Introduction

Social media marketing is becoming an increasingly important tool for small businesses. From creating brand awareness, to providing customer service and engaging with customers, social media marketing provides a platform for small businesses to reach out to their target audience. By utilizing social media to its fullest, small businesses can benefit from increased brand visibility, improved customer relations, and even increased sales. This article will explore the benefits of social media marketing for small businesses and provide helpful tips on how to maximize the potential of social media marketing.

How to Leverage Social Media Platforms to Create Brand Awareness for Your Small Business

Social media has become an invaluable tool for small businesses looking to build brand recognition. Utilizing social media platforms to create brand awareness can help you reach potential customers and increase your bottom line. Here are some tips to help you leverage social media platforms to create brand awareness for your small business.

1. Establish a Brand Presence: Start by establishing a presence on the most widely used social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Take the time to create a profile that accurately reflects your business and its values. Use high quality images and videos to showcase your products and services.

2. Share Relevant Content: Once you have established a presence on social media, share content that is relevant to your target audience. This could include blog posts, videos, or images that are interesting and educational. Make sure to include links to your website or blog to drive traffic to your site.

3. Engage With Your Audience: Social media is all about engagement. Respond to comments and messages quickly and thoughtfully. Ask questions and provide helpful advice to your followers. This will help you build relationships with your audience and create a loyal customer base.

4. Utilize Paid Advertising: Paid advertising on social media can be an effective way to reach a larger audience. With targeted campaigns, you can reach potential customers that are likely to be interested in your products and services.

By following these tips, you can leverage social media platforms to

5 Benefits of Implementing a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses

1. Increased Brand Recognition: Social media marketing helps to increase brand recognition and visibility by amplifying your content and making it easier for potential customers to find your business.

2. Improved Brand Loyalty: Social media marketing helps to build trust and loyalty with your customers. By engaging with your followers and responding to their comments, you can create a stronger bond with your customers and foster loyalty.

3. Increased Website Traffic: Social media marketing helps to drive traffic to your website. By sharing content on social media, you can encourage your followers to visit your website, which can lead to more conversions.

4. Improved Search Engine Rankings: Social media marketing can help to improve your search engine rankings. By optimizing your content for social media, you can ensure that your content is more visible and can help to boost your rankings.

5. Cost-Effective: Social media marketing is a cost-effective way to market your business. With the right strategy, you can reach a large number of potential customers without spending a lot of money.

Utilizing Instagram and Facebook Ads to Drive Traffic and Sales for Small Businesses

Small businesses are increasingly turning to social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, to reach their target audiences and drive traffic and sales. Instagram and Facebook Ads offer a range of options and features that can help businesses generate more leads, conversions, and sales.

Instagram Ads are one of the best tools for small businesses to reach their target customers. Businesses can use ads to reach a wider audience, create brand awareness, and increase engagement with the target audience. Instagram Ads can be used to promote products and services, increase website traffic, and generate more sales.

Facebook Ads are another powerful tool for small businesses. Ads on Facebook can be used to reach a wider audience, create more brand awareness, and drive traffic to the business website. With Facebook Ads, businesses can target specific demographics and interests, as well as measure the performance of the ads. This helps businesses gain valuable insights into what resonates with their target audience and allows them to optimize their campaigns.

When creating an ad campaign, businesses should focus on creating high-quality content that resonates with their target audience. Additionally, businesses should ensure that their ads are properly targeted and optimized for maximum reach. They should also test various ad formats to determine which ones are most effective.

Finally, businesses should use analytics to measure the success of their campaigns. This can include tracking website visits, conversions, and sales. By tracking the performance of their ads, businesses can gain valuable insights into what works and what

The Impact of User-Generated Content on Your Small Business’s Social Media Presence

User-generated content (UGC) is playing an increasingly prominent role in small business social media marketing strategies. UGC refers to any type of content created by users of a product or service, such as reviews, images, videos, or posts on social media. This type of content can be extremely beneficial to small businesses, as it can help to increase brand awareness, engagement, and trust.

One of the main benefits of UGC for small businesses is that it can help to increase brand awareness. Customers are more likely to engage with UGC than with traditional advertising, as it is created by individuals who have a personal connection to the product or service. Additionally, UGC can be seen by a wider audience than traditional advertising, as it can be shared and commented on by other users. This increases the reach of the content and can help to raise brand awareness.

In addition to increasing brand awareness, UGC can also help to drive engagement and increase customer trust. UGC tends to be more authentic than traditional advertising, as it is created by real customers who have a genuine connection to the product or service. This can help to create a sense of trust between the business and potential customers, which can lead to higher levels of engagement and sales.

Finally, UGC can help to save time and money for small businesses. UGC can be used to create content quickly and cheaply, as it does not require the same level of investment as traditional advertising. Additionally, U

Tips for Growing Your Small Business’s Social Media Following

1. Identify Your Target Audience: Before you can start growing your social media following, it is important to first identify who your target audience is and what platforms they are using. This will help you to focus your efforts on the right platforms and content topics.

2. Utilise Your Existing Platforms: If you have an existing website or other social media accounts, leverage them to promote your new social media accounts. For example, you can link to your new accounts on your website and encourage people there to follow you.

3. Create Quality Content: Quality content is key to social media success. Create content that is relevant, interesting and engaging to your target audience. This could be images, videos, blog posts, infographics etc.

4. Use Hashtags: Hashtags are a great way to get your content seen by more people. Use relevant hashtags to help boost your visibility.

5. Follow and Engage with Others: Following others and engaging with them is a great way to increase your visibility. Connect with influencers in your industry and comment on their posts. This will help to increase the chances of them noticing your content and following you.

6. Run Social Media Contests and Promotions: Running contests and promotions on social media can be a great way to increase your followers. Offer rewards for people who follow and engage with your social media accounts.

7. Utilise Paid Advertising: Paid

Conclusion

In conclusion, Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses is an effective and cost-efficient way to reach new and existing customers. It provides small businesses with the opportunity to create stronger relationships with customers and build brand awareness. It can also help small businesses boost their online presence, increase website traffic, and ultimately, generate more leads and sales. With the right strategy and effort, Social Media Marketing is a great way for small businesses to stand out and succeed in the competitive digital landscape.

There’s no shortage of advice in the blogosphere on how and where to spend your time on social media. How organizations are actually spending their time online, however, is a different story.

Unlike most marketing campaigns you see looking to get you using a product or service, non-profit social marketing is all about getting you to take action for a cause.

Often, non-profit organizations are tight on resources and don’t always have the ability to produce large, high-visibility campaigns. That’s where social media can help. Let’s dive into the social media platforms that non-profit orgs can leverage today.

How Non-Profits Leverage Social Media

There are three major ways that non-profit organizations can use social media to get the word out on causes that matter.

The first is through social challenges.

Think back to 2014 when the ice bucket challenge went viral. This challenge involved taking a bucket full of ice water and pouring it onto yourself, posting it on social media, donating to the cause, then nominating friends and family to follow suit.

This challenge, designed to raise awareness of ALS or Lou Gherig’s diseases, spread like wildfire through social media and helped the ALS association increase its annual funding by 187%.

Social challenges are fantastic for two reasons: They usually involve doing something funny which increases their viral potential and they invite people to join in.

Another marketing tactic non-profit organizations use is user-generated content.

Social proof is used in marketing all the time to foster trust between a brand and its target audience. Brands often do this by sharing customer reviews.

Non-profit orgs can also use social proof to drive action.

In 2021, Habitat for Humanity included drawings done by children of Habitat homeowners sharing messages of hope, strength, and resilience.

For non-profits, the best stories come directly from the beneficiaries themselves. Everything from a video to a handwritten message can be used to show how impactful the work is.

TikTok

When it comes to non-profit marketing, TikTok is a great platform to raise awareness. It’s particularly helpful for reaching a younger audience, like Gen Z and Millennials.

According to TikTok, users made close to 75,000 donations on the platform in 2021 for causes ranging from fighting hunger to humanitarian relief efforts.

The social platform arms non-profit organizations with features that help them generate interest in their causes and fundraise.

For instance, in April 2020, TikTok introduced donation stickers that could be added to videos, live streams, and profiles.

They work with a third-party platform called Tiltify to process donations securely. As such, non-profit organizations that want to use this functionality must go through an approval process by Tiltify.

In addition, TikTok has also financially contributed to these organizations, recently donating $7 million to #GivingTuesday initiatives and matching donations when users use branded hashtags.

@siennamae
#duet with @samsmith
♬ original sound – Sam Smith

Meta

Similar to TikTok, the social media platforms under Meta – notably Instagram and Facebook – also offer non-profit friendly features that facilitate donations and promote awareness.

To access these features, organizations must be eligible and sign up for charitable giving tools on Facebook.

Once that’s done, they’ll have access to a series of tools, such as:

Donation buttons that they can add to their profile and share during live streams.
Page fundraisers
Volunteering sign-up forms
Profile support buttons

You can find a list of tools by Meta here.

In addition to providing these tools, Meta has also contributed to many campaigns. Last year, on Giving Tuesday, the company matched up to $8 million in donations made to fundraisers on Facebook.

Image Source

To celebrate Instagram’s 11th anniversary, the social platform also matched fundraisers up to $50,000 from seven top creators on the platform through Giving Tuesday.

While TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook currently offer the most advanced features for non-profits, organizations can still leverage other social platforms like Twitter and Clubhouse to drive awareness and action. However, if you’re a new org looking to gain some traction, these are great places to start.

Whether you’re a new or seasoned social media manager, managing a brand’s social presence can be overwhelming. After all, you’re behind every post and every interaction with potential customers so the pressure is on.

One way to ease that and make sure you’re at the top of your game is with a social media checklist. In this article, we’ll cover the daily and monthly tasks every social media manager needs to succeed.

Social Media Tasks

Before we get into the checklist, we’re going to break down the work of a social media manager into four pillars.

Sharing – You must post on social media regularly to grow and maintain an audience.
Engaging – Connecting with your audience, via polls, responding to comments and DMs, and reposting user-generated content, is key to building that brand loyalty.
Monitoring – It’s important to know how your brand is perceived online, so you’ll need to monitor mentions of your brand as well as topics within your industry.
Reviewing and Optimizing – If you’re not reviewing your performance, how can you improve? This is a necessary part of every social media strategy.

If you don’t share often, you’ll struggle to build an audience. Without an audience, you won’t have much to engage with. This also means that you’ll have little to no data about what works well and nothing to optimize or review.

This is all to say that to have a robust social media presence, you must be strong in all four areas. Now, let’s dive into the daily tasks you’ll need to complete in this role.

Social Media Daily Checklist

On a daily basis, you will be focused on the first three pillars: sharing, engaging, and monitoring.

While there is some reviewing and optimizing that can happen daily, you can better identify patterns when you do so on a monthly basis once you have compiled a good data set.

1. Sharing content.

Your number one priority on social media should be sharing content.

That’s what will allow you to reach your target audience, attract them to your brand, and keep them engaged.

When we surveyed 310 U.S.-based marketers in 2022, we found that most social media marketers post between four to six times a week on social media platforms.

While that is the average, some marketers post more or less depending on the platform. For instance, 29% of marketers surveyed said they post on Facebook every day while 35% said they do the same on Twitter.

However, when asked about Pinterest, most marketers surveyed only post two to three times a week.

Of course, how often you post will depend on a variety of factors including the return on investment.

Something else to consider is that sharing content doesn’t only mean from your brand. It can include user-generated content or content from another non-competitor that would add value to your audience.

2. Responding to comments and DMs.

One of the easiest ways to engage your audience is by responding to their comments.

If you’re struggling to generate comments in the first place, try starting a conversation and asking your audience to join it.

In this post, sunscreen brand KINLÒ asks its audience to share ways they protect their skin.

In that same vein, you can ask your audience to tag a friend that would enjoy your post.

Another way to engage your audience is by responding to direct messages. Often, consumers will reach out to brands on social media to learn more about the brand, ask specific questions related to shared content, or get help.

It’s important that you review these questions every day to leave a positive impression on your audience. If you take too long to answer, they may lose interest or escalate the issue by complaining to the public.

You can take it one step further by working internally with your customer support team to develop an escalation process once a customer reaches out via social media.

3. Monitor brand mentions and industry-related content.

When you’re growing your business, it’s vital that you know how your brand is being perceived online and what is being said about it.

According to our 2022 social media marketing report, 35% of marketers surveyed track brand mentions and hashtags on social media.

Thankfully with social media, that information is within reach. You can easily set up alerts to be noticed whenever your brand is tagged or mentioned on social media.

You can also routinely do searches on platforms like TikTok where alerts aren’t readily available.

This will allow you to gauge brand sentiment and quickly address concerns from your target audience.

Pro-tip: HubSpot’s social media management software includes a brand monitoring tool that will help you stay on top of all mentions and even track your competitors.

4. Identify trends and buzzy content.

Trends come and go just about every week on social media.

The trick is jumping in as they’re growing in popularity and knowing when they’ve died out.

The best way to find trends is by simply being on social media – social listening. You may start to notice a particular sound being used often or a song being added to every Reel you come across.

Some social platforms will tell you exactly what’s trending, like on TikTok’s “Discover” tab and Twitter’s “Trending” tab.

There are also accounts that are dedicated to finding trends as they happen and explaining their origin. This will help you determine which ones are worth joining and which ones you should stay out of.

As a brand, everything you put out there is a representation of your values. That’s why it’s important that you be extra careful when assessing trends.

See what videos other brands and users are creating with that trend. Are they funny and creative? Are they offensive? Do they align with your brand?

If not, it’s always OK to skip because there’ll be another one coming around the corner.

5. Answer queries on forums.

When we think of social media, we often think of content-sharing apps like TikTok, Twitter, and Twitch.

However, some social apps – think Reddit and Quora – focus instead on conversations and community.

You may be surprised to find how many conversations people may be having about your brand on these websites. In addition to being a great source of information surrounding brand sentiment, you can also learn a lot about your audience’s challenges and pain points.

You can then leverage that information into value-packed posts to attract your audience.

6. Connect with brand evangelists.

Building brand loyalty is no easy feat. So once you’ve accomplished it, you have to invest time to maintain it.

This means connecting with your brand evangelists on a regular basis.

Yes! 😍

— Brandon Blackwood (@BBlackwoodNYC)
April 27, 2022

This can look like commenting on their content and/or sharing it on your platform, giving them access to exclusive content, shouting them out, and inviting them to participate during live streams.

While social media can be filled with parasocial relationships, don’t let that be the case for you and your audience.

Social Media Monthly Checklist

1. Check your analytics.

Data is every brand’s most sacred asset. It holds incredibly valuable insights about your target audience.

On social media, your data will tell you the type of content your audience enjoys, what grabs their attention, and what generates conversions.

It will also help you identify trends. In fact, when we asked social media marketers “How do you predict which social media trends are worth investing in?” The top answer was by analyzing their social media analytics.

So, which metrics are marketers reviewing? Here are the top five, according to our survey:

Likes and comments (41%)
Sales (41%)
Traffic to their website (41%)
Impressions and views (40%)
Brand mentions and hashtags (35%)

If you have at least one month’s worth of data, you can start finding out which posts perform the best and dig into the why.

Through your analytics, you can also assess which social platforms are worth investing in. According to our survey, the top three metrics marketers look at to make this decision are:

Impressions/views
Sales
Follower or subscriber count

Whether you’re already succeeding or struggling on social media, reviewing your data will always set you up for a better month ahead.

2. Set goals.

Once you’ve reviewed your analytics and know what went well and what can be improved, you can set your goals for next month.

For instance, say you notice that last month’s videos outperformed any other content type and generated 2,000 visits to your website. For next month, you can up the number of videos you post and set a visit goal of 3,000.

Whether it’s increasing your reach, generating more engagement, or driving more traffic to your website, setting goals will serve as your north star and allow you to schedule content that aligns with these goals.

3. Schedule next month’s content.

When you’re managing multiple social media accounts, you have to plan your content ahead of time. Otherwise, you risk under planning and not having enough content.

You’ve already set your goals for the month. So now, it’s just a matter of creating content that best aligns with them.

For instance, say you want to increase your reach and last month’s data shows that your most shared content relates to three main topics. You can then center next month’s content on these three topics.

When scheduling content, you should also consult other teams to determine if there are any events, announcements, or campaigns that you will need to share.

The earlier you have your creative assets – images, videos, copy – the easier it will be to create your content calendar.

Pro-tip: We created a social media content calendar template to make planning posts and coordinating campaigns easy.

There you have it – a detailed social media checklist that will have you on top of your game every day.

Creating an effective content workflow is a lot like baking a cake. If you accidentally pour unfinished batter into an unprepared pan, the damage is done. You can’t go back and prep the pan after the fact.

Imagine your cake batter is your content, and the cake pan is its publication. If your content goes straight from the writer to your consumers, you are running a lot of risks. You must first edit and fact-check the content before publication and distribution. Readers become disinterested or upset at careless, incorrect content. And once the information is out there, it is nearly impossible to recover.

Having the right people in place on your content team is not enough. To create quality content every time you post, your company needs to outline its processes in a content workflow.

In this post, we’ll cover the topic of content workflow — what it is, how to manage it, and how you can create one for your business.

Strategists, writers, editors, and managers are people you would have on your content team. Their tasks, seen in a workflow, include planning, writing, editing, publishing, and more; however, each function is not necessary for every content type.

Depending on the content type, your workflow will change. Businesses can publish various content like newsletters, blog posts, and social media posts. The content workflow is different for each asset. For example, compare the publication of a newsletter and a social media post. The most evident difference in this process is that the content types go through different channels. Once you break down the workflows, you will discover that each may require separate people, processes, tools, and resources.

With so many moving pieces necessary for creating a content workflow, managing the process becomes a top priority.

Content Workflow Management

If left untamed, your content workflow can become complicated and confusing for your team. To successfully manage your workflow, start by outlining the processes, people, and tools involved in the content creation process.

Processes

To manage your content workflow, identify the steps needed to create content. They are:

Strategizing
Planning
Creating
Reviewing
Publishing
Analyzing

While this is the basic workflow for content, each step has supplementary processes depending on the content type. You can build these extra steps as you create your content workflow. At this stage, it’s helpful to outline a content strategy.

People

An effective content workflow focuses on the processes needed to publish content, but people are arguably the most vital part. One aspect of managing content workflow is identifying and managing key players. These people are responsible for fulfilling the steps in the content creation process listed above. For example, for strategizing, you’d need a strategist. For reviewing, you’d need an editor.

In conjunction with managing your people and their processes, content workflow management also covers the tools needed to complete the work.

Tools

For your content team to fulfill their roles and work through content creation processes, they need tools. Content has to be created, edited, shared or managed somewhere. Managing your team’s content workflow means managing the tools it needs.

Content management systems, like CMS Hub, are essential for publishing blog posts. Canva and Adobe Photoshop are great tools for design. These are just three of the many tools your company might add to its content tech stack.

As the content marketing industry booms, your business needs to expand to accommodate this growth. This expansion reflects an increase in the people, processes, and tools associated with your content workflow. The more comprehensive your workflow becomes, the more daunting it is to manage; however, integrating content workflow software can solve the problem.

Content Workflow Software

Content workflow software, or a workflow management system, is a program that manages the content creation process through planning, production, and publication. Instead of teams using multiple methods and approaches to monitor the content process, workflow management systems help you create a centralized location for your team to visualize its processes. It promotes the execution of your content strategy in alignment with company goals.

The added benefits of using content workflow software include:

An increase in productivity
A reduction in errors
An improvement in workplace collaboration

Increase In Productivity

Without using a content workflow software tool, team members are left with extra work and time wasted. These issues are removed with content workflow software because it is automated. It eliminates sending email updates because the software sends them for you. Content teams don’t have to guess the timeline of a project because the system manages it for them. Everything happens quickly and efficiently.

Reduction In Errors

Nothing is perfect, and you can’t expect the same from your content workflow. Even so, content workflow software helps reduce errors. It helps your team stay ahead of deadlines. It allows you to identify what processes in the content workflow need adjustment. Content management software gives your company the tools for improving your workflow.

Improvement In Workplace Collaboration

Content management software improves workplace collaboration between team members and the apps and platforms they use. Executing your content strategy requires many different people who use various tools. Workflow management software allows your team to notify and update another member while the software integrates with several content management systems, email providers, messaging services, and social media platforms.

To take advantage of the benefits of using content workflow software, learn more about Marketing Hub and how its marketing automation technology simplifies tasks.

Content Workflow Template

Content workflow software is fundamental in keeping up with your content strategy; however, you need the appropriate steps to build your workflow. Only then can you get the most out of the software. Where do you begin? Here’s how you can create your content workflow.

How to Create a Content Workflow

The people, processes, and tools necessary for executing your content strategy are helpful markers in creating your content workflow. To create a content workflow, you need to:

Decide what content to create.
Create a breakdown of actionable tasks.
Assign roles.
Determine the time associated with each task.
Document your content workflow.

Decide what content to create.

First, decide “what” you are creating. Is it a social media post? Is it a newsletter? Your company has the choice of creating many content types like infographics, blog posts, video content, and more, and you will need to create a workflow for each.

Create a breakdown of actionable tasks.

Once you are focused on a particular content type, outline the necessary steps needed to get it from strategy to publication. Consider this sample workflow for a blog post. Its process might look like this:

Strategizing > Planning > Creating > Editing > Publishing > Analyzing

While these are broad tasks for creating a blog, this is where it needs to expand. Strategizing typically includes performing content audits, creating buyer personas, and conducting keyword research. Editing might involve implementing SEO techniques or adding images and links.

Every step in the process needs to be accounted for so it can be assigned to the appropriate team member.

Assign roles.

After you have the tasks for your content process, it’s time to decide who does them. This step can help identify if anyone is at capacity in their role and if you need to bring in additional members. Using our blog example above, this is how you might assign roles.

Strategizing > Content Strategist
Planning > Content Manager
Writing > Copywriter
Editing > Editor
Publishing > Content Manager
Analyzing > Content Manager

After assigning responsibility for each task, determine how much time is necessary for completion.

Determine the time needed for each task.

To determine how much time you need for each task, consult your content team. How much time does your writer say it takes them to write a 500-word post? What about a 2500-word post? Use the length of time they give you and build in additional time. It can help your company avoid working with tight timelines or missing deadlines.

After this step, your content workflow might look like:

Strategizing > Content Strategist (1 day)
Planning > Content Manager (<1 day)
Writing > Copywriter (2 days)
Editing > Editor (1 day)
Publishing > Content Manager (<1 day)
Analyzing > Content Manager (Ongoing)

Once you have outlined a process for the tasks, people, and length of time needed for creating your content, your content workflow is complete.

Document your content workflow.

The last step in creating your content workflow is documenting it. Companies typically use standard operating procedures (SOPs) to keep their teams aligned with the process. Marketing Hub, Trello, and Evernote are examples of systems that give teams easy access to documents like SOPs.

Content workflows work, so you don’t have to.

Content creation isn’t simple. There are many elements in publishing content and successfully executing your content strategy. Creating a content workflow helps your team stay on task by increasing productivity, reducing errors, and improving workplace collaboration. The predetermined flow of each process makes it easy, but managing individual tasks becomes increasingly chaotic without content workflow software.

When managing how your content transforms from an idea to publication, content workflows handle the heavy lifting.