Start with a plan

Unlike randomly sharing posts on your personal profiles, when it comes to your business pages, you need to have a plan before you start posting. The more time and effort you put into your social media plan, the better. Get started by setting your business goals or objectives. Are you hoping to find customers, raise awareness, send people to your online shop? Once you’ve written down your objectives, it’ll be easier to figure out the following:

Are you selling a product or offering a service?

What will you be posting about?

How often will you post in a day, week, month?

Know your audience

A benefit of social media is that you can target your audience on platforms and apps that they enjoy using every day. Start by doing research on who your ideal customers are. Are they adults, youth, a mix of both? What types of content do they enjoy? Then, research where your target audience is most active (eg. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram) and create a business profile.

Choose the right platform

When choosing which social media platforms to use, you should consider the type of business you’re promoting and to who. For example, if your customers are adults aged 25 and up, then Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter could be good options. If your customers are teenagers and young adults, Instagram and TikTok can work better. It’s important to not waste your energy on platforms that aren’t relevant to your business. Remember, you can use different social media platforms to reach different audiences.

Create content

This is where you can get creative. Researching your customers can help you figure out what they might like to see. For example, you could reach adults with good quality pictures and bold text. Teenagers on the other hand, may prefer videos or GIFs. Free tools such as Canva can help you quickly create exciting posts.

Once you start posting content, you need to make sure you respond to all questions/queries you receive on your socials. This gives your business a good online repuation. It’s important to remember that not all feedback will be positive. Sort through feedback and decide which messages are relevant to your business, and don’t take those which are negative and demotivating too personally.

You can also mention or re-post content shared by your customers. This will make them feel more involved and valued. Play around with creating different hashtags and encourage your customers to use them too.

Use hashtags, links, images, and tag your friends and family. This will help your posts reach a higher amount of people. Ask your friends and family to share your posts to their socials as well.

Be consistent

Your business pages will only grow if you post consistently. Don’t get discouraged if your page likes aren’t growing fast enough, or if you don’t see any engagement in the beginning. The art is to keep on interacting and posting. You can use free scheduling tools such as Creator Studio for Facebook and Instagram, Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule your posts ahead of time.

Promoting your small business online isn’t always easy. It’s important to create posts that your audience will find useful. Having a plan and remaining consistent is key. Work hard on it and don’t give up. Social media has allowed many entrepreneurs to build and shape their small businesses into empires. Will you be using these tips to promote your business? Share your business page with me in the comments below!

If you or a friend need advice or help, you can contact me here on Ask Choma, send a Facebook message or a Twitter DM, or a WhatsApp Message (071 172 3657).