Social media marketing forms an integral part of every successful small business strategy today. It offers small businesses with many opportunities to grow the business.

Although social media marketing can help any business, it has special relevance for small businesses. Small businesses can leverage social media to build a loyal following that will eventually lead to growth and higher profits for the business.

Here are some other reasons why small businesses find social media marketing lucrative:

• It is cost-effective
• It can be easily managed in-house
• Quick results (as compared to SEO)
• Basic knowledge is sufficient to implement an effective strategy

It is important for every business to know how to use social media marketing properly. Without this, your business is not likely to get the desired results.

Although most small businesses utilise at least one social network, very few know how to use social media properly.

This article identifies simple yet effective techniques that small businesses can use to get the most out of  social media.

Here are ten social media marketing tips for small businesses.

1. Integrate Social Media Effectively On Your Website

Your company’s website or blog is one of the best sources for attracting followers and expanding your network on social media. In order to succeed, small businesses must optimise their website for social media and make it easy for visitors to connect with the brand. This is one of the simplest ways to boost your social presence.

Make sure to display social media icons and share buttons prominently throughout your website, and don’t neglect Google Plus and Pinterest. Include Google Authorship tag particularly if you publish content such as articles or blog posts.

In addition to share and follow buttons, there are many website plugins and widgets that your business can take advantgage of.

Here are some website plugins that you can take advantage of:

• AddThis or ShareThis
• Facebook Like Box
• Twitter Activity Box
• ReTweet

2. Create Business Pages on Social Media, Not Personal Accounts

Many social networks including allow users to create business pages which are different to regular personal accounts. Make sure to create a Facebook Fan Page, LinkedIn company page and Google Plus business page for your company.

If you use Pinterest, it now gives you the option to convert your regular account into a business one for free. Business pages are better for branding and designed specifically to promote your company. It is one of the most basic ways for small business to build their presence and tap into the ever increasing user-base of respective social networks.

However, simply creating a fan page is not enough. Make sure that you optimize it well.

Here are some tips on how you can do that:

• Create relevant and engaging content
• Make sure to post regularly
• Engage your audience by posting questions, responding to comments promptly, running contests or polls, and giving away free stuff

3. Use a Good Social Media Dashboard

Small businesses need to use several social media sites for maximum reach. However, posting content manually on each social network can take up a lot of your time. Fortunately there are many free social media services that let you manage several social networks from a single dashboard.

You can use this to monitor conversations or post content to several social networks at once. This will save you a lot of time that can be better utilised elsewhere. HootSuite, BufferApp are some free tools that your business can take advantage of.

4.  Leverage Location Based Services to Target Mobile Customers

Yelp, Foursquare, and other location based services or mobile social networks can be powerful marketing channels for small businesses. They offer a very effective way for small businesses to target mobile and local customers.

You can also add your business to map based services such as Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local (now Nokia Primeplace).

At the very least, you can register your small business with these services at no cost. For best results, you can take advantage of the following tips.

Here are some tips:

• Create profile on all leading location based services
• Request customers to leave reviews on Yelp, Google Places, etc.
• Run promotions or offer discounts
• Incentivise participation e.g. give special offers to those who check in to your location on Foursquare or offer discounts to customer who will write a review on Yelp

5. Use Multiple Networks

One of the best ways for small businesses can reach out to a vast consumer-base is by utilising several social networks in combination with each other. Limiting your small business presence to the big three (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) is a common mistake that should be avoided.

Niche networks and social bookmarking services such as Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Stumble Upon are equally important and often outperform even the leading social networks in generating backlinks and traffic to your company’s website. Sites like Google Plus and Pinterest are also equally important to target as part of your marketing efforts.

6. Use Social Media to Create Brand Recognition

Social media can prove to be a very effective tool for small businesses to promote brand recognition. Use custom branded social media profiles to reinforce your brand.

Make sure your cover photo and profile image on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn reflects your intended branding. It is equally important for your branding to be consistent across all social networks.

Consistent user-names and messaging are also important.

7. Use Variety of Popular Content Types

For small businesses to be successful on social media and get the maximum reach, it is essential to post different types of content on social media. These include regular status updates & announcements, links, videos, images and infographics.

8. Take Advantage of Key Research Findings

The time you spend on your social media marketing does not necessarily reflect the results you will get. There are plenty of researches and studies covering various aspects of social media ranging from the best time to post to customer behaviour patterns. An effective small business social media strategy must take these into account.

Here are some studies that you may wish to consider:

• Best time to post on social media
• Best time to post on  your blog
• The type of content that works best
• Impact of posting frequency
• User-base and demographics of various social networks

9.  Share Your Content Automatically Between Your Website & Social Networks

This is a very effective way to promote your content and build your social media presence. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to add your website or blog’s RSS feed which means every time you publish something new, it automatically gets published in your timeline. Twitter does not allow you to connect your site directly but you can use free services such as TwitterFeed to do this. Alternatively you can connect your Facebook Page with your Twitter account so content is shared between the two automatically. Similarly, you can connect Pinterest with your Facebook Page so your pins are automatically shared on your Facebook timeline

It is however important to be cautious and not get carried away with automation. You also need to account for the fact that not everything you post on one social network may be relevant for users on another.  But, if done correctly, it can save you a lot of time and enable you to grow your following with minimal effort.10. Track Your Social Media Performance

10. Track Your Social Media Performance

Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that provides detailed and very useful information about your website traffic and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. When we run social media campaigns, we’ll often attach tracking tags to those campaigns so that we can properly monitor them in Google Analytics. This is important because without such data it will be nearly impossible for you to evaluate the success of your social media marketing efforts. But analytics are important for another reason: they’ll tell you which sites are sending traffic to your site.

Conclusion

Social media marketing offers phenomenal opportunities for small businesses. The results you will receive will not necessarily depend on the time you spend but rather on how smart your approach is. The social media marketing tips outlined above can provide a good starting point for your small businesses to leverage social media marketing and enable you to get the most from social media.

What About You?

How do you use social media marketing for your business? What methods do you use? Are you taking advantage of the tips above? We would like to hear from you. Please add your responses by leaving a comment below.