Social media is essential for a small business since the marketing budget is low for  numerous startups. Social Media also offers you the liberty to reach people across the globe, and most importantly directs your message to your focused target market.
After reading ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ by Robert Kiyosaki in 2010, I decided to twitch my first blog PIE (People into Education/Entertainment/Economics). After a couple of weeks doing it and not getting ample hits, I decided to take it to my Facebook account.  I told my friends about it and in just a week people began flooding PIE, leaving comments and sharing it with their friends. I felt great!

This triggered my interest in Social Media marketing and advertising.  Social media is fun and easy to use because there are already people using it. It’s like China, the people are there, all you need to do is sell them something they like, and your sales and brand awareness will increase exponentially.

Amazingly it does not involve a high budget, just your time.

You may  potentially be asking ‘how can I use Social Media for my small business?’ well here are some awesome tips that I have found to be effective in the past six years that can be used by any start up or small business.

1.    Write from the heart

Writing from the heart is very imperative in the sense that you stand apart from your contenders as it permits you to engage with your clienteles as a substitute to selling to them.  If you are selling to them they will not pay attention for the reason that most sales messages are not sociable or special. Additionally, Facebook will spontaneously situate your post last on your clientele’s feed. So be nice, engage with them as a substitute of selling to them.

2.    Usage of visuals

Folks scroll down on their phones very fast; consequently they do not read all the posts posted. A very important question you might be asking yourself is: “How do I grasp their attention Thabo, how do I make them discontinue and read my content”?
Irrespective of how noble your story is, if it’s not visually appealing, your prospects will never stop to read it. I have realized that small businesses that write the best copy always end up with no reactions from their prospects. This is because what they put out is not visually appealing. Counter this by posting visually appealing content, add pictures (high quality) or videos that are short and precise.

3.    Do not over-do it

Using dating as an analogy you will beat this bad drill that small businesses fall into. Imagine if your boyfriend or girlfriend constantly sought to see you, day and night.  After a couple of months you two would run out of things to talk about. The same applies with social media.
If you post twenty posts in under a minute, it’s overkill. Your audience will not like this for the reason that they did not log on Facebook to engage with you, they did so to catch up with their friends. Provide them some time to breathe, come once in a while, and allow them some time to miss you. When you do come back do so very effectively! After all, too much of a good thing is not good for anyone. If you have too many thoughts to share use that ‘schedule post feature’ on Facebook.

4.    Study your data

Facebook provides data for free; based on your page, consume the data for greater insights, mug up the facts and behaviors practiced by your audience. After three months of doing this you will be able to know when to post and what to post. This is also a great tool for market research and analysis.
Social Media is great for advertising, marketing and Public Relations, but then again if not precisely used, your audiences will misinterpret your message; causing a lot of damage to your brand’s reputation. So avoid obscurity or going to extremes with big words.

I hope this material was handy!

Thabo Ledimo