Small Business Social Media: How to Handle It

You end up wearing a variety of hats as a small business owner: customer service rep, accountant, service provider, marketing professional…the list goes on. Adding “social media strategist” to that list can feel overwhelming, especially when you consider all of the platforms available, each with its own tricks and content requirements. So how do you determine where you should be focusing your energy and resources?

With our small business clients, we of course, start small. We’ve put together a guide to show you how we figure out a social media strategy that will work for our small business clients. And sometimes having someone guide you or help you execute this task can be your best option!

Off to a (Small) Start

First of all, let go of the notion that you need to be everywhere. It’s best to start off small, especially if you’re working with a small team and limited resources. Instead, we ask a few key questions to figure out where your social media efforts will be most effective:

1. Where are your customers?
2. Where are your competitors?
3. What purpose is each platform serving?

We start by considering how much time and budget a small business might have to dedicate to social media. And a social media audit is a good first step. For example, if you don’t have a lot of time to spare it’s probably best to avoid video-first platforms like YouTube and TikTok. It’s also worth deciding whether you’ll mostly be creating original content or repurposing existing material, like webinars and live workshops. We sometimes do part of the social media, or one of the channels, supplementing a small business’ in-house resources, so it’s not overwhelming for them to do all of it.

Picking a Social Media Platform

If you want to reach as many people as possible with your social media efforts, consider how many people use various platforms. Facebook clocks in with the most users (almost 3 billion), though Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have each crossed the billion-user threshold as well. Smaller, newer platforms (like alternatives to Twitter/X) won’t have the same populations.

All Social Media Channels Are Not The Same

The average user of each platform varies, so you’ll need to determine which venues are popular among your target audience. Facebook users tend to be closer to middle age, with 77% falling between 30 and 49 years old, while almost half of TikTok users are between the ages of 18 and 29. Remember, though, that just because your audience is using a platform doesn’t mean they spend money there, so if you use social media to sell goods or services you should also look at users’ spending habits. Facebook and Instagram are particularly popular as shopping venues, while TikTok has yet to roll out universal access to its “Shop” feature.

Begin, Test, Begin Again

Once you’ve selected the platforms you’ll be using and started posting content, continually check in on your content’s performance. See what’s working and what isn’t. Keep an open mind when it comes to what sort of content your audience wants to see. And don’t be afraid to shake things up every now and then. You may just stumble across a new means of connecting to your audience. Relationship-building is the name of the game when it comes to social media.

Getting the Press Release Right

A press release is an official statement (written or recorded) that an organization issues to the news media and beyond. Whether we call it a “press release,” a “press statement,” a “news release,” or a “media release,” we’re always talking about the same basic thing.

Most are a page long — two pages max. The goal is to provide enough information so that news outlets have sufficient material to craft their own stories about whatever the release is detailing.

Press releases are delivered in a myriad of incarnations, from new restaurant openings to executive promotions, you’re feeding an unpredictable news cycle.  PR professionals then make the ordinary extraordinary.

Here are a couple of tips to make your next one stand out.

Create a Simple Headline that Gives an Overview of the Content

Press release headlines frame the ensuring content. They should convey the central message of your story that is easy to understand.

Make Your Email Subject Line POP

News makers barrage new outlets with this type of information overload every hour of every day and in order to lift your clients’ news out of a sea of emails, it’s paramount to write a succinct message with an eye-catching subject line.

Less is More with Press Releases

Consider the last time you scrolled through social media or read the news. Your gaze probably gravitated towards the stories that had sensational headlines or graphics. Journalists are skimmers. It’s an art form for them. They are looking for information that interest them and their audience quickly.  

Keeping your information concise is a great strategy to boost its impact. Putting the most important points at the top will give interested journalists an immediate entry way to find everything they need while removing anything that isn’t absolutely necessary to the story that they are developing.

A few types of social media marketing

Content Marketing/Content Creating: This is where a company will make content and share it on a social media platform. It can be anything from a podcast, videos, emails, etc. These messages are personal and should help the company achieve its objectives and reach a specific audience.

Advertising/Sponsorship: This is a more formal way of using social media. It is a non-personal message that promotes, or sells a product, service, or concept. You are able to create and place the exact message you want.

Influencer Marketing: This is where a company can use a social media influencer to help promote their product. This influencer is trusted and has a loyal audience, so when they share the product, it raises brand visibility.

Check out this article about 10 different types of social media to learn about other types of social media marketing.

Which type of Marketing high schoolers respond to the best

Overall, most high schoolers respond best to Influencer Marketing or Content Creating/Content Marketing, specifically on popular social media apps like TikTok or Instagram. Personally, I find traditional ads are easy to scroll past compared to an interesting video that grabs your attention. With influencer marketing, these content creators already have a following, making it a perfect place to promote. However, it is crucial to find a content creator that aligns with the idea for your product. Many beauty companies will pair up with a content creator that has an entire page on that specific topic, making it relevant on that page.

On the other hand, making original content for a company or a brand can be extremely successful. Many popular companies now have accounts on popular social media platforms and are active in many different ways. Some comment on posts that mention them or will repost videos made about them as well as making their own.

How to stand out

There are many ways to stand out as a company and gain traction through social media. I think one of the best ways are brand trips. Brand trips are when a company takes a group of influencers on an all-expense paid vacation. These trips always get a lot of attention and influencers spend the duration of it promoting the brand and what it sells. These have proven time and time again to be an effective way to bring attention to a company and product.

Another great way to bring attention to your brand is make a TikTok account. On average, high schoolers spend 113 minutes a day just on TikTok, significantly more than any other social media site. It can take a while to gain a following, so patience is important. Once an account reaches a point of success, they typically continue to grow.

How Can Lead Generation Benefit Your Business?

Good question! You’ve heard about “Lead Generation” but aren’t sure what that is, how to do it, or if it can help you build your business, right? As a marketing firm that works on lead generation strategies and programs all the time, we’re here to answer your questions. So ask yourself these questions next:

1. Interested in investing in the expertise of what a strategic, seasoned marketing partner can provide for your overall brand? Good. Read further.
2. Ready to invest the resources, time, money, etc. to get there? Better.
3. Know that the fundamentals of a brand architecture, brand strategy, message map, creative brief are key? Your competition and target customer are defined? Best.

Over the past two weeks, we have had new prospects reach out to us regarding lead generation. So, let’s rap about that specifically.

Let’s Get Started

What is it? Lead generation is the process of attracting and engaging your target audience. And then, converting them to customers. Engage your prospects. Build relationships. Turn leads into loyal customers. And loyal customers translate into sales.

Lead Generation Winning Strategies

There are lots. There is no silver bullet, one size fits all. Once all documents are reviewed and goals and target are considered, we recommend the right strategy for each business we work with at Front Porch Marketing.

Let’s name a few:

• Content Marketing. This really should be part of any of the processes below. It hits many buckets: social media, website, SEO and inbound marketing. Providing consistent, relevant content of value and establishing cred and authority with your prospects.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and on page. This has to do with your website. Think forms, widgets and pop-ups to attract website visitors and produce leads by collecting information like email addresses for follow-up, or addition to a monthly newsletter.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Platforms and tools — i.e. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, PipeDrive, Salesforce, ZoomInfo — can help identify and reach the optimal target audience for your business. Once you reach your audience these tools also help you nurture them. Turn them into loyal customers via email, SMS and other one-on-one relationship building communications.

What’s Your Next Step?

Our clients reap success using these strategies and tools. We can share success stories related to any of the bullets above. And, we are here to help you. Let us implement a repeatable process of lead generation and then scale it with strategies and tactics to grow your topline.

What are AI Influencers in marketing?

AI influencers are virtual personalities managed by brands or agencies. They are created using computer graphics and machine-learning algorithms to appeal to a brand’s audience. These influencers serve the same purpose as other real influencers. But they are designed to reinforce a brand’s particular marketing objectives. AI Influencers can wear a retailer’s clothing or visit their store — all virtually. They can express their thoughts about the benefits of products. They can help elevate a brand’s social media.

AI influencers have already worked for brands from Red Bull to Tinder, since 2016. They interact with consumers using conversation, photos and videos. Often hyper-realistic, they create attention-getting, stylish interactions with the products they represent.

What are some benefits of AI Influencers?

AI influencers work 24/7, whereas real humans cannot keep up this pace. This keeps active engagement rates high, and is beneficial to consumers engaging globally in multiple time zones. With round-the-clock content creation, these spokespeople can quickly build a large global following.

Often, they can create content specifically tailored to answer their audiences’ questions. Further, they can engage with thousands of consumers in a personalized way — without the conventional challenges of doing all of this as a real person. AI influencers, and their accompanying data, can also guide brands to find new or specific audiences. They can introduce new products, create more engaging content, and help optimize campaigns. 

How do they help brands specifically?

Everything listed above is incredibly beneficial to growing a brand. But did you know AI influencers can also track consumer engagement so you don’t have to? These influencers can sum up analytical data from a brand’s work with them. That’s influencer and data are rolled into one. This makes it easy to view analytics and make decisions going forward.

From social media engagement to sales reports, an AI influencer can become an important part of helping brands build business. This data is valuable in offering ideas on which demographic to reach. It is valuable to know when to reach them, and how to reach them as well. Brands like Calvin Klein, Samsung, and Prada have all worked with AI influencers. These brands have incorporated influencers on social media platforms with success.

In the future, look for innovative new uses as AI influencers evolve. They’ll continue to talk with consumers and build value for brands in platforms beyond social media.

It is probably safe to assume your company has a marketing plan. That’s document detailing the strategies to market your products and services to the defined target audience. However, do you find your company falls short in executing the plan? That’s where the Content Calendar comes in!

Let’s face it, priorities change, and problems come up. Next thing you know, it is six months down the road, and you have forgotten what was in the original plan, let alone followed through with implementation. And this lack of follow-through can negatively impact your business.

Follow Through on your Plan with a Content Calendar

One way to eliminate this situation is by developing a content marketing calendar. By definition, it’s a tool that helps you plan and execute your marketing strategy. It turns your plan into actionable deliverables.

Creating a marketing content calendar may seem daunting at first, but in its simplest form, consider it a living, breathing document used to plan your content. The amount of detail and layout can vary according to your organization’s preferences. At a minimum, it should contain a separate column or tab for your platform(s), content to be published, and the publishing date.

How to Create a Marketing Content Calendar

It may seem overwhelming but consider these key pieces of information as you start to plan your content calendar.

• What marketing platforms do you use? Social media, email marketing, blog posting. No matter what platforms you utilize, it’s most efficient to keep track of your content in one document.
• Determine how often you publish content. Do you post to your social media channels three times a week? Do you send a monthly email or maybe a weekly communication? How often do you write blog articles? Twice a month?
• Create your content calendar. It’s recommended to plan your content at least one month in advance using either an excel spreadsheet or a Google Sheet. Create a separate tab for each marketing platform (social media, email marketing, blog articles, etc.). For social media, create a new tab for each month of content.
• Plan your content. Consider key dates to promote your product or service. Do you have an upcoming product launch or event? Are there specific holidays or national days you want to highlight?
• Build out your calendar. After you’ve answered all the questions above, add those items to your content calendar. Plug your content into the assigned content tab for each month or week.

Next Step: Executing Your Content

The next step is to add additional levels of detail. Consider the supporting images and content needed for each social post, email, blog article, on your content calendar. Assign ownership and build out timelines. Who is responsible for image creation, content development, social media posting and building and launching emails?

Now it’s time to see the benefits of your hard work pay off. Publish your content and monitor your results using analytics. Find out what content and images generate the greatest response and what fell short. Test your messages and images. Change your content accordingly. Be creative and…HAVE FUN!!! It all starts with a good content calendar.

How Do You START Marketing Your Small Business?

Marketing your small business can be an overwhelming task if you’re starting from scratch. Where do you start? What’s the most important thing? What are the marketing steps to take to get to success?

Over the years, Front Porch Marketing has written a ton of articles to help small businesses succeed — on everything from social media to marketing plans. Today we’ll gather those up in a helpful list that you can use to start marketing your small business. Even if you’re starting from scratch.

Start Your Marketing With a Plan

Before you start doing anything, you need to have a big, bad marketing plan. Why? This steering document will help you know who your audience is and what your goals are. It will help you develop strategies to succeed, and tactics to reach those people.

As months pass, though, don’t forget you’ll need to continue to cultivate your marketing plan to make it grow, much like weeding and feeding a garden. Weed out what’s not working, and do more of what is working. A Marketing Plan is a living document.

Make Your Business Look Like It Means Business

To present the best face of your business to the world, you’ll need a logo. This visual symbol of your business’ legitimacy will be a reminder everywhere — your email, your website, your invoices, your staff’s golf shirts. Designing a strong logo and implementing it is key to a strong brand voice.

Can Your Customers Find You as You Are Marketing Your Small Business?

Most businesses have a website, as their home-base on the internet. This is the first place customers will go to find you and learn more about your business. Is yours up-to-date? Or do you need to build your first website? Maybe you just need to expand your presence by adding a social media channel or two after a social media audit. Depending on who your customer is, you might choose Facebook or LinkedIn, Twitter or TikTok, to reach them.

You might also want to consider email marketing to reach your customers. Engage and connect with customers. Make their lives easier by helping them solve problems. Email marketing has power, and building your email marketing list can build your business.

Grow Your Audience With Advertising!

Reaching your consumers wherever they may be is important. So your marketing plan might likely include some form of advertising. Do you need digital advertising to reach new customers on the internet? Maybe text message marketing and advertising (SMS) to build loyalty with your existing customers. Would testimonials on your website convince others to try your company?

Establish Your Authority With Media Relations.

Some businesses benefit from having the news media write about them in editorials, reviews and interviews. Effective media relations can get great results for your business goals when done properly. Customizing your news to each publication can benefit both parties.

Start Your Small Business Marketing from Scratch By Taking the First Step

Read through some of our articles to help you get started on the journey of marketing your small business. Remember that it’s a marathon, and that you can continuously improve your approach to get better and better results. Need help with any part of your journey? We’re here to help.

Front Porch Marketing is now 12 years old, thanks to you. What are our marketing take-aways from the past 12 years? We value your support and confidence in us over the years! You and your brands are our jam.

Marketing Take-Aways to Help Your Business Grow

Reflecting back on client trends and opportunities, on our pearl anniversary, we share common pearls of wisdom we saw at the beginning and continue to see today. We hope these marketing take-aways spur some thinking for you!

1. DIY Marketing

It only gets a brand so far. And, once your brand is established and has credibility, DIY marketing is no longer good enough. Time to take your garage band to the main stage. Hire a professional or firm.

2. Hiring One Marketing Person to Do All the Marketing Things

There are only a handful of unicorns on the planet that can do all the things marketing. If you go this route, know they need support. A marketing generalist isn’t your graphic designer, copywriter, webmaster, etc. Give them the resources they need to do their jobs.

3. B2B Websites

We hear from business owners their websites aren’t a priority and aren’t a sales and marketing tool. Not true. What we see most often is that you aren’t closing the sale or getting to the next round of meetings because you are getting the veto vote when potential clients go to your website to validate your credibility. Important marketing take-away: your website is your virtual office. Optimize it!

4. Marketing Take-Away for CEOs, C-Suite Executives or Managing Partners

Your role is strategy, operations, finances, and managing people. We have experienced too many times when you want to get too far in the weeds managing marketing. At that point, bottlenecks happen and marketing doesn’t happen at its best or consistently.

5. Brand Architecture

Without brand architecture, your branding is inconsistent. Define your brand mission, personality, positioning and affiliation. Let all things marketing flow from there. This becomes the filter and guidepost for branding and marketing strategy as well as execution.

6. Shiny Objects

You have Salesforce, but your team isn’t utilizing it. Then you get Hootsuite and ZoomInfo and, and, and. Stop right there. Marketing operations take-away: Make sure whatever technology you currently have is being utilized to its fullest. Then, if needed, build upon that with other tools.

Marketing Take-Aways to Take You Through the Next 12 Years

Cheers to you! Thank you for trusting in us, believing in us and getting us to our 12^th anniversary. Without your support, we wouldn’t be rockin’ on the Porch today and lovin’ every minute of it. We hope these 6 marketing take-aways will be helpful for your business as we grow together over the next dozen years!

Whatever your industry, you can no longer afford to ignore the importance of optimizing your website for mobile experience. Google recently revealed that more searches take place on mobile devises than on desktop computers in 10 different countries, including the United States and Japan. That means failure to optimize your website for mobile could leave you with as much as 30% fewer conversions!

How to Increase Your Mobile Conversion Rate

So, where do you start? You’ll need to decide whether your website will be responsive. This means it will automatically adjust based on whether the visitor is on desktop or mobile. Or if you’ll have a separate, mobile-friendly site you direct customers to. Regardless of how you get them to your site, designing your web pages with mobile users in mind is key to avoiding abandoned carts and a high bounce rate.

Optimize Your Website’s Bounce Rate with UX

A ”bounce rate” refers to the “percentage of people who visit [your] landing page and then ‘bounce’ without converting on a form or making a purchase.” Here you want a low number. Design is key to keeping potential leads and customers on your page for as long as possible. HubSpot completed an experiment by re-designing one of their content landing pages, placing an emphasis on UX design, and saw their bounce rate decrease by an average of 27%!

User-focused pages designed with mobile in mind tend to focus on simplicity. Good UX (User Experience design) can help. If a form is too long, there’s too much text to read, or the physical navigation of a page is overly difficult, visitors are likely to become frustrated and leave the website altogether. Poorly formatted pages are also more than aesthetically displeasing, as they tend to feel less reputable than their well-designed counterparts.

Safety Optimization Keeps Visitors On Your Site

It’s important that visitors feel safe while exploring your site. “Mobile users are more likely to have their passwords, app login info, and financial details sorted on their phones,” making them extra vigilant about the websites they visit. Optimize safety on your website. Make your website secure with HTTPS and displaying trust badges. This will put users’ minds at ease. Further, payment method mistrust results in 19% of customers abandoning their carts. If you don’t already make use of e-wallet payment methods like Android Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal, consider adding them to your payment offerings.

With mobile traffic contributing to the highest percentage of global web traffic, businesses need to optimize their online presence for mobile use. The information here will get you started on the right track.

Front Porch has currently four clients, both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C), with paid digital media campaigns ads and paid social media running. These clients are across different industries from financial and non-profits to insurance and ecommerce. These clients’ marketing strategies include paid digital media advertising because it works for them. We recommended integrating your digital marketing with your brand strategy as part of your overall marketing plan.

Maximizing A Digital Media Budget

Our digital ad philosophy is to consider what formats deliver the maximum opportunities possible for the budget available, to an audience most likely to be interested. This approach maximizes the resources of our clients.

Here is a sampling of paid digital media advertising tools that we are using currently to serve our clients in this space:

• Social – Ads served on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to build awareness, build relationships with the audience, and drive traffic to a website
• Digital Banner Ads – Ads served through browsers and in-app to build frequency and drive traffic to a website
• Streaming Audio – Ads served within music and/or podcast content cross-device, including smart speakers

How We Determine A Plan’s Effectiveness

So, what is the predicted ROI of a paid digital media advertising campaign? When the campaign is for business to business, not an “exit now for cheeseburgers”, it is trickier to predict. But this is how we view the situation, and read our analytics.

Here’s an example for a paid digital advertising campaign for a service business client of ours. Our standard average CTR (click-thru rate), which is the number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of times it is shown, is typically .03-.05% for digital ad campaigns. (Social and Native can trend higher with more mobile impressions than Banner Ads served computers.)

So a digital media plan with about 1MM impressions per month would generate 300-500 clicks. These are the customers that click and come to our client’s website. But, the bounce rate can be high in the 90%. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. Thus with 300-500 clicks, this leaves 30-50 quality prospects per month. Which is a fantastic number for our service client.

If you’d like to know more about how a paid digital media plan might work for your business, just ask!