How Do Small Business Owners Succeed on Social Media?
Small business leaders are coming to understand the importance marketing has on their success. Read more about how social media can influence your business!
Do you have your own business or want to start yours? The prevalence of social media has accelerated college students starting their own businesses as it affordably allows individuals to access a large audience and promote products. Social media is a great platform to increase brand awareness, reach potential customers, and establish loyalty. So, how can you as a small business owner succeed in social media?
Social media offers equal opportunities for businesses, be it small or big, to attract their audiences and improve traffic. Once you gain the audience’s attention, you can lead them to the website or directly drive the sale. For those running social media accounts, it is essential to give the audience incentives to follow your accounts or see their content: posting viral content and offering humanistic interaction.
Making viral content is one of the most effective ways to achieve success on social media; it can also be user-generated content. Word of mouth is so powerful that people trust what they hear from others rather than the brands themselves. To increase brand awareness, it is essential to make people motivated to feature their products and increase exposure on social media. You can see tips to create visually-appealing content in Lauren's blog post.
It is also important to form a relationship with your audience and customers. Small businesses have a great advantage of focusing on individuals. They are more likely to foster connection with each customer than larger businesses such as by a personalized response. Showing that there is a real person behind the brand accounts and welcoming comments and questions will lead customers to feel that brands care about consumers and are credible, resulting in establishing customer loyalty.
It is indispensable to use social media to promote their products, especially for college student entrepreneurs. Not only just having the accounts but also maximizing the use of social media will contribute to the growth of your business. Do you want to increase your traffic?
Resources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/01/25/why-small-businesses-and-startups-should-invest-in-social-media-marketing/amp/
https://www.quicksprout.com/social-media-for-small-business/
The Clock Ticks on TikTok
Is Instagram giving TikTok a run for its money?
ISAIAH CROOKS | OCT. 23, 2020
TikTok’s recent claim that competitors are attempting to steal their followers by utilizing similar, popular features from their app should come to no surprise to anyone. While TikTok did not name any social media platforms, it is clear that one of the platforms they are referring to is Instagram, who has a history of implementing features that are similar to those used by competitors.
Instagram’s tricks may be slimy, but they are unfortunately common in the business realm. One tactic that has always existed in business has been to:
take a competitor’s feature
improve the feature
implement the feature into their own mix
After that, it is the marketing team’s responsibility to market the feature as new and improved– and vastly superior to their rivals.
Ultimately, Instagram is following the business handbook, but they may not succeed this round in dethroning their competitor. If TikTok is serious about maintaining their “It Girl” status, they need to learn from Snapchat’s mistakes and show that their app is vastly superior to Reels (which it is).