As a small business owner, you may think that social media marketing is not worth your time, or that it’s only for big brands. However, social media can be a powerful tool to help you grow your business, achieve your business goals, and can even level the playing field for small businesses. In this article, we share a comprehensive guide to social media marketing for small business.
Why Is Social Media Important for Small Business?
The benefits of social media for small business are numerous. Here are several key reasons why small businesses should use social media to market your business:
Build Brand Awareness and Loyalty
Social media allows you to connect with your audience and build a relationship with them. By sharing valuable content, engaging with your followers, and showcasing your brand personality, you can increase brand awareness and loyalty. Customers are more likely to remember and recommend a brand that they feel connected to. Regularly posting engaging content can also help build brand awareness and recognition.
Cost-Effective Marketing
Compared to traditional forms of advertising, social media marketing is relatively inexpensive. Even with a small budget, businesses can run targeted ad campaigns, reach a large number of people, and achieve a good return on investment.
Customer Engagement and Relationship Building
Social media allows businesses to interact directly with their customers in real-time. This two-way communication facilitates engagement, helps businesses build relationships with customers, and fosters customer loyalty.
Customer Insights
Social media platforms provide valuable data about customer behavior and preferences. Businesses can use these insights to make informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies, and more.
Reputation Management
Social media allows businesses to monitor what is being said about their brand online and respond promptly to customer queries or concerns. This can help improve customer satisfaction and protect the business’s reputation.
Competitor Analysis
Businesses can monitor their competitors’ social media activities to gain insights into their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses, and adjust their own strategies accordingly.
Increase Website Traffic
Social media can be a great source of traffic to your website. By sharing links to your blog posts, products or services, you can entice your followers to visit your website and learn more about your business. This can lead to increased sales and revenue as you grow your small business.
Boost Sales and Revenue
Social media can also be a direct channel for sales. By using social media advertising and promotions, you can reach a highly targeted audience and influence their purchasing decisions. Social media platforms also offer e-commerce integration, which allows you to sell your products directly on the platform.
Which Social Media Platforms are Best for Small Business?
There are many social media platforms available, but not all of them are suitable for every business. It’s important to choose the platforms that align with your business goals and target audience — every small business has its own characteristics and may have different business objectives. The best social media networks are different for each business, depending on your target audience. Here are the major social media platforms in New Zealand:
Facebook offers several benefits for social media marketing, especially for small businesses in New Zealand:
1. Large User Base: Facebook is the largest social media platform globally, with over 2.9 million users in New Zealand alone. This vast user base provides a significant opportunity for small businesses to reach a wide audience.
2. Targeted Advertising: Facebook’s advertising platform allows businesses to target ads based on users’ demographics, interests, and behaviors. This can help small businesses reach their specific target audience more effectively.
3. Customer Engagement: Facebook provides various tools for businesses to engage with their audience, including posts, comments, likes, shares, and Facebook Messenger. These tools can help businesses build relationships with their customers and foster a sense of community.
4. Insights and Analytics: Facebook provides robust analytics tools that can help businesses track their performance, understand their audience, and refine their marketing strategy.
5. Cost-Effective Marketing: Compared to traditional forms of advertising, Facebook can be a more cost-effective way for small businesses to reach a large audience and achieve their marketing goals.
6. E-commerce Integration: With features like Facebook Shop and Marketplace, businesses can showcase and sell their products directly on the platform, providing a seamless shopping experience for customers.
7. Local Awareness: For small businesses that operate locally, Facebook allows you to target ads to people within a specific geographic radius. This can be particularly beneficial for businesses like restaurants, retail shops, and service providers.
Instagram similarly offers several benefits for social media marketing for NZ small businesses in New Zealand, with its 2.15 million NZ users:
1. Visual Storytelling: Instagram’s focus on visual content allows businesses to showcase their products, services, or behind-the-scenes processes in an engaging and appealing way. This can help to build a strong brand image and connect with the audience on an emotional level.
2. High Engagement Rates: Instagram typically has higher engagement rates compared to other social media platforms. This means users are more likely to interact with the content, providing businesses with more opportunities to engage with their audience and build relationships.
3. Access to Younger Demographics: Instagram is particularly popular among younger demographics, making it an ideal platform for businesses targeting this audience.
4. Influencer Marketing Opportunities: Instagram is a leading platform for influencer marketing. Collaborating with influencers can help businesses reach a larger and more engaged audience.
5. Shopping Features: Instagram’s shopping features allow businesses to tag products in their posts and stories, leading users directly to their online store. This can streamline the shopping process and increase sales.
6. Targeted Advertising: Like its corporate sibling Facebook, Instagram offers targeted advertising options, allowing businesses to reach a specific audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.
7. Insights and Analytics: Instagram provides businesses with insights and analytics to measure the performance of their posts and ads, understand their audience, and refine their marketing strategy.
TikTok
TikTok grew dramatically during the pandemic and now reaches 1.65 million NZ social media followers. Its benefits include:
1. Access to Younger Audiences: TikTok has a predominantly young user base, making it an ideal platform for businesses targeting Gen Z and younger millennials. In fact, two-thirds of TikTok users are under 40.
2. Viral Potential: TikTok’s algorithm is designed to promote social content that users engage with, regardless of the size or popularity of the account that posted it. This gives small businesses the opportunity to reach a large audience if their content resonates and goes viral.
3. Creative and Authentic Content: TikTok encourages creativity and authenticity, allowing businesses to showcase their brand personality and connect with their audience in a unique and engaging way.
4. Influencer Marketing Opportunities: Like Instagram, TikTok is a popular platform for influencer marketing. Collaborating with influencers can help businesses reach a larger and more engaged audience.
5. User Engagement: TikTok’s features such as duets, challenges, and trends encourage user participation and engagement, providing businesses with opportunities to interact with their audience and build a community.
6. Advertising Options: TikTok offers a variety of advertising options, including In-Feed Ads, Branded Hashtag Challenges, and Branded Effects. These can help businesses reach a wider audience and drive brand awareness and conversions.
7. Analytics: TikTok provides businesses with analytics to measure the performance of their content and ads, understand their audience, and refine their marketing strategy.
Twitter has been through some high-profile misadventures in recent times. Nevertheless, with its 791,700 Kiwi social accounts, the social network does offer benefits for NZ small businesses, including:
1. Real-Time Engagement: Twitter’s real-time nature makes it an ideal platform for businesses to share timely updates, news, and announcements. It also allows businesses to engage directly with their audience in real-time, fostering a sense of connection and community.
2. Customer Service: Many businesses use Twitter as a customer service channel, responding to customer queries and feedback quickly and publicly. This can help improve customer satisfaction and demonstrate the business’s commitment to customer service.
3. Hashtag Usage: Twitter’s hashtag system allows businesses to reach a wider audience beyond their followers. By using relevant and trending hashtags, businesses can increase their visibility and participate in larger conversations.
4. Influencer Engagement: Twitter is a popular platform for influencers and thought leaders. Engaging with these individuals can help businesses increase their visibility, reach a larger audience, and enhance their credibility.
5. Market Insights: By monitoring Twitter conversations and trends, businesses can gain valuable insights into their industry, audience preferences, and competitors. This can inform their marketing strategy and decision-making.
6. Advertising Options: Twitter offers various advertising options, including Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends. These can help businesses increase their reach, drive website traffic, and generate leads.
7. Analytics: Twitter provides businesses with analytics tools to track the performance of their tweets and ad campaigns, understand their audience, and refine their marketing strategy.
Pinterest, with 676,000 NZ social media users (around 70% female) offers several benefits for social media marketing, particularly for small businesses in New Zealand:
1. Visual Discovery and Inspiration: Pinterest is a platform where users discover new ideas and find inspiration. This makes it an ideal platform for businesses to showcase their products or services in a visually appealing way, sparking interest and driving discovery.
2. High Purchase Intent: Users often come to Pinterest with high purchase intent, using the platform to plan purchases or find products. This provides businesses with a unique opportunity to reach potential customers who are ready to buy.
3. Long Content Lifespan: Unlike other social media platforms where content quickly gets buried in the feed, Pins can continue to drive engagement and traffic for a long time after they are posted.
4. Rich Pins: Pinterest offers Rich Pins, which allow businesses to add extra information to their Pins, such as product details, recipes, or articles. This can make the Pins more useful and engaging, driving more traffic to the business’s website.
5. Targeted Advertising: Pinterest’s advertising platform allows businesses to target their ads based on demographics, interests, and behaviors, helping them reach their specific audience more effectively.
6. Insights and Analytics: Pinterest provides businesses with insights and analytics to measure the performance of their Pins and ad campaigns, understand their audience, and refine their marketing strategy.
7. SEO Benefits: Pinterest is highly integrated with search engines, meaning that well-optimized Pins can rank in search engine results, driving additional traffic to your website.
YouTube
Although strictly speaking it’s not actually a social media channel, YouTube (with its 4.24 million NZ users) is often included in social media marketing campaigns. Here’s what to expect if YouTube is used as a marketing tool for businesses:
1. Video Content: As the world’s largest video platform, YouTube allows businesses to share video content, which can be more engaging and informative than text or images. This can help businesses showcase their products or services, share tutorials, or tell their brand story in a compelling way.
2. Large User Base: YouTube has over 2 billion logged-in monthly users, providing businesses with a vast audience to reach.
3. SEO Benefits: As a Google-owned platform, YouTube videos are often prominently displayed in search results. Properly optimized videos can help improve a business’s visibility in search engine results, driving more traffic to their content.
4. Advertising Opportunities: YouTube offers various advertising options, including display ads, overlay ads, skippable and non-skippable video ads, and sponsored cards. These can help businesses reach a wider audience and drive more views to their content.
5. Community Building: YouTube’s comment section and community tab allow businesses to engage with their audience, fostering a sense of community and encouraging user interaction.
6. Analytics: YouTube provides comprehensive analytics tools that allow businesses to measure the performance of their videos, gain insights into their audience, and refine their content strategy.
7. Long-Form Content: Unlike other social media platforms that favor short content, YouTube allows for longer videos. This can be beneficial for businesses that use content marketing and want to share in-depth content, tutorials, webinars, or interviews.
How Can You Use Social Media Marketing for Your Small Business?
It’s important to set a social media strategy in place before you start creating your social media elements for your small business, if you want to achieve success on social media.
Here are some ways Kiwi small businesses can use social media marketing:
Create a Social Media Strategy
A social media strategy outlines your goals, target audience, social platform, content strategy, and metrics. It’s important to develop a successful social media marketing strategy and have a clear plan in place to ensure that your social media efforts align with your business goals, to take your business to the next level.
Identify Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is crucial for creating content that resonates with them (and choosing the right social channel to reach them). You should research their demographics, interests, and pain points to create content that is informative, entertaining, and valuable.
Establish Your Social Presence
Choose the social media platforms that are most relevant to your target audience and establish your business’s presence there. Create a complete profile with all necessary information about your business.
Share Engaging Content
Regularly post content that is relevant and valuable to your audience. This could include product updates, behind-the-scenes looks, educational content, or user-generated content. Remember, the goal is to engage your audience, not just to promote your products or services.
Engage with Your Audience
Social media is all about two-way communication. Respond to comments, answer questions, and engage in discussions. This can help you build relationships with your audience and foster a sense of community.
Run Social Media Ad Campaigns
Social media platforms offer powerful targeting options for advertising. You can run ad campaigns that are tailored to your target audience, helping you reach more potential customers.
Use Social Media for Customer Service
Many customers now use social media to ask questions or share their experiences with a brand. Be responsive to these interactions to improve customer satisfaction and your business’s reputation.
Monitor Your Competitors
Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing on social media. This can give you insights into what works and what doesn’t, helping you refine your own strategy.
Measure Your Results
Use the analytics tools provided by social media platforms to measure the results of your efforts. This can help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and how you can improve.
Collaborate with Influencers
Partnering with influencers who have a strong following in your industry can help you reach a larger audience and build trust.
Promote Special Offers
Social media is a great platform to promote special offers, discounts, or sales. This can help you attract new customers and reward loyal ones.
Tell Your Brand Story
Use social media to share your brand story and values. This can help you connect with your audience on a deeper level and differentiate your business from competitors.
Successful social media marketing requires consistency, creativity, and engagement. It’s not just about selling your products or services, but about building relationships with your audience and providing value.
What Are Some Social Media Tips for Small Business Owners?
Effective social media marketing requires more than just posting content on social media. Here are some tips and best practices for small business owners:
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
It’s better to have a few high-quality posts than many low-quality ones. Your goal should be to provide value to your followers, not just to fill up their feed.
Engage with Your Followers
Social media is a two-way conversation. Engaging with your followers by responding to comments and messages can help you build relationships and loyalty.
Track Your Social Media Metrics
Tracking your social media metrics can help you measure the success of your social media marketing efforts. You should track metrics such as engagement rate, reach, and website traffic to determine what’s working and what’s not.
Create a Content Calendar
Planning your content in advance can help ensure you post regularly and stay on top of trending topics. A content calendar can help you organize your posts and schedule them for optimal times.
Use Visuals
Posts with visuals (images, videos, infographics) often get more engagement than text-only posts. Use high-quality visuals to grab your audience’s attention and convey your message effectively.
Be Authentic
Authenticity resonates with social media users. Be true to your brand and values. Share your successes, but also don’t be afraid to show some of the challenges you face.
Use Hashtags Wisely
Hashtags can help increase the visibility of your posts. Use relevant and popular hashtags, but don’t overdo it. Too many hashtags can look spammy.
Stay Up-to-Date
Social media trends change quickly. Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and platform updates to ensure your social media strategy is effective.
What Social Media Tools Can Small Business Owners Use?
There are many social media tools available that can help small business owners manage their social media presence. Here are three popular social media management tools:
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to schedule posts, monitor your social media profiles, and track your social media metrics.
Buffer
Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to schedule posts across multiple social media platforms.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media management tool that allows you to monitor your social media profiles, schedule posts, and track your social media metrics.
FAQ
Q: What is social media marketing?
A: Social media marketing is the process of using social media platforms to connect with your target audience and promote your business, products or services. It involves creating and sharing valuable, engaging and relevant media content to attract and retain your audience.
Q: Why is social media marketing important for small business?
A: Social media marketing is an effective tool for businesses to connect with their audience, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to their website. For small businesses, it is an affordable way to establish an online presence and compete with larger businesses in the market.
Q: How should I develop a social media strategy for my small business?
A: To create a social strategy for your small business, start by identifying your target audience, setting social media goals, choosing social media channels that resonate with your audience, creating a content calendar, and tracking your progress to adjust your strategy accordingly.
Q: How can I best reach my customers on social media?
Start by identifying the most appropriate platforms for your social media activities. Choose the social media marketing channels that are best for your business. Then create a social media calendar, planning your social posts in advance. This will enable you to take full advantage of the power of social media.
Q: What are some tools for small businesses to use for social media marketing?
A: There are several social media marketing tools that small businesses can use to manage their social media accounts, schedule posts, track social media analytics, and monitor social media mentions. Over and above the social media management tools mentioned above, you can also consider AI writing tools such as ChatGPT, Jasper and many others designed to meet small business needs. And, for effective social media images, your choices range across Canva, Figma and generative AI design tools such as MidJourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E2.
Q: How can I use social media for business?
A: You can use social media for business by creating social media accounts for your business, sharing valuable content, engaging with your audience, and promoting your products or services. Social media can help you build a strong online presence, post content unique to your business, generate leads, and drive traffic to your website.
Q: What are some benefits of social media marketing?
A: Some benefits of social media marketing include increased brand awareness, improved customer engagement, enhanced customer satisfaction, increased website traffic, higher search engine rankings, and higher conversion rates.
Q: How can I track social media for my small business?
A: To track social media for your small business, use social media analytics tools to monitor your social media performance, track your engagement rates, and measure the success of your social media campaigns. Some popular social media analytics tools include Google Analytics, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite.
Q: What are some effective social media marketing strategies for small businesses?
A: Some effective social media marketing strategies for small businesses include creating valuable content, engaging with your audience, using social media advertising, collaborating with influencers, and hosting social media contests or giveaways.
Q: How can social media take my small business to the next level?
A: Social media can take your small business to the next level by helping you establish a strong online presence, reach a wider audience, establish credibility and authenticity, generate leads, drive traffic to your website, and increase sales.
Q: How can I manage my social media presence as a small business?
A: To promote your business on social media, develop a digital marketing plan and strategy, create a social media content calendar, schedule social media posts in advance, engage with your audience regularly, monitor social media mentions, track social media analytics, and adjust your social media strategy accordingly.
If you’d like to learn more about Social Media Marketing in New Zealand, check out our online training courses:
All our courses are developed specifically for New Zealand conditions and are freshly updated for 2023.
Here are the current courses (click on the links for more details about each course):
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SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING COURSES
The Principles & Practice of Social Media Marketing
For those new to 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.
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We also have a course that will help you master both of New Zealand’s most powerful social media:
By far the most powerful social media channels for NZ marketers these days are Facebook and Instagram.
That’s where the audiences are, and that’s where YOU need to be.
Of course, there’s rather more to Facebook and Instagram marketing than making a few posts or taking a few pretty pictures and hoping to reach large numbers of your target audience.
Effective social media marketing requires the right knowledge, tools, tips and techniques to help you get noticed and to encourage your audience to engage with you and your brand.
That’s where we can help.
In recognition of the combined strengths of Facebook and Instagram, we’ve taken the best of our popular Facebook and Instagram courses, and blended them together into a powerful thirteen-part Complete Facebook and Instagram Marketing online training course.
This combined course will bring you up to speed with what’s required to make your social media marketing on Facebook and Instagram really work for you in 2023.
Check out the details of our Complete Facebook and Instagram Marketing online training course by clicking here.
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If you want to focus just on Paid Advertising on Instagram and Facebook — a wise idea, given that both networks are restricting organic (unpaid) reach — we have a ten-part course covering exactly that:
What can you do to improve your Facebook & Instagram Advertising activities?
Learn what works, and what doesn’t, through our online training course.
In this ten-part online training course, we will take you step-by-step through what you need to know to understand and master advertising on Facebook & Instagram.
For full Course Details, click here:
Mastering Advertising on Facebook & Instagram
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How to Prepare an Effective Social Media Brief
Even if you don’t intend to become directly involved in social media yourself, you may still need to understand the principles, practices and opportunities of social media — for example, if you need to brief someone about running a social media campaign. This programme is designed to provide you with the insights necessary to prepare an effective brief.
For more details of the How to Prepare an Effective Social Media Brief programme, please click here.
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Writing for the Web course
Effective writing has become an absolutely core competency when communicating online. Not just any writing, however. Different media require different approaches. The headline that might have looked wonderful in the newspaper probably won’t fit within the constraints of Facebook or Instagram character counts.
Oh, and you’ll probably want to know how to make best use of AI writing tools such as ChatGPT, Jasper AI, NeuronWriter and the many other AI enhancements for online writing.
Our Writing for the Web course covers the key elements you need to know to communicate effectively to online audiences.
For more information about our Writing for the Web course, please click here.
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Online Video Marketing course
Online Video is now New Zealand’s most popular broadcast medium, with YouTube alone reaching more than half the country on a daily basis (according to research by NZ On Air).
And online video is a powerful way to communicate your brand story, explain your value proposition, and build relationships with your customers and prospects.
Remember the old cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words? According to an estimate by Dr James McQuivey of Forrester Research, one minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words.
So let’s cut to the chase. It’s well past time for you to upskill yourself in online video marketing. That’s why we have a course on the topic, which covers both standard and vertical videos (landscape, square and portrait) and also some of the AI tools that have sprung up to make video creation easier than ever.
For more details of the Online Video Marketing course, please click here.
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Influencer Marketing course
Our Influencer Marketing online training course is a nine-part course which covers the importance of Influencer Marketing, helps you to determine the smartest and most effective strategies — and to explore how to identify effective Kiwi micro-influencers who will be good ambassadors for your brand.
For more information about our Influencer Marketing course, please click here.
AI for Marketers
As you will no doubt have noticed, Artificial Intelligence has developed a more and more prominent role in marketing in 2023, across social media and search and indeed all aspects of digital marketing.
We’ve been building AI coverage into all of our courses but we also have a dedicated AI for Marketers online training course which will help you master a wide range of AI tools to do what previously had to be done more manually.
For more information about our AI for Marketers course, please click here.
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DIGITAL MARKETING
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Certificate in Digital Marketing
This comprehensive Digital Marketing course is designed for marketers at any level (from junior to senior) who want to acquire comprehensive training in all aspects of Digital Marketing based on the latest technologies.
This online course draws on the latest developments in Digital Marketing, covering key competencies and new and emerging technologies.
For more details of the Certificate in Digital Marketing online course, please click here.
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Digital Marketing 101
Digital Marketing 101 is a 26-part online training course designed for students who may know very little about Digital Marketing, touching on a wide range of Digital Marketing topics over a six-month period.
For more information about Digital Marketing 101, please click here.
