting on Facebook is easy (sometimes too easy), but there are a couple of differences between posting as yourself on your personal feed and as your business on your business page.

All posts will be attributed to the page by default. It means that you should decide in advance on the language and tone you are going to use when putting updates onto your page. More specifically, settle on “I” vs “we” and stick to it.

Posting on Facebook as a beginner may seem intimidating because of all the post options and buttons available to you. Depending on your business type, you will use some of the features more than others. Attaching photos and videos, tagging products, adding a message button and a poll are among the most highly used functions for business owners getting started with their Facebook pages. 👇

Here is the full list for reference.

• Photo/Video — attaches a photo or video to the post. You can add multiples.
• Feeling/Activity — automatically ads a line “Feeling/Doing XYZ” to the post, like “Feeling determined”.
• Tag Product — available if you have an e-commerce store connected to your Facebook page, allowing you to tag products you sell in the post.
• Support Nonprofit — adds a donation button.
• Advertise Your Business — opens up options to boost the post.
• Get Messages — adds a neat “Send message” button below your post.
• Check in — adds the chosen location to your post.
• Poll — allows you to create a simple 2-option poll within your post.
• Watch party — gives you an option to host a screening of a publicly available video and for viewers to add comments as they watch.

Post Drafts and Scheduling

Posting as a page, you also have an option to schedule or save your post to drafts. Drafts are great for seeing how different media (photos, galleries, videos, maps) will look with the post — in fact, I recommend always saving your posts to draft first to make sure they look their best.

Scheduling is highly useful when you want to space out your communications. Learning how to schedule is one of the first skills you may want to master on Facebook, according to Emily Hessney Lynch, a social media strategist and the founder of digital agency Serve Me the Sky Digital:

Early on I learned scheduling content in advance & having a plan is important. Otherwise you’ll post weaker content on the fly or forget to post.

Emily Hessney Lynch, Serve Me the Sky

Notice how Emily mentions having a plan as well? Yes, that’s not going to change. Planning ahead will serve you well. I don’t make the rules.

Facebook Insights

Once you get the hang of publishing updates to the page and start accumulating some followers, turn your attention to Facebook Insights — it has valuable data on how your page is doing and how you can make it better.

Key metrics are all given space on the Insights dashboard:

• Page views, previews, likes, followers;
• Post reach and story reach;
• Post engagements;
• Recommendations (previously Reviews);
• Responsiveness of your page to messages.

Each of the metrics above can be explored in more depth in its own tab in Facebook Insights. As a Facebook beginner, you may find yourself visiting the tab for Posts the most often, because it shows you the performance of each post compared to all the others you’ve recently made. This helps you make decisions on which post types to prioritize.

Video used to be cited as the best performing medium on Facebook, however, it’s not all black and white. You may find that your page followers engage more with photos or click on relevant links more often.

But how do I grow my page to get to know my audience? — you may ask. Where do I get this audience?

Marketing Your Page on Facebook

Marketing on Facebook isn’t as easy as some blog posts would lead you to believe. And the truth is, depending on your line of business, it may be significantly harder or, rarely, significantly easier to grow your following.

When I first started marketing on Facebook for my then-company, it was as easy as inviting my friends to like the page and ask them to share a few posts. Post reach was in double digits. Photos did the trick. We, marketers, loved it… until it was over.

Depending on your line of business, it may be significantly harder or, rarely, significantly easier to grow your following.

Facebook doesn’t like organic reach very much anymore because they want your advertising dollars. “Pay to play” is a common phrase when describing Facebook today. If you do not want to pay, you will have to be very patient and consistent with your efforts. (If you do want to pay, then know what you’re paying for and probably don’t pay for vanity numbers like page followers, mmkay?)

One of my clients is a travel guide and for them, it is so easy to grow it’s ridiculous. Because who doesn’t like a nice photo of a beach or a mountain shot in their timeline? Page likes practically fall on them. Post shares are a regular thing.

On the other hand, another client with a health practice has to fight tooth and nail for each new follower. They run promos, give out freebies, engage in Facebook groups. It is all good effort for them that builds brand recognition, but it’s not EASY.

Is a travel website an inherently better business than a health centre? Of course not. It’s just the nature of Facebook marketing. Your business is unique and so your mileage will vary. You will succeed if you put in the effort, but this effort may take a while. So make sure it counts!

#1: Focus on being useful

Make it your motto to create a meaningful info channel for your customers. Forget the number of likes and follows — focus on being useful.

Check out these great examples below 👇

#2: Continuous engagement is key

Settle on a posting schedule, just like Emily suggests above. Make sure you have enough content and/or creativity to deliver week after week, month after month. If you skip a day on an occasional week, it’s fine, but don’t go weeks without posts — maintain your presence.

Monitor Insights for post ideas to diversify your content. Experiment with image galleries, collages, simple polls or even contests.

#3: Join Facebook groups

Search for relevant groups to join as your page. Since some groups now allow pages to join as members, engaging participants in other groups is now easier.

FB groups are a great option if they make sense for your biz! Good way to build community.

Emily Hessney Lynch, www.servemethesky.com

When participating in groups, do not, and I repeat, do not make it about your business at all, unless directly asked. This is not fun for others. Focus on providing information, advice or praise. Monitor the groups continuously and be patient.

#4 Monitor page messages

Reply to your page messages as quickly as you can. A high response rate delivered quickly enough will activate the green badge of response time that will encourage people to reach out to your page.

#5 Play nice

Does it even need to be said?

• Do not steal content or assets.
• Avoid repost without permission (Facebook post shares are okay since they credit the creator).
• Never use images you have no rights to use (plenty of high-quality stock is now free).
• Do not air grievances with customers in your posts — that’s gross and unprofessional no matter how in the wrong they are.

And just keep going. You got this.

What Next?

Now that you have all you need to know to absolutely nail it on Facebook for your business, it is time to put it into practice! And once you do, don’t be surprised when you start wondering if you should get on board with Facebook Ads too… and Business Manager… The journey is neverending.

Thanks for reading!

The post Facebook for Small Business: A 2019 Starter Guide appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

You may have heard about Foursquare. If you have not, as a small business owner, you very much should! Foursquare is a robust app focusing on providing reviews and recommendations for patrons of local businesses all over the world. Because it is so popular, marketing on Foursquare can be a worthwhile investment. So if you are wondering how to use Foursquare for business, this post is for you!

Foursquare began as a location-based game app that allowed users to check into places they were visiting, like coffee shops, stores, offices, and parks. It gained a solid following and outgrew its basic premise in a matter of years, bringing the founders to the idea of splitting the app into two.

Foursquare in its current form focuses on local business listings and user reviews of them (“tips”). Swarm, Foursquare’s sister app, is dedicated entirely to the game of check-ins and sharing them with friends.

Is Foursquare relevant to you as a small business owner?

If you operate a bricks-and-mortar location that welcomes foot traffic, yes! You should be on Foursquare. In fact, you may already appear on the platform! If you are, users may be checking into your location and be leaving reviews about you. If you do not appear on Foursquare yet, you should add your business! Adding it (but not claiming it) is free.

Furthermore, Foursquare has its own advertising platform that serves local businesses appearing on the app. Unlike Yelp, it does not aggressively solicit businesses’ participation in its expensive ad program, so it is very little known. At the same time, it can add a lot of value to your marketing mix for only a few dollars per month.

How do you find your listing? How do you claim your business on Foursquare? Should you advertise on Foursquare/Swarm if you are a local business? This guide will answer all these questions and tell you everything you need to know about how to use Foursquare for business. Let’s dive in!

Foursquare and Swarm: Basic Functions

Let’s take look at both apps first and learn what they do and how.

Foursquare

Foursquare is available both on desktop and as an app for Android, iOS and Windows phones.

When you open the app, it welcomes you to start searching for places nearby. There are tons of categories that listings can get assigned to, from “Restaurant” to “Advertising Agency” to “Tree”. (Yes, people like to check-in near beautiful old trees.)

You can click on suggestions or type in your own search.

SMM Headquarters pops up on the list of suggestions since I am writing this post at work!

The listing for any Foursquare place (“Venue”), be it an office or a coffee shop, contains its location, contact details, photos (submitted by users), tips, as well as the rating (from 1 to 10) that is based on how much users like the place. Naturally, the higher the rating the more favourably it reflects on the venue.

One of the key features of Foursquare is the venue tips. Tips frequently include information on the best dishes to try, best hours to visit, whether service is friendly or if something went wrong. These provide a wealth of information about places, giving their business owners an opportunity to find out what they are doing right (or not so right).

Every venue listing on Foursquare is user-generated. Some just have been around longer than others. Any user can add a new venue. Business owners have the ability to claim an existing venue as their business (more on that later).

Swarm

Swarm by Foursquare is available as an app for Android, iOS and Windows, with some limited desktop functionality for registered users. As mentioned before, its focus are the check-ins! Swarm excels at calculating user’s precise location (obviously, it needs permissions to access your phone’s GPS to function) and recommending places to check into based on the location.

Here is what the main screen looks like for logged-in users:

I have so many wonderful international friends.

When you tap the blue pin icon, a list of nearby places appears:

The Beaches attractions, everyone.

I want to check into SMM Headquarters since this is where I am right now:

Once I tap “Check In”, my new location is shown on the main screen for my all Swarm friends to see. Other than that, Swarm check-ins are private; their visibility is restricted to only those people a user approves as friends on the app.

Swarm is a fun app that is not really about discovering local businesses but planting a flag in one once it has been found. Foursquare and Swarm share the venue database, so the information between the two stays synched. Either app can be opened from another (provided that both are installed on the user’s phone).

Lots can be said about more advanced features of Foursquare and Swarm (in a separate blog post)! We are here to discuss their uses for small businesses, so let’s go into that next.

Foursquare for Business: Your Listing

You now know how businesses appear on Foursquare and Swarm. You know that users create venues and add information to the listings. There is nothing preventing you from doing the same for your own business. All you need is a personal Foursquare account.

Creating an account on Foursquare is free. Adding venues is also free. However, claiming your business isn’t free. It costs $20 USD to verify your ownership, and sadly there is no way around the fee for Canadian businesses. (In the U.S., an option to get verified via a regular mail postcard existed for some time, but it is being phased out in favour of the instant, paid, verification.)

That said, if your business is already listed on Foursquare, you should claim it. If your business is not listed yet, you should add it and claim it as well. The price tag ($20) to do so may be a little or a lot depending on what your business does. Since it costs some money, let’s go through…

The advantages of claiming your Foursquare listing:

• Claiming a venue on Foursquare will give you full control of the information that appears on the page, including contact details, address, map pin, and photos.
• You will be able to edit details of your listing instantly instead of waiting for them to be moderated (every unclaimed listing goes through multiple info checks before the edits are accepted and applied).
• As a verified page owner, you will be able to showcase the best user-generated photos on your listing and flag those that are not relevant to your business.
• Last but not least, advertising on Foursquare and Swarm is only possible for claimed venues!

Warning: Foursquare and Swarm are location-based platforms for businesses that want more foot traffic. If your business is closed to the public and/or does NOT have a physical location, you may want to reconsider spending money on claiming it. You or your employees can still create a venue for you all to check in there.

Claim your business listing on Foursquare:

1. Create an account or log into the desktop version of Foursquare;
2. Search for your venue to see if it has already been submitted 
3. Add your business, if it’s new.
4. Follow the steps to claim your listing:

Now you can take advantage of all the Foursquare features for businesses and start marketing on the Foursquare platform!

Foursquare for Business: Manager Home

After your venue claim is reviewed and approved, you will be able to switch between your personal Foursquare account and your business account any time you like.

When using Foursquare as your business, this is what you will see:

The options available to you are pretty clear. Clicking on “Manage your listing” will take you to the “Tools” section, where you can edit the logo, write a brief business description, include the location, specify opening hours, special events and more.

Click to view full size.

There are also some Advanced Tools that you can employ to manage your listing.

As you can see, having a claimed listing on Foursquare gives you full control over it. Worth the 20 bucks, if you ask me!

Advertising on Foursquare

And now, let’s talk about Foursquare ads.

Now that your listing is complete and looks all shiny and attractive to Foursquare users, do you stop there? Is it worth advertising on Foursquare for additional exposure?

The answer will vary. Let’s go over some advantages and disadvantages of advertising on Foursquare/Swarm.

Advantages of Foursquare advertising:

• If the apps are popular in your city/area (easily judged by the number of local venues and the level of check-in/tip activity), advertising on them taps a very targeted audience with the intent to purchase immediately.
• The platform is much more niche than Facebook/Instagram and is directed at local businesses specifically.
• Action/bid campaign types allow you to compete directly with other business owners in the same category via bid size, controlling how much you spend on ads.
• Because Foursquare is much lesser-known as an ad platform and/or your business is even slightly unique, you may not face ad competition at all!

Disadvantages of Foursquare advertising:

• The stats may look impressive, but if the audience isn’t present in your target area, ads will do little to reach it.
• The primary focus of the Foursquare platform is on the discovery of entertainment/food/drink businesses, not corporate, professional services. Foursquare users are in pursuit of leisure. So if your business falls into the latter category, you may not have much luck.
• Platform ad analytics are much less robust than what Facebook and Google offer.

Therefore, you should advertise on Foursquare if:

• Yours is a local business with a physical location;
• Foot traffic is welcome and needed in your business;
• Your establishment has a relatively low price barrier for impulse purchases (food/beverage, souvenirs);
• The Foursquare listing for your venue already has check-ins and user feedback (tips and photos).

You SHOULD NOT advertise on Foursquare if:

• Your business does not have a physical location or does not want/encourage foot traffic. Foursquare is just not for you.
• The main product line of your business involves a lot of prior customer consideration (think luxury items and big purchases like cars). You may still benefit from general exposure on the platform, so claim your listing and keep it up-to-date.
• Your business does not target the core Foursquare demographic of younger users eager to discover entertaining places in the city (think real estate agencies versus pizza places).

Important: Advertising on Swarm

As a small business, you do not currently have an option of advertising on Swarm specifically. As you will see below, Foursquare Business Manager only provides you with an option of ordering ads on Foursquare City Guide.

When asked about it, @4sqSupport referred me to their ticket system:

Hey! Please visit the following link and submit a help request. Thanks so much! 🙂 https://t.co/U6jn0XjzzP

— Foursquare Support (@4sqSupport) March 20, 2017

Customer Support wasn’t too helpful:

Hi Katya,

Unfortunately we only offer advertisement on Foursquare City Guide. I apologize for the inconvenience! Thanks!

Best regards,
Evan

I pointed out to Evan that ads do pop up on Swarm, looking something like this:

JustEat does not reaaaaaally qualify as a small business, does it?

Only when prompted, Evan graced me with a reply, but continued to be unsatisfyingly brief:

Hi Katya,

Unfortunately we currently only offer Swarm advertising to our largest business partners. I apologize for the inconvenience. Thanks for your patience.

Best regards,
Evan

Indeed, Foursquare does work with big brands, offering them more robust advertising solutions than those currently available to you as a small business owner. Advertising on Swarm seems to be part of that deal.

So below, we will only discuss advertising on Foursquare proper.

Getting Started with Foursquare Ads

When you log into your Business Manager on Foursquare, the option to create an ad is immediately available to you.

All you need is some basic copywriting skills, an image, and a credit card.

1. Build your ad

Enter your ad description into the box. The maximum length is 160 characters, just slightly longer than a tweet!

Select a photo that best represents your ad message. Your logo may not necessarily be the best choice. Emphasize the uniqueness of what you offer with a relevant image (your best-selling product, the best-rated dish or even a happy employee!).

2. Set your monthly budget

The minimum monthly budget you may have is $25 USD. The minimum bid (cost per action) is $0.50 USD. You will only pay for actions that Foursquare users may take after seeing your ad. Ad impressions are free.

What counts as an action:

• A click on your ad after a user sees it on Foursquare;
• A visit to your business following an impression of your ad (without necessarily clicking on the actual ad);
• A Swarm check-in at your business following an impression of your ad.

The bid amount you select indicates how much at most you are willing to spend on one action. Because Foursquare runs a placement auction among competing ads, if yours is the winning bid, you will only pay the amount of the second-place bid. For example, if your bid is $5 and your competitor has bid $2, you will only be charged $2 for the action.

3. Choose how to pay

You can pay for your ads with the credit card you used to verify your listing. You may also add a different card. Your ad will run continuously until your monthly budget runs out or until you pause your ad. Your credit card will be charged weekly.

You can edit your payment methods and view your transaction history under Billing.

Click “Turn on my ad” and you are set!

Next steps after you create a Foursquare ad:

• Monitor its performance under Stats 
• Adjust the monthly budget and bid, if necessary.
• Create additional ads to test different messages and photos, if you like. Each ad will have its own budget and bid.

If you already advertise on Foursquare, we’d love to hear from you! Comment below or email us, and we’ll update the post with your story!

Conclusion

Being present on Foursquare as a business is a lesser-explored marketing opportunity than marketing on Facebook or working on SEO for Google. However, it can bring enormous value for the right type of business when used appropriately. In particular, advertising on Foursquare may boost your sales and increase customer traffic for a much lower bid price that you would normally pay for Facebook ads or Google AdWords.

To take advantage of all features of Foursquare for Business, you do need to claim your listing, which requires an investment of $20 USD. It is very useful regardless of whether you choose to advertise afterwords or not. Ad bid amounts and the monthly budget required to get started are up to you. If your establishment fits the interests of the Foursquare core user base, you may see great results from marketing on the platform!

The post Foursquare for Business: A Full Guide for 2019 appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

Welcome back to Social Media Marketing 101! In our first post, we narrowed down your strategy and clarified ways in which you can approach social media marketing, depending on your business goals.

Today, we will discuss the next very important step of your social media marketing journey: choosing the social networks to focus on in your marketing campaigns! We will:

• cover six of the most popular social networks,
• list their advantages and special features,
• and help you decide which ones are best-suited for your business!

Let’s get started!

1. Facebook

Facebook is the largest social network on the planet with over 1.86 billion monthly active users. The platform has evolved over the years. Facebook users stay in touch with friends, family, and colleagues by posting various types of content (photos, videos, text updates, links). They also:

• follow and comment on news;
• connect with brands, businesses, public figures on various Pages;
• engage with like-minded individuals in public and private Groups.

Why your business should be on Facebook

The sheer number of active users should have convinced you already. In case not, Facebook refers more traffic to third-party websites than any other social network. Business owners can build beautiful, functional and content-rich pages to represent their companies on Facebook. Its advertising platform is also incredibly powerful, for which only Google Adwords is a valid competitor.

Why your business should NOT be on Facebook

You may want to consider investing your time in another social network (namely LinkedIn), if your business is in the niche that isn’t too marketable or palatable to wide audiences. An example would be a funeral home, a hospice or a collection agency. We are struggling to come up with another example. Convincing a business not to be on Facebook in most cases is playing devil’s advocate.

2. Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging public platform which allows users to publish messages of 140 characters or shorter (called “Tweets”). Anything and everything that can be expressed in 140 characters goes! Breaking news, commentary, opinions, live tweets of events, chatting with friends (called “Followers”)… Twitter is surprisingly versatile for what it offers. Most tweets are public, which makes it easier to discover interesting people and companies to follow.

Why your business should be on Twitter

If you create a lot of content like blog posts, case studies or articles, sharing them on Twitter is a great way to spread the word about your business. Twitter has made itself visually appealing and interesting by allowing images, GIFs and even videos to be attached to tweets.

If you are in a niche industry, you are likely to find peers and other professionals more easily on Twitter than on Facebook. Twitter is also a great customer service tool which allows you to monitor your customers’ feedback about your business and quickly respond to their concerns.

Why your business should NOT be on Twitter

If your primary goal on social media is to direct people to your website to make a purchase or an order, Twitter scores quite low in that regard. You are better off with Facebook (and using its ads). Furthermore, if not a lot of people offer praise or complaints to you on Twitter, it may not be worth your time to try to pedal it as a customer support channel.

3. Instagram

Instagram is a highly visual social network which focuses exclusively on photos and video content. It is used for sharing photos and videos that users mostly take on their phones. It has also become increasingly commonplace to share high-quality professional photography, comics, illustrations and other entertaining visual content.

Indeed, a lot of brands are able to effectively connect with their customers through photo sharing on Instagram. Instagram feels immediate and personal, and harnessing that humanizing feel has brought many brands huge success on the network.

Why your business should be on Instagram

If your company has a strong visual representation of its offering, Instagram is perfect for you. Fashion sellers, cooking schools, bars, restaurants, travel agencies, book stores etc can all benefit! It is a lot easier to get discovered on Instagram by potential customers than on Facebook or even Twitter through the use of hashtags (clickable tags like #Instagram or #socialmedia).

Why your business should NOT be on Instagram

Being highly visual, Instagram requires a steady stream of high-quality visual content to keep your followers engaged. It also does not make it easy to share other people’s visual content, the way Pinterest does.

Unfortunately, some businesses simply do not easily translate into visuals. For example, an accounting firm would have a hard time making Instagram work. It will be unlikely to find clients through it. It can still have an Instagram account to publish photos of team retreats or client success stories, but that is a different use of it entirely.

To put it simply, if you can’t immediately think of ten images you could post on Instagram about your business, reconsider it as your main choice. Place your focus on Facebook and Twitter, or another niche network, instead.

4. Pinterest

Pinterest is a social network of beautiful images (called “Pins”) organized (or “pinned”) into collections (called “Boards”). Just like Instagram, Pinterest is a very visual medium. It got its start as a DIY and interior design heaven. Today it has grown into a powerhouse of visual inspiration, tips, and instructions on travel, fashion, food, gardening and anything else you can possibly imagine. Pinterest has a monthly active user count of 150 million, with the demographic being very female-dominant (85% of users are women).

Why your business should be on Pinterest

If your brand has a visually appealing side targeting Pinterest’s core demographic, it could be a great choice. Unlike on Instagram, you can layer your brand presentation, building up from a single Pin to a whole Board. You may also include keyword-rich product descriptions and attractive clickable links. Pinterest ads (Promoted Pins) may help you reach a wider audience, increase engagement with your content and send more traffic to the website.

Why your business should NOT be on Pinterest

You should look critically at your product and decide if it can be represented well on the medium. See above for examples that wouldn’t do well on Instagram, as Pinterest is similar. Visuals are key!

If you have plans of casting your social media net really wide, building a Pinterest presence using your existing content is doable. If you are looking for one or two “big” ones to focus on, and Pinterest does not seem like a natural choice, keep looking.

5. YouTube

YouTube is a platform for user-uploaded videos featuring an incredible range of talent producing all sorts of videos. How-to videos, comedy sketches, and even short action films attract over a billion users. Every registered user has an option of starting a channel to upload videos (for free) or simply use her account to interact with videos on the platform. YouTube has an advertising platform that allows content creators to place ads before, after or in the middle of their video clips.

Why your business should be on YouTube

According to Shareaholic, YouTube drives the most engaged traffic of all the social networks, period. If your company can afford to invest in the creation of videos about your product, you should be on YouTube. (Put simply, if you can only say it in a video, YouTube is for you.)

For sure, a lot of different businesses in different industries can attract a lot of views and generate genuine engagement by putting up videos to help or to inspire prospective customers. The key is figuring out whether the benefits of producing videos for YouTube will outweigh the costs of their production.

Why your business should NOT be on YouTube

If you want to test the waters of sharing videos with your customers, look into Instagram first. See if the video format is the right fit. Do not dive into YouTube head first only to abandon your channel a few months later.

6. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network where professionals come to, well, network. Think of LinkedIn as Facebook for your professional connections. You have a personal profile which focuses on your career and professional skills, effectively acting as your online resume. You can choose to restrict access to your profile fully or partially. LinkedIn is actively used by recruiters to hire employees.

Why your business should be on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has 450 million users, with 25% consistently active on the network. LinkedIn stands apart from all the other social networks discussed because its nature is not inherently entertaining. Instead, it focuses specifically on work, career search, and (especially) professional services. Therefore, if you feel that every other network is not “serious” enough for your business, LinkedIn may be for you. Another reason you may want to consider building a presence on LinkedIn is its robust B2B advertising and publishing capabilities.

Why your business should NOT be on LinkedIn

As a business, you have limited platform functionality. Businesses are represented by Company Pages that do not yet live up to the standard of Facebook Pages. Apart from being present purely from a brand image point of view, you will likely not benefit from it if you are a small local business or an eCommerce website. B2C tend to have better results on other social networks. That said, you as a business owner should definitely have a LinkedIn profile!

So Which One?

Above, we talked about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram which offer the most diverse set of uses suitable for many small businesses. We also covered YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, listing their advantages and niche uses.

Your business does not have to be on all six. In fact, we strongly encourage you to pick just one or two to get started. Keeping your social media goals in mind, study the list to decide which ones are the best for you.

• The Facebook + Twitter combo is very common.
• Instagram + Pinterest is a great choice for highly visual brands.
• Twitter + LinkedIn would suit a service professional perfectly.
• Only Facebook? Good.
• Just Twitter? Depending on your industry, it could work!

Which one will your business go for?

Stay tuned for Part 3 of Social Media Marketing 101!

The post Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses: How to Choose Social Networks appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

Social media is the marketing buzzword of the decade. As a small business owner, you have probably heard many people, experts and regular folk alike, touting the importance of being on social media. You may not be on social media, but you may already be convinced your business should be.

Should it?

The short answer is: yes, it probably should. If you have the means, you need to take advantage of this great marketing channel that can be very effective if used right. Any business can benefit from building a better connection with its customers and establishing authority in its market by mingling with industry peers online.

Even if you are not aiming that high (yet), you need some basic skills and understanding of how social media works to start carving your own piece of this enormous pie.

All this tweeting, posting and snapping may look daunting. It will take some time to get a hang of it if you have never tried Facebook or Twitter before. But trust us: you will learn quicker than you think. Your small business stands to benefit, so you will give it your best shot.

Welcome to Social Media Marketing 101!

Let’s begin by covering the first, and the most crucial, step on your marketing journey: the overarching strategy of all your future marketing efforts.

Your Marketing Strategy on Social Media

Before you dive head first into learning to plan, post, schedule and engage on social media, you need to settle on the big picture. Namely, you have to answer these two questions: Why? For Whom?

• What is the reason behind you wanting to get on social media for your business?
• Who will be your target audience?

Then and only then may you confront the big question of How. If you do not think about the strategy and do not define your audience and your goals right now, your efforts are bound to be haphazard. Choosing the social networks will be tough and your content schedule will likely lack structure.

No one wants that! Your time as a business owner is extremely valuable! If you are choosing to learn to do social media marketing by yourself, it is doubly important to stay laser-focused. Strategy first, tactics second!

So…

Why?

• Why do you want to be on social media?
• What are you hoping to achieve? What are your goals?

Ultimately, a presence on social media has to be valuable to you. It has to contribute to your bottom line, even if indirectly. It has to play a part in reaching your business goals. Even if you are doing it just because everyone else does, you need to think critically about what you could achieve with your online presence.

Social media may help you grow your audience and convert leads into buying customers. You could start taking the first steps towards that by:

• Regularly publishing often-changing details of your business like the location of your food truck, your business hours, table availability for dinner reservations. Social media is a perfect tool for this.
• Communicating with customers in real-time about their experiences or issues. Nothing is more real-time than social media, except possibly phone calls!
• Sharing behind-the-scenes of your business and just plain getting social with your fans, customers, and prospective clients to build trust and credibility.

Whatever your goals for being on social media are, outline them clearly. There may be one and there may be twenty. Keeping them in mind will help you answer the next question, namely…

For Whom?

• Who is your target audience on social media?
• Whom are you hoping to reach and with whom to interact?

If you are sitting here thinking,  “Pfft, my customers, of course!”, that’s a great start! However, you may want to reach other people on social media too. How about:

• prospective clients,
• potential business partners or investors,
• suppliers,
• your employees,
• fellow business owners,
• and maybe even your competitors?

The type of content you put out there will really depend on whom you are trying to reach. Yes, it is unlikely you’d want to focus on impressing your competitors (you shouldn’t anyway), but you may well want to post information that would be valuable both for your customers and suppliers, for example.

Keep in mind also, that being active on social media puts your business into the public eye. All your posts, regardless of social network, may be seen by all of the people we outlined above. This is not a bad thing, but rather a reminder to always be professional and sticking to your brand voice.

Why + For Whom = Goals

Now that you have answered the Why and For Whom, put the two together to form one or a few clear social media goals.

How do your goals and reasons for social media presence connect with your desired target audience?

Think about the answer and write it down.

• “I need my craft brewery business to increase walk-ins and grow weekday sales.”
• “It is time for my accounting firm to build brand visibility and attract investors to scale my business.”
• “I would like my coffee shop to grow the number of loyal customers.”
• “We want to generate buzz for our new eCommerce business before launch and connect with potential suppliers in the process.”
• “As a professional writer, I want to seek networking opportunities and project leads.”

Etc, etc, etc!

Look at the statement you came up with. This is your strategy. You will be trying to achieve exactly this on social media. This is what will inform the choices of social networks to be on. This is what you need to keep in mind when coming up with tactics, with posts, with calls-to-action. It may change in future! But for now, this is what you came here to do.

Congrats on taking the first step on your social media marketing journey as a small business owner!

Read Part 2: Choosing Your Social Networks

The post Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses: Your First Steps appeared first on SMM Headquarters.