5 Ways Small Businesses Can Build Their Online Presence

As a small business, you have to work hard to keep up with your competition. A great space to do this is on social media.

Even if you don’t have the same workforce as your competitors, you can dominate online with a little planning ahead. Here are a few ways to help your small business make significant social media gains.

Link Up on LinkedIn

The first platform your small business needs to master is LinkedIn. It’s the world’s largest professional network, with over 630 million professional profiles.

You probably already have a personal profile. However, LinkedIn allows you to build your brand by posting ads on the platform through sponsored content, like text and display ads.

Read more on utilizing LinkedIn

Engaging with LinkedIn display ads will enable you to deliver personalized ads, instantly generate leads, and boost your content on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device.

Make sure your employees are fully engaged with your company’s page. This engagement builds your company’s authenticity and directs more traffic towards your page. Another tip: make sure to put your LinkedIn page on your business card; it will serve your organization better than you may think!

Find Your Place

You should be focused on creating high-quality content, sure, but it doesn’t matter if no one is reading it. You need to know where your audience spends time online.

First, claim your organization’s profiles on every social networking website so you can to make sure your brand has a unified image. Your content shouldn’t just be technical company updates! It should be a mix of relatable retweets, shared posts, and new content.

The demographics of your company will determine which platform you will utilize the most. It will benefit your company to gather current audience data based on age, location, language, financial ability, and interests.

After determining these factors, research social media analytics. After that, get posting!

Visuals Are Key

How do you stand out from the deluge of constant content? Visuals! “Your brand’s visuals are everything that your audience sees,” we’ve reported before. “Investing in high-quality visuals will help catch your audience’s eyes and improve brand recognition overall.”

The visuals you share should be tied to the brand and message you want your company to portray. These pictures can be created internally or retweeted, reposted, or reshared from other companies that help emphasize your company’s image.

Plan Out Your Posts

You should frequently be posting to keep up interest in your business, but you can’t be glued to your phone all day. Posting in real time would be hugely time-consuming.

An easy fix to this is to utilize a posting planner like Hootsuite, a multi-social media planner, and organizer. Hootsuite allows you and your employees to post specific information and have it set to post whenever you want, saving you time and resources. It also allows you to plan your posts for ideal times.

“Clients are looking for a solution to their problems,” says Nexa. “If your content appears at just the right moment, you become the answer they’re looking for. Or didn’t know they were looking for!”

Give Your Followers a Shout Out

As a new business owner, you will want to share your appreciation for those followers. 76% of social media users were more likely to buy from a brand that they felt connected to than a competitor. Showcase your recognition of them by liking, retweeting, or commenting back to their posts to your business. This recognition will make them feel genuinely heard and cared for by your company.

Move Forward with Stronger Social Media

Social media is a great way to highlight your business’s strengths. Make sure you’re utilizing LinkedIn, posting in the right place, creating stand out visuals, planning your posts, and highlighting followers. You’re sure to see great results.