Some Tips on How to Leverage Social Media For Your Local Business

Digital marketing has always been changing – and changing fast.Take a look at how Google search engine algorithm is updated; every now and then new update is rolled out. In 2017 alone, Moz has reported (so far) four changes in Google search algorithm. Such changes leave many businesses grapple to keep pace with this rapidly changing marketing landscape.

Social media, being considered as the “new search engine” follows the same trend. Notice how Facebook makes updates not just on the user-interface level but on their search algorithm as well, and you’ll realize that, perhaps, a dedicated team should be assigned to keep an eye on these updates to help your business to thrive in the digital environment.

So, the question now becomes: how to make the most of social media platform to optimize your online campaign for your local business?

Here are some tips that you might find useful:

Apply the principle of social segmentation. The truth is, not all of the people in socialverse are your audience or prospective customers. This is the reason why you have to find your target audience by putting it into your market segment. How do you do that? Well, you can do it in several ways. For instance, you make sure that the page (that represent your local business) falls in a more specific category (e.g. if you are a lawyer, then categorize accordingly). Also, you can also target your post in a particular location (locations that your business actually serves).

Unified business profile across social media accounts. Your local business becomes more effective when it comes to branding when you have the same business profile (same logo, tagline, contact information) across your social media accounts as well as on your local business pages. And this strategy is not just effective in name recall, but it also creates a “more reputable” impression from customers and prospects.

Improve your organic audience reach. Organic reach means non-paid exposure. This is done by sharing more engaging content to your audience. While quality textual content is an effective tool to engage your audience, it has also been proven that visuals (images and videos) tend to capture more audiences. So share useful, engaging content that is relevant to your industry. Don’t forget to experiment which type of content is more effective, and capitalize your time and energy on that.

Supplement organic audience reach with paid campaign. On Facebook, for instance, you can make use of its ‘sponsored’ content feature to reach more audience in your target market. This too is an effective strategy to build / increase the number of your audience. The best thing about Facebook sponsored content feature is that it is scalable, measurable. Meaning, you can customize your content to decide on specific target demographics, location, budget, and audience reach estimates.

Engage with your audience. This is perhaps one of the most important ways to keep your audience and to give them assurance that your page is run by authentic or legitimate company. With that, what you can do is to make sure you respond to their queries – whether these queries are sent as private messages or comments. To engage with your audience / prospects helps build a good reputation, which is beneficial to your brand.

There are more other ways to leverage social media for your local business online campaign. You just need to be creative and embrace inevitable periodic changes and upgrades.

For professional digital marketing service for your local business, contact us at (858) 605-2806.