If you operate a small business today, then you understand that you simply HAVE to use social media in order to best optimize your opportunities for new business, and reach both potential new clients as well as those you have already converted. Social Media is of key importance today.

So many small businesses try to use social media, but fail miserably. The number one question we get here at Akin IT Services when it comes to social media is “what am I doing wrong.” While we always preach that social media is a process that needs to be treated like a full time marketing campaign, we’d like to offer a few tips that can help supercharge your social media sites to generate a bit more business.

1. Consistency. Like anything else, if you aren’t consistent in providing new and fresh social media content, you might as well not provide any at all. At a minimum, you should provide at least one social media post on each of your social platforms every other day. That is at the very minimum. We know you can’t have someone hired to just make posts all day long, but the goal should be to try to have 10-20 posts per week across your social media platforms.
2. Do More Than Promote Your Business. This is where 90% of small businesses fail. In many cases, you are already working 18 hours a day just to cover your job in running your business, as well as all the others that you can’t afford to hire someone else to do. So adding another thing in, like social media, feels like a waste of time if you aren’t focused solely on your business. We get it. That said, that’s 100% the wrong move! Think about your habits on Facebook or Twitter. You generally scroll through and click on something interesting. Only rarely will you look at a specific person’s feed and click because it’s them. Generally, you’ll see a video or a meme that looks interesting and click it to comment on it. If it’s really good, you may follow that person or business, just so more like what interests you comes through your feed. This IS the process. For every post with a call to action to purchase your product or service, you should have at least 4 that are general consumption to the masses. The more you make your social media pages fun and SOCIAL, the more people will like or follow it. That directly relates to that call to action post you make having more eyes on it, and generating more sales (or at least sales contact with your company).
3. Know Your Hashtags. For years, anyone that has been involved in SEO talked about keywords and key phrases for search engines. Social Media has their own search methodology. With Twitter, and now with Facebook, that methodology is known as hashtags. With so many people these days using Twitter and Facebook to find products, services and other information, it’s imperative that you understand the most popular hashtags related to your products or services. Add them to your posts, and you will become part of the results pages when people search on those platforms.

These are only a few key pieces to a very large, involved process. If done correctly, you will see results. Your social media will drive new business to you. It’s a great tool if used correctly, consistently and without spamming your clientele endlessly. If you are going to put in the time, let that time generate income for you.

If you need help with your social media campaign, please consider hiring Akin IT Services to handle this marketing effort for you. Call us today at (330) 732-5460.