Small Businesses are not taking advantage of social media...

Small Businesses are not taking advantage of social media...

In the UK as well as in the United States for some reason, small businesses have not caught on to the power of social media or they are doing it wrong.  

Sara Oberst, VP of marketing at Manta commented 

"There is no denying that Instagram is highly popular among today's consumers. With over 500 million monthly viewers on Instagram, small businesses have a unique opportunity to capture new customers. But as our poll found, small business owners aren’t taking full advantage of Instagram for business use – only 24 percent of small business owners actively use Instagram in their social media marketing.”

What I have found amongst the small business owner is that they just post stuff, there is no plan of action put into place for what they are trying to accomplish, whether it's branding, acquiring new customers/clients or to keep their existing customers/clients base informed. Put together a business plan for social media platforms only, what is your business's end game and what results are you trying to accomplish using social media.

The article was based on small businesses in the U.K., however, I find it relevant to what is happening in the local Charlotte NC marketing plans for small businesses I speak with.

Read the full article here: Small Business Owners - UK.  Business Matters - U.K.'s leading small business magazine, however, this is relevant in Charlotte NC.

Interesting Article About Facebook Live & Snapchat...

Interesting article about implementing Facebook live & Snapchat in your social media marketing.  I am finding that small business owners are having a little anxiety over this.  First and foremost, stop and breathe this is not the red carpet & it will not require you to take acting lessons.  The businesses I have been working with me, hear me say all the time people do business with people.  Put yourself out there be honest and act with integrity and the customers will come.

I agree with the article please make a plan and build on each live chat/video.  If you just get on, just to do it, without a plan it could absolutely backfire on your business.  What I am not seeing in this article is that when you are live please acknowledge who jumps on with you live, take a moment to let that sit.

Engaging with your live viewers will also take time so that you have quick decisive messages and thank your customers/clients and followers, without them, you have no business.

Below I have posted some great pointers from this article:

"When creating custom geofilters for Snapchat:

• Make sure you put in your request six weeks ahead of your event date because approval is on a first-come, first-serve basis.

• Get the maximum usage length of 30 days.

• Ensure that it’s a PNG file with a transparent background, a width of 1080 pixels, and a height of 1920 pixels. 80% of custom geofilters for businesses are disapproved because they aren’t transparent."  Search Engine Journal
• Here is the link to the full article in - Search Engine Journal-https://www.searchenginejournal.com

As always remember to suck every bit of life out of all your content, as my customers know, we turn video into podcasts and articles, we post our content everywhere on all of our platforms, this is easily done through the right training or software.

Remember, if you are not having fun, you are doing it wrong!