Top 4 tips for promoting your small business on social media

So you’re a small business owner and you've got the basics down. Your product is great, you've protected your investment with small business insurance, and your customers love you. But what about social media? Most small business owners know by now that they need to have a presence on social media. You've probably set up a fan page on Facebook for your business, and you probably have a Twitter account. You may have a LinkedIn account, a Google+ page and even a YouTube channel. Those are great first steps toward promoting your business. Now you have to feed the beast.

1. Find Your Social Evangelist

Someone in your business needs to be responsible for managing your social media. By having a single point of contact, you can develop a strategy. Your social media guru can create a calendar so that new posts appear somewhat regularly, and so that promotions are communicated across all social networks at the same time.

2. All Roads Lead to the Blog

If you have a blog relating to your business, you can use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube to drive traffic to your blog. Post a ‘teaser’ or a promotion on each network, than include a link to your most recent blog post. If you have a special offer or promotion, describe it in the blog post as well as the social media posts, in case people come to your blog in some other way.

3. Keep the Content Coming

Social media content has a very, very short lifespan. A post or tweet may only stay near the top of a user’s feed for a few minutes. By posting frequently, you have a better chance of staying at the top of the feed, and your message will be top of mind.

Keep the quality of your content to a high standard. You’ll find that consumers are looking for different types of content like whitepapers and infographics. Make sure it’s useful and concise. Content that feature listicles such as our “10 Important Personal Characteristics of an Entrepreneur” piece are a great start. Social media has shortened our attention spans, so you need to grab the reader’s attention and hold it by providing information they can use. Don’t try to extend the length of your posts with ‘fluff’ – you’ll lose your audience.

4. Don’t Worry About Redundancy

Some business owners are afraid to put the same promotion or message on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and so on. Don’t be. Many of your prospects pay more attention to one of these channels than the others, and those who see your post on multiple channels will just gloss over your message if they've seen it before.

If you are concerned about bombarding prospects and customers on multiple networks, keep your message or promotion the same but vary the copy a little bit. Understand that LinkedIn is most often the network of choice of businesspeople, Facebook is more personal, and Twitter is a little of both, for those who admire brevity.

Social media is the great equalizer of business. By paying attention to your social media strategy, you can compete with much larger companies and win.