Social Media Marketing for Small/Local Businesses

Social Media platforms have arrived and if you are not present on them, there are chances that you are not being discovered by a potential customer.

By YOU, I mean YOUR BUSINESS. For SME’s/local businesses, it is that personal touch and a unique connection with our customers that get you maximum business. However, if we have to grow, expand and yet maintain our ethos, social media can be a very useful tool in that regard.

Do these things before you start off on social media:

• Make customer personas of existing and potential customers: customer personas go beyond traditional user demographics like gender, age, income, etc. Personas help you define your customers better by understanding their pain points, influencers, key life stages, etc.
• Create/update your Google My Business listing: I cannot stress the importance of GMB enough for a local business. Claim the business, remove duplicates, update every information that needs to be updated and then start taking reviews from customers, friends, and family.
• Start using Whatsapp Status, Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories: This is the hidden and most underrated nugget in this checklist. Starting getting familiar with these tools and see the response received in less than a month. Start sharing anything every 2 – 3 days, even if it is about your personal life. The idea is to get you familiar and habituated with these tools.
• Ensure name consistency: Before you get started on all platforms, try and ensure that you get the same user name across all platforms. Even your website domain should be the same as your Facebook page, Instagram business account, Linkedin company page, twitter account, and your GMB handle.

Start doing the above at the earliest and only then it would be worthwhile to move on to managing/updating your business pages and then start online advertising.