How to Make Social Media Really Worth It For Your Business

How to Make Social Media Really Worth It For Your Business

Utilizing Social Media for Small Business…
Is It Actually Worth It?

As an entrepreneur and small business, it’s important to understand the impact of any campaigns I have running.

Social media is an amazing resource at your disposal…

But, if not used properly it is difficult to see the ROI.

Basically, we want to know how much time, money, and energy goes into these campaigns to come up with some sort of return on investment.

If you are struggling to realize the impact it has on your business…

OR, if you’ve written off social media strategies because you haven’t seen an ROI from it…

AND, if you’re just starting your business and need to figure out a game-plan.

Then this post is for you.

Let’s break down what Social can do for your business, to help you make the most intelligent decision on what to do next.

The Big Mistake

The first mistake most small businesses and entrepreneurs face is that they join every network and start posting away.

The problem is, over time, they soon realize is the amount of time it takes to post, monitor, engage, and optimize these networks is astounding.

Jumping from Facebook to LinkedIn, Twitter to Reddit, Instagram to Pinterest.

All these platforms require a certain level of expertise and energy.

On top of all that, they all require a different kind of finesse.

Creating a post for Facebook that is engaging to your audience is completely different than posting an engaging image to Instagram.

Making a Tweet that people will love and retweet is completely different than curating an engaging post for your LinkedIn followers.

You need to find where your customers are and what they like…

Are they on Pinterest? Are they on Twitter? Etc…

Then you need to figure out where they are the most engaged.

One-third of the world is on Facebook, but is this where they are the most engaged with your content? Maybe… Maybe not.

You might find out the Twitter brings your site the most conversions, but less traffic than Facebook.

Slow it down. Read the data. Find where your customers live online.

Knowing these variables will help you know where to start.

Time

Another mistake people make is thinking that Social Media is free.

The platforms are free to join, free to post, free to have conversations with customers…

…but the time it takes you to do all of this is far from free.

Time is Money…

Sprout Social surveyed 500 of its small business customers to ask…

“How much time and money do you spend on social?”

Their analysis was incredible…

• 43% of small businesses spend around 6 hours per week on social – that equates to a workday… One day a week spent on it.
• 55% of small businesses have blogs, and the average post takes them around 1-3 hours to curate.
• Most posts occur on Facebook and Twitter. Little is posted on other networks.
• The MINIMUM most small businesses pay for social media advertising tools is $26 per month(publishers, analytics, research tools, etc…).

Let’s think about that for a second…

Businesses spend a whole day, every week, social media marketing and blogging…

And, this is just using Facebook and Twitter! Only 2 out of the trillions of platforms.

e.g. How much is a workday worth to your business?

I’ve done the math for my own business and we’d lose somewhere around $17,000 per year with a lost workday!

This seems to be a pretty steep cost…

But what we haven’t taken into account the ROI.

If I spend $17k but bring in $50k, is it worth it? (Me personally? No. $3 to $1 is decent, but I aim to make $5 for every $1 I spend).

Now, let’s jump ahead and come back to this number – remember $17k.

Tactics

There are many different tactics you’ll hear out there.

In fact, I can almost guarantee you that after reading this post, it will trigger ads in your Facebook feed….

AND, one of those ads will be someone selling you on a “secret” tactic they found that nobody else knows.

To understand which tactics to use for your business, you need to understand your audience (or the audience you want to target).

The first key, and I think most important, is to be consistent (I’m going to use this word, consistent, a lot in this post).

If you post every day at 8am, keep them rolling in every day at 8am.

Hence, your audience will be looking for your posts.

If you don’t stay consistent you have the potential to lose them.

PROMOTIONS

Here are some result driven tactics I use for promoting on organic social media:

• Join groups in your niche and interact with group members
• Connect with influencers in your niche to help promote your brand
• Engage with those who mention your business
• Respond positively to EVERY comment made on your post
• Promote those posts with high engagement via social media ads
• Create and promote your blog posts
• Seek out guest posting opportunities
• Plan and promote contest giveaways
• Share lead magnet freebies to build your email list
• Promote your LinkedIn pulse posts on other platforms
• Create shareable videos, photos, and images
• Review social media campaign analytics and optimize your campaigns

Nonetheless, test these strategies and see what your audience responds to.

Once you’ve figured out what your audience likes and dislikes, you can start to optimize your campaigns…

And strategize on how to take advantage of the different tactics.

Always remember, nobody knows your audience like you do. 

Above all, test everything!

Benefits

Staying consistent and properly optimizing your social media campaigns, your business will start receiving some amazing benefits.

AUTHORITY

• By being consistent with what you do on social media, you will always remain top-of-mind with your followers.

This will help you gain market share and improve the authority you garner in your niche.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

• Everyone is on social media these days.

This is a perfect place for your business to stay in touch with customer queries. In return, your audience will feel the love and reciprocate. An amazing way to keep client turnover rate low.

LEAD GENERATION

• For most businesses, this is the bread and butter of their business. Generating leads is an industry in and of itself.

By engaging and promoting your brand on social media you will start to see the leads roll in. Once you figure out how to get your first lead using social media, optimize and scale your campaigns and you’ll see your inbox filling up.

TRAFFIC GROWTH

• Post and promote your blog posts.

This is the simplest way to get people to your site.

Engage with influencers you have built relationships with and ask them to promote your content as well.

You will be amazed at how much traffic you can get by sending out a few emails.

Return on Investment

Okay, now that we’ve covered the basics of how it all works, let’s jump back to the return on investment…

We understand that there is a huge potential to drive revenue through social media.

We have an idea of what we should be doing and the benefits of promoting our business on social media.

What about the ROI?

How do we generate positive ROI with our social media outreach?

If we are constantly testing and optimizing then we can see what’s working and start focusing our time and energy toward those campaigns.

Now we’re rolling. Utilizing social media to our advantage and growing revenues. But…

…This all takes a lot of time. Just about one day a week in fact.

Remember that number? $17k?

We were still short on our ROI goals. We are making $3 for every $1 we spend, but our goal is to be making $5.

So how do we get there?

EXPENSES

Let’s begin by looking at the expenses…

We are losing a day’s worth of revenue spending so much time on social media.

I am pretty sure I could get this down from 6 hours a week to 2, but let’s give ourselves an obtainable goal, say 3 hours per week.

Accordingly, by cutting the time we spend on social media in half, we could use some uber-simple math and say $17,000 / 2 = $8,500…

Which means, we are now making$5.88 for every $1 we spend.

Perfect!

But how do we cut down on the time?

This is where it gets fun!

Just like a carpenter needs a saw and a plumber needs piping, we need tools…

We need a tool that allows us to monitor what people are saying about our brand.

Then, create visual images and graphics.

As well as, oversee our content calendar, reply to queries, and review social media analytics in one place.

We also need to keep in mind that most businesses say, “Finding and posting content is the most time-consuming.”

So we need a tool that does all that and allows us to research content and post it at blinding speed.

There are many tools out there that you can try stacking together to accomplish all of this…

BUT, that just brings more pain.

Jumping from one program to the next.

Auditing what’s occurring over here and cross-referencing it with what’s going on over there.

It can get quite tedious…

But more than likely, stressful!

Hootsuite is one tool that can do it all:

• Monitor
• Analyze
• Research
• Schedule
• Create

Check them out for yourself!

Furthermore, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without utilizing these tools.