How Small Businesses can Simplify Social Media Marketing: A Symmetrical Aspect

To many small business owners, social media marketing is a daunting and seemingly time-consuming form of digital marketing. Even though small business owners may hear about how they absolutely must have their business active on social media, there is still a fair amount of skepticality of its impactfulness especially in the business-to-business industry. Social media marketing has become one of the most influential and cost-effective methods of marketing in recent years and it is projected to continue to grow exponentially. I’ve created a social media marketing strategy that will help small businesses to leverage social media in an effective manner and it is based on a symmetrical strategy.

The symmetrical aspect to the social media strategy is centered on the content, post frequency, post timing, account names and account summary. In the interest of saving time and presenting a credible appearance on the social media accounts for your business, the content that is shared should be the same and social media activity must remain consistent. A daily posting schedule is highly recommended, but the social media strategy that your business chooses to implement needs to be adjusted to the means of your business. Leveraging social media management tools like Hootsuite or Buffer have helped many small businesses to simplify the task by scheduling content out far in advance and manage the accounts efficiently. A company that chooses to post content on social media for a few months and suddenly go silent or simply is hard to find because they aren’t producing content online will not appear to be credible. This is especially critical for businesses in the B2B industry since oftentimes a buyer will perform an extensive search (on and off the internet) for a specific service or product and if your business doesn’t seem credible to them, they won’t want to make any purchases from your business. Many businesses have benefited from being able to leverage social media as a form of social proof and having an active presence on social media will demonstrate more life and insights for your business. Each social media platform has ideal post times that differ based on a variety of demographics which is why the time at which your share content for your business online may differ but if you are marketing towards other businesses, the preferred social media posting times are during general business hours.

Content Marketing is the process of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage your target audience. Sharing unique content from your website will help to drive targeted inbound traffic that will be more likely to produce leads, prospects and eventually clients for your business. Sharing curated content from credible sources allows your business to provide value to its followers by providing them with informative industry insights or news. By sharing unique and useful curated content, it will encourage your followers to like, follow and share content from your page which will allow you to increase the reach of your business and gain a following organically.

In order to enhance the digital presence and credibility of your business, using the same or similar URL’s or usernames for your social media accounts will be helpful. Using the identical custom handle on Twitter, Instagram and Periscope as well as URL on Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest as your website will make it easier for searchers to connect with your business across each of the social media platforms that your business uses which will increase the likelihood of them viewing and interacting with your updates. This is important since search engines are taking cues from social media activity in deciding where sites will be ranked during web searches. In addition, creating an identical or similar complete company description for each page will help the social media pages for your business to effectively rank in search engines and promote the credibility of your brand.

In conclusion, the symmetrical aspect of this particular social media strategy will help your business to manage its social media presence in an efficient manner and promote the growth of your company’s overall digital presence.

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