Social Media for Small Business Owners

If the idea behind running a small business is to grow that business, then developing a strong social media presence is one of the most effective ways to achieve your goal without spending a lot of money. In this guide, we'll show you the key actions you need to take to grow your brand awareness, engage audiences, and develop your brand messaging on social media.

What ROI can you expect from social media marketing? 

Developing a robust small-business marketing strategy for social media takes some time and effort. While there’s no average return on investment (ROI) for social media, you can expect to see some growth after a few months of strategic social media campaigning. Just how significant your ROI from social channels will be depends on two main factors: the time you commit to those platforms and your quality control.

If you have the resources, it could be a good investment to hire someone to manage your social media full-time. As a small business, you may not have the staffing resources that bigger brands are able to commit to delivering social media content. But, with a clear strategy and a dedication to driving it through, you shouldn’t need a big team to build your business across your chosen social platforms. 

Which social media marketing KPIs should you track? 

Regardless of what social media strategy you create, it’s important to set some performance metrics for each of your social media channels and across your social presence as a whole. Tracking those metrics will help to make sure you’re on the right path—and learn where you need to iterate and optimize. 

The key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll want to watch for are:

• Awareness. How many people are aware of your brand directly through social media (e.g., by measuring follower numbers)?

• Engagement. How does your audience interact with your social media messages (e.g., liking, sharing, and commenting on your posts)?

• Conversion. How many people take action as a direct result of your social media efforts (e.g., clicking through to your website)?

• Consumer Sentiment. Learning how your current customer base feels about you will help you adapt your messaging to meet their needs. Social media tactics for small business are invariably drawn from this revealing data.

Driving awareness of your brand on social media

Since so many people and brands use social media every day, building your own social media presence that stands out from the noise and competition is not an easy task. However, you do have an advantage: As a small business, you likely have a clear story to tell, putting your brand in a good position to hold the attention of your target audience. Many consumers trust small businesses more than large ones. Social media content gives you an opportunity to develop that consumer trust as a core part of your growth journey. 

Here are a few tips to follow in order to drive awareness of your brand in the social media space:

Post content on a frequent, consistent cadence

The best way to be visible on social media is to post valuable content on a regular basis. Plan your content in advance so that you always have something ready to post, and invest in tools that simplify social sharing from your website.

Make your social media content engaging

Give your audience reasons to interact. What’s engaging about your brand? Consider sharing product development videos, competitions, or celebrations of the people who work for you. Make a list of everything that might interest your target audience, and use it to shape your strategy.

Adapt your social messaging to be in line with audience sentiment

Track your social media metrics regularly to see how awareness of your brand is growing and how people feel about your content. Some social networks offer built-in data insights that show your most popular posts and engaged followers. Be sure to check out your website analytics to see which social posts best drive traffic.

Small businesses and start-ups who apply these methods will start to look a lot bigger to their audiences. The more followers you generate, the greater the likelihood of interaction—and ultimately business transactions—with you and your business.

Read more about building a social media presence.

Planning what you post and when you post it

Two of the key factors in getting people to interact with your content are what you post and when you post it.

You need to understand your audience and the nuances of their tastes so that you can craft social media content that not only reflects who you are as a business but also provides what your audience hopes to see when they check their social channels.

What kind of content does your audience like? 

For example, do they want beautiful photography of neatly positioned products? Or do they prefer to watch unboxing videos of influencers walking through the features of your products?

Knowing this will determine not just how you craft your social media content but also where you host it. In this case, it would probably be a choice between Instagram—photographed by a pro photographer and adapted to your brand with the Unfold app from Squarespace—or amateur video footage shot on a phone and uploaded to YouTube.

As a growing business with a relatively small audience, this type of taste-based information should be straightforward to find out if you conduct effective audience research.

When is your audience online?

In addition to the kinds of content you should be putting on your social media channels, it’s important to consider what times of the day and week when particular audiences are most likely to be online—and to plan accordingly.

Audiences are far less likely to see your posts—regardless of how quality the content is—if you share on your channels during times when your audience typically isn’t engaged on social media. That’s because some social algorithms prioritize content according to how recent it is to the viewer. It helps to check your website analytics to see what times people are clicking through to your website for a better understanding of your peak traffic flows from social media. 

According to Hootsuite, typically the best days and times to post are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays around 10am, but it differs for every brand, audience, and social platform. So don’t just settle for the average. If you do, you may be drowned out by the noise of everyone else posting at the same time.

Read more about what to post and when to post it.

Choosing social platforms for your brand 

If you’re just getting started on your social strategy, it’s likely that you’re asking some of these key questions: 

• “Which social media platforms should my business have a presence on?” 

• “Should I post the same content on all social media?”

• “How do you manage multiple platforms?” 

Choosing social media platforms for your business doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s all about assessing the relative benefits of each platform as they relate to your target audience. 

Here are some of the most popular social networks:

• Facebook. The biggest of all social media with 2.93 billion monthly users, who primarily fit into the 35-44 age demographic, Facebook allows you to set up a page, post news and links to your site, share photos, and respond to comments on your post. You can also start live videos, which is great if you’re running an event or a product launch.

• Instagram. With one billion users, 31.7% of whom are between 25-34, Instagram is the place to share photos and videos that tell your brand story to a diverse audience. You can use hashtags to drive traffic, post stories and Reels, and build your brand’s visual identity system into your page with the Unfold for Squarespace app.

• Twitter. 330 million people around the world use the microblogging platform Twitter. They’re largely an educated and high-income audience, and they use the platform to share moods, trends, and opinions. One of the best things about Twitter is that users can interact directly with brands and influencers. 

• Linkedin. 190 million people in the United States use LinkedIn, followed by 87 million in India. 59.1% of those users are between 24-34 years old. Linkedin is the leading social media platform for professional networking and B2B marketing. The best way to use Linkedin for your business is to expand your reach through lead generation tools and thought leadership posts. 

• YouTube. The world’s second-largest search engine with 2.6 billion users, YouTube offers you the chance to create your own brand channel to which users can subscribe. Via YouTube videos, you can launch products, deep-dive into subjects relevant to your brand, and position yourself as a sector thought leader. Plus, it’s easy to embed YouTube videos in your other social media posts: Just copy the URL and paste it into your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even your website’s video collection.

• TikTok. TikTok has over a billion monthly users. Branded content on this platform should be all about joining in with the purpose of the platform: “to inspire creativity and bring joy.” Any content that overtly interrupts the user experience will not play well here. Savvy small businesses collaborate with content creators and share their own lighthearted videos that position their brands in a positive light.

• Pinterest. With more than 430 million monthly users, over 70% of whom are women, Pinterest is the place to share inspiring photography of food, fashion, interior design, and vacation destinations. In fact, any product where a photo might influence a buying decision is ideal for Pinterest. You can create “boards” so that users can directly access themed content. Hashtags will help drive audiences to your “pins.”

Read more about what social media channels make sense for your business 

Growing your brand via social media

Social media isn’t just a space where you can communicate your brand message. It also affords you the chance to shape that message and flesh out your brand strategy.

When you set out to build a brand, social media should be a key consideration in how you communicate it to the wider world. From your mission, vision, and values all the way to your product promotions, social networks give you the opportunity to convey who you are, what you do, and why you’re valued by your customers. 

Take, for example, a business like Slack, the project management platform designed to help teams communicate more effectively. Marketinginsidergroup.com rates it as the No. 1 best brand on social media, simply because it lives and breathes its brand purpose (to bring “the right people, information, and tools together to get work done”) via its social media. How? By sharing productivity tips and news articles that enable better teamwork. 

Your focus in growing your brand on social media should be split between conveying your brand message, developing your follower numbers (awareness, as detailed above), and turning followers into dedicated fans and advocates of your brand. Brand ambassadors are created on social media by giving your followers a sense of reward for engaging with your narrative. 

For example, you can:

• Give people “top follower” status.

• Invite followers to product launches and other branded events.

• Ask your followers to feed into your brand narrative with guest content.

• Curate your most influential followers’ content by sharing it on your own channels. This is known as user-generated content, or UGC. 

Brand ambassadors provide evidence that your messaging reflects the truth of who you are as a business. The more consumer advocacy you create, the more authentic your brand message becomes. 

Read more about using social media to grow your brand. 

Developing your social media narrative

The story you tell about your business on social media plays a huge part in helping form ideas about the value you bring to people’s lives. So it’s important to spend time shaping your brand narrative in a way that represents you as you wish to be seen.

Developing your social networking reputation requires presenting the best version of your business for the world to see. Look at every aspect of what you do as a company and your relationships with different people, including employees, suppliers, and customers, then focus on what’s great about those things.

Think about things like:

• What makes you a great employer and the ways your people help to shape your brand story (e.g., via day-in-the-life videos).

• The journey from product and service innovation through manufacturing and logistics to customers using those products and services.

• How your customers can help to tell your story by sharing their own experiences (e.g., curating their reviews, photos, and videos on your social channels).

An app like Unfold for Squarespace simplifies brand storytelling across popular social media channels. New templates for TikTok and Instagram Reels help frame your brand’s narratives in an approachable, easy-to-consume format. An all-in-one app with hundreds of templates and multiple effects and fonts available to you, Unfold enables you to use your videos, photos, and text to create storyboards that walk audiences through brand experiences, which will enrich their understanding of your personality as a business.

Above all, remember that developing your reputation on social media isn’t about publishing every photo, video, or thought. Successful brands carefully craft their social narratives to influence their target audiences in positive ways. It’s a great tool for managing your own reputation within your sector. 

Read more about using social media to tell brand stories.