4 Small Business Social Media Tips

Social media has never been more important to your small business as it is right now in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media channels perform a vital function for many businesses at the best of times, meaning you’ll want to eke out every last drop of performance and efficiency you can during these more turbulent moments.

From raising awareness, conveying important updates and engaging with your audience to providing entertainment, useful information and even sharing deals and special offers, we want to make it easy for your SME to leverage all of the power that platforms such as Facebook and Instagram offer you right now.

Read on for our four easy ways to make your social media profiles perform better and work harder for you, effective immediately.

1. Sign up for a scheduling tool

If you’re still scheduling your posts manually, you’re wasting lots of time and missing out on crucial insights. Sign up for a scheduling tool (Hootsuite has a free option for up to three social media accounts) and start scheduling posts in bulk.

Not only is this much more time efficient, it means you aren’t in danger of forgetting to post an update, can keep all of your channels current in one swoop and most important, access vital data which tells you which posts are more successful and at what time of day and day of week you get the most interaction and engagement.

2. Research the right hashtags

Hashtags are vital to post discovery but, they aren’t necessarily the same ones across all channels. Some platforms, such as Facebook rely on less hashtags than others; Instagram for example. Spending a little time researching appropriate hashtags can make all the difference to performance. You can also add a clickable link to your Instagram profile to aid with discovery and increase your visibility.

3. Use Stories

Stories on Instagram generate a huge amount of engagement so make sure you’re using them! You can add swipe-up links to other posts and pages and share images, videos and retweets. You can also add interactive elements such as sliding bars, questions and polls to encourage your audience to engage with you.

4. Use Instagram Stickers

To help small businesses, Instagram offers Stickers for use on Stories – these allow direct actions such as placing an order or buying something without leaving the app. They give you another means of making a sale and generating revenue and capitalise on your existing audience or Story views.