Connecting with your target audience on social media is paramount for attracting new prospects as a local business owner.
However, crafting effective posts that drive significant engagement on social media takes time, effort, and consistency.
Consequently, many local business owners avoid social media marketing altogether.
In reality, social posting is easy if you do it smartly.
Considering the above, this post will cover social posting strategies that can help drive targeted exposure and results for your business and brand.
Let's get going.
Choose Relevant Hashtags
Using popular yet relevant hashtags can help deliver maximum exposure for your organic posts on social media platforms.
That is to say, consider the search terms your audience commonly uses to help ensure they discover your posts and brand.
For example, on Instagram, you can add a long list of hashtags to the comment section of your post.
However, limiting your hashtags to a maximum of 3-5 per post is best practice.
Post Soft Content on Your Channels
Posting soft content as part of your social posting strategy can prove beneficial.
Considering this, examples of soft content include:
- Case studies
- Testimonials
- Employee announcements
Notably, soft content delivers insight into your business and demonstrates how it can serve your audience.
Additionally, soft content often receives more engagement than standard sales posts.
Create Simple Posts
Local businesses often employ over-the-top visuals to make their posts stand out.
However, being excessive usually turns off customers.
Therefore, it is often best to craft simple posts with relevant graphics.
Correspondingly, ensure that you limit the text on your image posts to no more than 20%.
Encourage Audience Engagement
Algorithms ultimately decide who and how many people see your social media posts.
With this in mind, they prefer posts that receive significant engagement.
Accordingly, you can encourage your fans and followers to engage or interact with your content by asking questions at the end of your post, publishing sharable content, and responding to comments.
Likewise, you can boost engagement and increase reach by running competitions and giveaways and asking your audience to like, comment, and share your post in exchange for a chance to win.
Focus on One Platform at a Time
Trying to build a presence on multiple social media platforms simultaneously is tempting.
Yet, it potentially doubles, if not triples, your workload.
Instead, determine where your prospects and customers spend most of their time and focus your efforts on that platform.
For example, do they casually connect with friends and family on Facebook, or are they professionals who regularly network and communicate on LinkedIn?
By all means, after mastering one platform, you can expand your presence into others.
Employ Automated Posting
Again, consistency is key for achieving meaningful results from social posting.
To emphasize, the more quality content you post on social media, the more engagement you will receive.
That is to say, customers prefer local businesses that remain active on social media.
However, many local business owners lack the time to implement a smart social posting strategy.
Consequently, consider hiring a social media manager or utilizing tools to automate social posting.
With this in mind, tools like HootSuite and Buffer allow you to create, manage, and schedule posts to publish automatically on specific dates and times.
In Conclusion
Given the points above, social posting is a powerful tool for promoting your local business.
Again, achieving success requires a proper strategy and willingness to commit the resources necessary to craft content that engages your target audience and establishes your business as a trusted authority within the community.
So, get out there and start connecting with your customers!
The possibilities are endless – what story will you tell?
Hope this helps,
Erik
We implement creative, results-based digital and hybrid marketing strategies for local business clients.
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