How to Best Use Social Media to Boost Your Small Business

Content and Photography By: Lindley Battle, LB Cultive Co.

As a small business owner in this day and age, social media has become a necessary part of everyday life when it comes to running a business. While many business owners struggle to create and maintain a professional and relatable social media page, once you get a few practical tips down, it can be incredibly easy and even fun! Your social media presence has effectively become the calling card for your business – statistics show that consumers are far more likely to visit a business’s social media page before even making it to their website, and younger consumers are purchasing items or booking services directly through social media without ever clicking out of the app. A strong social presence is a free and easy way to clearly communicate your brand values and vision and to sell to a wide range of customers from the comfort of your home office. While there are endless social media strategies out there, the four touchpoints that we use when creating a social plan for our branding clients is simple and incredibly easy to implement on your own!

Consistency

The number one tip when it comes to creating a strong social media presence is consistency. Don’t let that immediately stress you out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be posting daily. It does, however, mean that when you do post, it needs to be consistent and also directly related to when your target market is using social media. If you find that you get your best engagement in the early morning, then download a scheduling app like Planoly to ensure that your posts are scheduled early in the morning. Looking at Instagram analytics can be incredibly helpful when it comes to this, but it’s also as simple as giving some thought to who your ideal client is! If you sell mostly to moms of young kids, mornings before school are likely not the best time to post. If your ideal client is in their mid-20’s, you’ll probably get their best engagement in the early evening scrolling time. Once you pick the times that your posts will best reach your ideal client, it’s time to think about how frequently it’s realistic for you to post. We’ve found that once a day is the best and easiest rule of thumb for our clients, but if you don’t have access to that much content or time, picking a target number of posts per week allows your audience to know what to expect from you. There’s nothing worse for your algorithm ranking or engagement to post inconsistently, to throw out ten posts one week and then go silent for the next two. Finding an easy and maintainable balance and routine for your social posting goes a long way in the success of your page.

Content

With consistency in mind, it’s extremely important to think about the visual content that you’re posting. Are your images consistent when it comes to general color and lighting patterns? While you don’t necessarily always need to work with one brand photographer, it’s helpful to try to find and partner with photographers who have a similar aesthetic, so that your Instagram feed comes across as polished and consistent. If you’re just starting out and don’t have the budget to work with a photographer to help create professional looking content for your business, find a formula that works for you to help showcase what you do in a quality way. iPhones take gorgeous photos these days, and if you’re looking for something a step up, the Canon Rebel is an affordable and easy to use camera to help you get a bank of brand images built up. If you’re DIY-ing your brand images, make sure that the lighting and colors stay somewhat consistent, and if you have a product-focused business, maybe consider finding a few places in your store or home office that you can consistently photograph new items. Although you don’t want your feed to look too uniformed or boring, consistent imagery will go a long way in communicating a brand message. 

Copy
The number one complaint that we hear from small business owners who are hoping to outsource their social media management is that they have the most difficult time writing captions. While engaging copy is a crucial part of your social media presence, it doesn’t have to be as hard as it can sometimes feel! Think of your captions on social media as your time to shine when it comes to educating your dream clients about your business – you want these captions to feel professional (good grammar and punctuation is a must!), but also relatable. Keep your captions conversational, informative, and easy to read. Although it can start to feel repetitive for you to constantly talk about the same selection of products or services, your customer doesn’t know everything that you do about what you offer, and likely follows you because they want to learn more. If you’re in the beauty industry, in addition to talking about the products or services you offer, take some time to educate your customers on trends. If you’re in retail, in addition to showcasing your newest items, give your customer ideas for how to use these items in their daily lives! Try to strike a good balance between setting yourself up for a sale and truly sharing your passion for what you do with the people who follow you. By sharing the heart and story of your brand or business, you’re going to naturally attract customers who are much more eager to purchase from you. Think about how differently “We’re having a sale!” reads when you could instead say “We’ve spent the past three months carefully curating items that we know you will absolutely love, and now we’re beyond thrilled to be offering these items at a discounted price so that we can make room for the new items we’ve been sourcing!” Ultimately, the core concept of these two captions is the same, but the feeling it delivers is so much different. It takes the messaging from “hey, come buy from us” to a client-centered offering with heart and story behind it.

Connection

Finally, the best way to use social media to bring attention to your small business is to authentically connect with your audience. Your business’s dream client is out there, and ready to purchase from you! By showcasing yourself as a real person and speaking to the unique solutions that your business offers in a genuine and authentic way, you’re allowing your ideal client to connect with you in a way that will ultimately lead to more sales and also a more loyal client base! While not every post should be about your personal life (it’s important to keep marketing conversations primarily about solving a problem for your client), it helps to pop on every now and then to share who you are and why you run this business. If you’re an enthusiastic dog owner, consider finding cute ways to incorporate your furry friend into your marketing messaging – other dog owners will appreciate the sentiment, and this will immediately differentiate your brand in their minds. Whether you’re a travel junkie, wine connoisseur, or whale lover, find space in your brand messaging to appropriately share enough about you as a human being to create genuine connection between you and your audience. This connection goes above any one-time sale, and helps you create followers that can’t wait to see what you have to say next! 

At LB Cultive Co, we are truly lucky to work with passionate small business owners to create a professional and thoughtful digital presence. If social media is something you find you’re struggling with, we’re happy to help take it off your plate so that you’re free to get back to running the business you love! Our team of brand strategists, photographers, and copywriters have created a seamless digital management experience that does justice to the business of your dreams – head to lbcultiveco.com or @lbcultiveco to learn more!