How social media savvy is your small business

Social media has seeped into the marketing fabric of businesses today, inadvertently, owing to its reach and efficacy. The point to ponder is- how social media savvy are you, if you own a small business initiative? A simple quiz regarding your,

  1. Frequency of social media use.
  2. Pervasiveness of its usage.
  3. Channels used to engage.
  4. Use of paid tools or free tools.

If your answers are higher frequency of usage, comprehensive use of social media for all activities, strategic use of all possible and effective channels and majority use, respectively for all the four above mentioned questions, then you are social media savvy and you earn major brownie points.

  1. The strategic and consistent usage of social media has helped many small startup ventures to reap the desired outcome in a short span of time, compared to the ones who are not serious enough about social media potential. For a structural social media approach you need to,
  • Plan a customized campaign with the help of professionals.
  • Increase web presence with quality posts and links.
  • Join forum conversations, listen and prove credibility.
  1. We all know that social media campaigns act as marketing tools to increase sales but how can you be sure of the efficacy, if you do not pay enough attention to analysis of marketing trends of competitors, customer service and other internal functions like collaborations and recruitments, among others. Using social media for all these aspects can increase your reputation and hold you in good stead among your competition.
  1. It is also known that small businesses concentrate more on local customers and using less used channels but you can optimize your results by using Facebook Fanpage, twitter, bookmarking services, geolocation services and forums, even to pool local customer base.
  1. Similarly using tools to monitor your social media ROI is essential to alter your strategies and replace them with effective ones, periodically.

If you have suggestions/questions and advice to help other readers, please add them to the comments section.