Are You a Small Business? This is How You Can Use Social Media to Grow!

One of the most common questions we get from all our SME customers is; should we be using social media? That’s usually then accompanied with; but, we don’t have the time or money…

Most importantly, great social media content and brand engagement come from telling a story and inviting customers to be part of that story. Trust us when we say, your audience wants to know everything! The good, the bad, the successes and the failures.

And before you say “we don’t have enough content to post all the time” just think about everything that can happen in one working day! Start with what you know, we at OITC call this your epicentre i.e. the stuff that you absolutely own and can talk about across many platforms and with many people. It’s basically the central ‘WHY’ to your business and speaks to the solutions your product or service is performing.

So if you are a small business, here are three really basic ways you can you use social media to grow your business;

Create a closed Facebook group
Creating an online community will give you direct access to your existing clients while creating a viable way of building highly engaged discussions, that can really take off because it’s not as intimidating as a business page. Its an opportunity to really hear what your customers want and need, one of the best ways to engage and create value in the closed group is by holding question-and-answer sessions and creating exclusive content and offers for your community.

Get on Instagram and get friendly with Direct Messaging
Direct Messaging or DMing completely changed the social media game; Creating a private vehicle for followers to instantly talk to profiles and businesses. Use it as a way to thank someone for buying from you, invite your top followers to exclusive events and send offers directly to them, quickly respond to product questions and instantly dissolve a dispute before it gets heated publicly.

Use your time to find and collaborate with other social media profiles.
Other businesses with the same client base as you make for excellent partners and can be a simple way to grow your brand and community by leveraging off the trust they have built within their social community. Use your time on social media to search these brands out, start conversations through direct message and engage with their community. Then once you’re comfortable, suggest to run competitions together and co-host events IRL and finally work out a system where you refer business to each other.

Try one of these tips today, and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in contact with us! Happy posting!