Essential Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners During a Recession

Generating leads through social media marketing

An economic recession shows itself in many forms. Experts refer to these as “shapes”, and each is complicated. For this article, though, imagine that there are two shapes, a V and an L. A V-shaped recession signifies a rapid but progressive decline.

The good news is, it doesn’t last too long. An L-shaped recession, on the other hand, is an abrupt drop that can last for a while.

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History reveals that we have encountered this type of recession many times before. Great depression killed businesses regardless of the industry or scale. If there’s one thing that sets the current pandemic-caused recession apart from the others, though, is that it happened during the digital age.

There are a lot of ways to make money online, and there are a lot of resources on how to start a business.

The Role of Social Media Marketing

With the help of digital marketing, necessary tools like push notifications, and online transactions, businesses today have a better chance of surviving a recession. Social media marketing, for instance, plays a crucial role in bringing businesses closer to their clients.

What most business owners don’t realize, though, is the fact that social media marketing goes beyond sharing posts online three times a day. There are methods that you can do in order to improve its efficiency and ROI, tips that we are going to share with you below:

1. Start with your objectives.

What are your top marketing objectives? Come up with at least two to three and think about how social media can help. You can also look into how these objectives or goals are being accomplished by the competition.

We’re not saying that you should copy them. Instead, analyze their methods in order to lessen your learning curve and strategize how you’ll be able to get yours up to speed or even surpass their efforts.

Knowing your objectives will allow you to use your social media pages beyond just being a megaphone. It will also give you a path to follow and a measure of success.

2. Establish your own online presence.

Here’s another common misconception. Most small business owners do everything to promote their trade, and isn’t this what this article is about? That may be true, but it’s also not a good reason to forget your own online reputation.

Don’t forget to take care of your LinkedIn. Keep your online CV constantly updated. Clean up your social media accounts of posts that you won’t want your clients to see.

Set yourself up as a social media influencer, and we’re confident that your business will follow suit.

Here’s a pro tip: While you’re auditing your own social media accounts, wouldn’t it be the perfect time to audit your business’ accounts as well? Remove irrelevant and inaccurate posts. Curate your social media page and only retain uploads that better reflect you and your business.

3. Where do you want to focus?

We understand why most business owners feel compelled that they should sign up for an account across all social media channels. After all, they’re free, and you’ll be able to reach more users that way right?

Not exactly.

The law of diminishing returns suggests that there is only a limit to the extra effort or improvement you can apply before it reaches a tipping point where the profit won’t be able to catch up anymore.

Juggling three to five (or sometimes even more) social media accounts at a time will spread your efforts too thin. Hence, why don’t you focus on one to two social media accounts instead? Research where your target demographic usually hangs out and start from there. Dominate that channel.

If you really want to add another account, then try to establish a foothold on your existing accounts first before expanding your network. This leads us to our next tip.

4. Focus on quality.

Just like the number of your accounts, you also don’t need to post several times per day. Posting similar (or worse, identical) material, or just half-measured statuses just because you want to keep your account “active” is considered spamming.

No one wants to follow an account like that.

What’s worse is that there are social media sites that penalize such accounts by lessening the visibility of their posts in people’s homepages.

Hence, we recommend high-quality posts. Think of your content. Utilize impressive yet relevant visuals. It doesn’t matter if you can only work three times a week. If they’re high-quality and people look forward to seeing them, then they’re worth it.

Here’s a pro tip: Strategize your social media posts in a single planning session every two weeks. There are tools that allow you to schedule them in advance and post them automatically on the set time and date. Your posts will not only work more cohesively this way, but they will also give you more than enough time to maintain your conversations with your followers all throughout the week.

5. It’s not just a trend. It should be a conversation.

Speaking of conversations, some people think that the secret to a successful social media campaign is to get a post to go trending. While a viral post, and much more a hashtag, can certainly help improve your follower count, it is what it is: a fad. The attention won’t last forever.

Hence, we recommend sparking conversations with your followers instead. Remember, one of the benefits of social media marketing is it doesn’t just allow you to promote your products and services, it also lets you reach out to your audience and engage with them. Answer their questions. Prove your expertise. Converse and reply.

This tip is especially more significant during a recession when there is a lot of news, events, and general online noise to compete with. Building relationships with your audience is how you’ll be able to establish a solid foundation for your social media reputation that endures.

6. You don’t have to do it on your own.

Finally, we understand how easy it is to talk about “building relationships” or coming up with “high-quality posts”, but in reality, accomplishing these social media marketing goals can be really hard to do, especially for business owners with really hectic work schedules.

So, for our last tip, we recommend leaving your social media efforts to a pro. Hire a freelancer to help you with your campaign. In this way, you’ll be able to focus on what really matters: growing your company.

Should you choose this route, though, just make sure that all your personal and business accounts online use distinct usernames and passwords from your social media accounts for your own security.

Final Thoughts

Don’t let a recession take your business down. Instead, think of it as an opportunity to tap into using social media marketing.

Recessions that occur during the digital age drive people online, and most of these online hours are spent on social media. Just imagine the benefits you’ll be able to enjoy if you are able to leverage this and get their attention.

There are different techniques that you can apply to your social media campaign to make it more effective, but we’re confident that the tips that we have shared with you above will already give you a strong foundation to build on.

How social media marketing helping small business
Essential Social Media Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Small Business During a Recession.

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