Is Social Media Really That Important for Small Businesses?

Written on the 27 December 2018 by Nathan Drew, Fox Finance Group

You've probably come across several people that can give you 50 reasons why your small business should invest in digital marketing strategies.

We wanted to take some time to break it down in easy to understand terms, so you can get your digital media and marketing channels in place and benefiting your business in 2019.

Let's face it, if you don't, your competitors will, or already have!

Social Media Marketing Channels

Let's be honest, social media marketing has been around for a long time now and is a proven advertising tool for small businesses. (A long time in business can feel like 5 minutes, right?)
You must have now started to understand that for the successful execution of your small business' digital marketing strategies, you need to go social.
Why? Your customers are already using social media. Further to this, people these days spend more time staring at their mobile phone screen than they do their TVs, and what are they looking at? Social Media of course.

Blogging

Do you understand Blogging? (No, it's not a dirty word)
Having a strong blogging strategy needs to be on the top of your digital marketing strategy list. According to resent statistics for business growth and expansion, approximately 88% of B2B marketers use content marketing as an integral part of their overall marketing strategy.
So why is blogging so popular? People are seeing results from doing it consistently. The key word here is "consistently". You need to set yourself a schedule to when you are adding content to your blog and commit to it. Once you are in a rhythm of writing great relevant content it is easy to keep going, but you need to get started.

Blogging helps to establish yourself and your company as an industry expert in your chosen field and gives you the opportunity to position your branding message exactly where you can give back the most value to your clients.  See More
The good news is you haven't missed the boat. Only 32% of businesses have a formal content marketing strategy in place in their business today, but this percentage is growing fast.  It's time to get blogging people.

Facebook is Still on Top

Facebook continues to be the number one social media platform in the world. On average, Facebook has around two billion active users per month. If you understand what your ideal customer looks like, Facebook can help you get a return on your marketing investment. By using their clever targeting tools, you can really drill down and laser-target in on your preferred audience. The amount of data that Facebook holds on its users is unmatched in the digital media sphere, which is a bonus for any small business that is thinking of using it to get their business out there.
Other than Facebook, some other platforms to look at are Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. Take the time to understand what each one has to offer to determine which platform is likely to have your ideal customer using it. Think of things like your customers age demographic for example.

Email Marketing

Did you know that nearly 4.3 billion population of the world uses email? This is approximately half of the entire population of the world. If your business is dealing with other small business owners, then you are in luck. Most small business professionals prefer communicating through email. If you understand this concept, then it makes sense to get your message in front of them in a medium that they like using right?

Your blogging strategy feeds into your email marketing strategy. Share your blogs in your email marketing strategy to your database consistently (See, there is that word again, "consistently".)
With the use of a clever CRM system, a regular newsletter can easily be scheduled to get your most recent blog posts out to your raving fans. It can take up some of your time to get it set up initially, but you can then automate a lot of what it does from there. Spend the time, make the investment.

Final Thoughts

We hope you enjoyed this article, we have enjoyed sharing some of our thoughts on this subject, and just in case you were wondering, no we don't provide social media services outside our business, we are just fantastic at helping our clients with finance. 

Now get blogging!