7 Social Media Marketing Tips for NZ Small Businesses

If you are a small (or medium-sized) New Zealand business looking for some social media marketing tips, you’ve come to the right place.

Before you dive into the sometimes-deep waters of social media, here’s what you need to know.

1 Social Media is a daily habit for most Kiwis

If you’re wondering if you should even consider using social media to promote your products, here’s why: it’s where your customers are. Two-thirds of us visit social media sites at least daily, according to recent World Internet Project NZ research.

2 You Need to Choose the Appropriate Social Medium for Your Audience

All Social Media are not the same: they tend to appeal to different audiences. To use the medium effectively, you need to select the right network for your particular target market.

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social network, with more than 2.7 million New Zealand monthly unique users (Nielsen Online Ratings March 2018). If you’re going for a broad audience, or an audience over 30, Facebook should be on your radar.

Instagram

Alternatively, if you target a younger audience, you’re more likely to find them on Instagram, according to Instagram’s own figures (March 2018).

Pinterest

Looking for female home-makers? Two-thirds of Pinterest’s audience is female, and the site flourishes through the sharing of imagery devoted to such topics as home decorating, recipes, fashion and other items of beauty and glory.

Oh, and LinkedIn is for businesses marketing to other businesses.

3. Your competitors are active in Social Media

Around the world, 2 million businesses use social media marketing to promote their products and services. No, you shouldn’t just use social media because other businesses do — but if your competitors are active and successful on social media, you owe it to yourself to at least check out your options.

Want to see what your competitors are promoting? Just go to their Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest pages and see what they’re talking about.

On Facebook, you can also go to their “Info & Ads” section to see what (if anything) they’re paying to promote.

4 Social Media drives awareness

According to AdWeek, at least once a month, 83 per cent of survey respondents heard about a brand or product on social media before they heard about it from any other source. And yes, awareness matters: it takes time to make sales and first they have to hear about you.

5 Social Media is an ideal place to engage with your fans

As your business grows, you’ll find it’s impossible to just invite your customers over for drinkies. Even if they really, really, really like you, your customers can’t just drop in to your business and find out what’s new and what’s happening. But they can stop by your establishment on social media and get all the goss — new products, special offers, behind the scenes exclusives.

If you stop thinking of your social media properties as a place to sell to people and think instead of the networks as a way to share stories, interact and engage, then you’ll really start to tap into the potential of social media.

6 Social Media is good for SEO

Search engine algorithms do seem to smile fondly on social media links as a positive signal, to boost the authority of your website and its pages. Sure, we don’t really know how fondly — like the Colonel’s secret herbs and spices, algorithmic factors are a closely held secret. But every little helps, especially if it’s your followers who are socially sharing the links rather than just you.

7 You Will Have to Pay to Promote Your Posts

Once upon a time, your social media posts would be seen by most of your followers and it wouldn’t cost you a cent. Sorry, not any more.

Nowadays, you will have to pay to boost your posts in social media and ensure that your carefully chosen words, pictures and videos are seen by as many people as possible. But, at least for now, you will probably pay less than if you advertised elsewhere (online or off-line).

If you choose your posts carefully, and primarily promote those posts that are already showing signs of success, you can also benefit by having recipients share your posts (without you paying any more). Why would they do that? Because your promoted posts were (a) relevant; (b) interesting; and (c) worth sharing. So choose carefully — the budget you save may be your own.

If you’d like to know more about Social Media Marketing, we encourage you to check out our online training courses:

Here are the current courses (click on the links for more details about each course):

The Principles & Practice of Social Media Marketing

This is a thirteen-part eCourse providing a comprehensive introduction to Social Media Marketing, from the Basics to detailed instructions on how to build and run a Social Media Marketing programme.

For more details of the Social Media Marketing online course, please click here.