10 Social Media Pain Points for Small Businesses
1. Time Management
As a small business owner, you’ve got a million things on your mind every single day, and it’s likely that social media is not at the top of the list.
Creating valuable, high-quality content on social media is intensive process that requires daily attention and effort. The companies and influencers that succeed on these platforms all know one thing, volume is king.
The more content you create, the higher the odds for gaining traction and engagement within these communities. Ideally, a dedicated social media manager should be posting multiple times a day (post amount differs across social channels).
On Instagram, post between 3-7 times per week.
On Facebook, post between 1 and 2 times a day.
On Twitter, post between 1 and 5 Tweets a day.
On LinkedIn, post between 1 and 5 times a day.
Social automation tools like Loomly, Hootsuite, and Agroapulse offer a wide range of organizational and time saving tools to help you manage your content schedule and more. If you are currently struggling at implementing a consistent social media strategy, I highly suggest utilizing one of the above services (we currently use Loomly).
However, Social media management is a full time job. So if you don’t have the free time to perform these tasks internally, you can also turn to a digital marketing or social media agency for outside help if it’s in your budget to do so.
2. Know Your Audience
You might think that the main point of social media is simply to share information about your business and its offerings. But if you don’t share this information in a way that resonates with your audience, then you may be wasting your time. Before posting content on your social channels ask yourself three questions:
Is my content original?
Is my content relevant?
Does it provide valuable information?
Once you feel confident that your content meets these criteria, it’s ready to be posted across your social channels. Don’t expect to have perfect engagement right off the bat, it takes time and testing to fully understand your audience.
Doing audience research to address their specific pain points and create content that’s relevant for them can make your social media strategy significantly more successful than it would be otherwise. Plus, this market research may also help you identify other business opportunities in the future.
3. Engaging with the Audience
In order for your audience members to feel heard, engagement is key. Creating content that gives the user a reason to like, share, comment or follow is integral in your social media strategy. Implementing incentives for following and sharing, like giveaways or special content is one method to naturally boost engagement with your followers.
While you should engage with your audience on a regular basis, it’s not necessary to respond to every single comment. Just be sure to keep your engagement efforts genuine and positive so that your customers know their opinions are truly valued.
Additionally, posting images and video is a powerful method to connect with your audience. In fact, 64% of consumers say that viewing a marketing video influenced their purchasing decision. So, implementing video content into your social media strategy is another way to boost engagement and influence consumers.
4. Positive Reputation
In the past, a business’s reputation was largely based on word-of-mouth reviews, but now, social media has taken that role. Keep up with your reviews both on social media and on platforms like Google, and be sure to take that feedback to improve your business.
One of the best ways to maintain a positive reputation is to use customer feedback to enhance their experience overall. When negative feedback does come in, use it to your advantage and discover where your business has the chance to improve.
5. Getting More Social Media Shares
Getting shares on social media can be an incredibly effective way to gain organic traffic. In fact EdgeRank makes the assertion that shares have more weighting than both likes and comments.
That means you’ll need to create content that not only gets your audience talking but also encourages them to continue the conversation by sharing with their friends.
Figure out what types of content lead to the most engagement and consider pursuing these types of content further. In my personal experience, simply telling the audience to share the content with a friend is effective at raising share rate.
Similarly, creating an incentive for sharing like access to a offer or special content, will drive more shares. The more shares you can get, the more exposure your business will get, even if you’re not purchasing paid ads.
6. Discovering and Curating Content
If you want to bring more people to your social media channels, one element is crucial: posting consistently. But in order to do that, you’ll need to discover and curate the content you’re going to share.
Fortunately the internet has a plethora of tools available to help you find new content. BuzzSumo, Reddit, and Answer the Public are tools that I personally use to iterate new content (my favorite being reddit).
It is important to act quickly on the trends and content that you discover, the internet moves fast, and if you delay you might end up missing the mark. On platforms like TikTok, trends usually last from a few weeks to a day, meaning that in order to succeed on these platforms you have to stay on top of your game.
This process may be a bit time-consuming at first, but it will become easier the more you do it. Plus, it will keep you on top of the trends in your industry and inspire future content topics for you to expand upon.
7. Limited Funds or Resources
Particularly for small businesses, every penny counts. It might seem like an unnecessary expense to spend time creating content and posting on social media just to get a few likes or shares.
However, exposure on social media is one of the most effective ways to bring new audiences to your company and engage with your potential customers.
If you are constrained by resources, but still want to develop a standing on social media, pick one channel and go all in.
Think about what platform makes the most sense for your industry. If you’re a restaurant or gym: Instagram. If you’re an accounting firm: LinkedIn. You get the Idea.
It’s worth allocating some extra funds to social media management or social ads as you can, and there are free or affordable tools like the ones mentioned above that can help you make the most of your digital strategy.
8. Presence on Multiple Channels
Facebook is not the only social media platform that matters anymore. There are millions of valuable audience members to be found on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and others.
However, your ideal audience will likely not be found on each one of these platforms. While it’s important to identify opportunities on multiple platforms, it’s not necessary to cover them all; do your research to see which platforms are most effective depending on who your target audience is.
9. ROI on Social Media
Just like in any other aspect of your business, your social media strategy needs clear goals in order to prove its success. It can be tough, though, to assign a numeric value to goals like “increase social media followers” or “increase brand awareness.”
Even if you need to start small, setting clearly defined and reasonably attainable goals will give you a solid direction in your social media strategy overall. Remember the SMART Goals strategy: keep your goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
We mentioned earlier that it may feel unnecessary to invest in social media, especially if you aren’t sure what your ROI (return on investment) will be. But even if the return isn’t directly monetary, it’s still valuable.
You’ll have to determine what metrics to track in order to decide whether or not you’re reaching your goals. If you feel intimidated or confused by this step, a digital marketing agency can help.
10. Developing Effective KPIs
You might have goals for your social media strategy, but you can’t know if you’ve reached them if you don’t have relevant KPIs to track. KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, help you measure the success of your objectives.
For social media, for instance, you can track KPIs like the number of shares or followers you have, or you can track how many visitors come to your website after visiting your social media channels. Measuring the right KPIs can help you understand whether your efforts are reaching the desired results.
Conclusion
While social media may be intimidating for small businesses, using it properly can make a huge difference in your overall digital strategy. Even if you start small, every enhancement to your social media approach can help spread the word about your business and prove your company as an industry authority. If you’re seeking out some help as you begin, consider working with Further Insights. Our digital marketing agency works directly with small businesses to understand your unique challenges and help you meet them head-on for the greatest chance of success. Contact Further Insights today to learn more!
