The number of active social media users around the world as of April 2020 is 3.81 billion. That’s why most businesses consider social media a key part of their marketing strategies. In fact, 73% of marketers consider social media marketing effective.
With this kind of competition, how can your small business stand out on social media?
What would make your target audience stop scrolling every time they see your posts on their feeds?
How can you increase brand recognition?
The answer to all of these questions lies in knowing who your target audience is, why they are on social media, and what value you can offer them.
You need to find ways to create content that your audience can relate to and build a community for your brand.
How can you do that?
This post seeks to present various ways in which your small business can stand out on social media.
Which Social Media Marketing Tactics Can Help You Build a Strong Social Presence?
Building a strong social presence can amplify your brand awareness, reach, traffic, and conversions. It can give your brand exposure while also allowing you to build strong relationships with your audience.
But every other small business is competing for attention on social platforms.
How do you cut through the noise and get your brand’s voice heard?
Read on to find out.
1. Start with an Effective Strategy
To stand out on social media as a small business, you need a robust strategy. Building a strategy will help you define what you want to achieve and how you will achieve it. It can also offer you insights into how you can optimize your social media marketing tactics for better results.
Building an effective strategy includes a number of steps:
Define your goals and objectives: Your goals need to be measurable, specific, and attainable. They should also be time-based and relevant.
What’s more?
You need to identify metrics to help you track performance. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you can track impressions, follower growth, reach, etc.
Re-examine your target audience: Who is your audience and what do they want to see on social media?
Knowing this can help you create content that they can relate to and will willingly engage with. It can also help you increase conversions.
Know your competition: A competitive analysis tells you who your competitors are, what they do better than you, and industry expectations. It’s a great way to spot opportunities too.
For example, if your competitor doesn’t have a strong presence on Twitter, you can work on strengthening your Twitter profile and community. However, make sure your target audience is active on the platform.
Analyze the performance of your social media campaigns: Which of your tactics have worked better than others? Find out what you need to improve, who engages with your content, and which platforms your audience prefers.
You should also find out if your presence on social media compares to that of your top competitors.
Evaluate and track the effectiveness of your strategy: Keep tracking and evaluating your strategy for strengths and weaknesses. Optimize tactics that work better, leave channels that don’t work, and strive to offer value to your potential and existing customers.
Re-evaluate, test, and constantly optimize your social strategy for improved results.
2. Maintain a Consistent Brand Voice
How does your brand sound?
Are you a serious brand, or a fun and relaxed one?
Establishing the right voice for your brand and maintaining it can help you connect with your target audience on an emotional level. And this can help you build stronger relationships.
But how can you maintain your brand’s voice?
Exposure to too much content can erode your brand voice. A quote you saw or a social media post you could relate to can stay with you and you may start writing in that voice. Writing in multiple ways can make you sound like you’ve got a multiple (brand) personality disorder.
So, it’s important to keep your brand’s voice consistent.
How can you stop copying other brands?
If you are a visual person, you should start by creating a visual chart. Every time you decide to publish a post or a Story, read the chart and stay true to it. You can also read your previously-published content to understand how your brand sounds.
Another option is to have a list of to-use and not-to-use words. This list can be a handy document for you to identify words that align with your brand’s voice and also the ones that don’t. You can then check them out every time you start writing your social media posts.
3. Maintain Consistent Aesthetics
To stand out on social media, you need to develop consistent brand aesthetics.
Why?
It helps you align your brand’s presence across multiple social media channels and reflect your brand’s style, mood, personality, and tone.
Having consistent aesthetics can make your brand recognizable and help you establish a memorable presence. A unique style can also differentiate your brand from your competitors.
How should you create brand aesthetics?
- Think about your audience: Who are they and what are their interests?
- Find a tone: What personality do you want your posts to portray?
- Determine your essentials: These will include the type of content to use, logo, colors, filters, hashtags, captions, attribution, etc.
- Have a consistent look across channels: Ensure that your brand’s name and profile photos remain similar across channels.
4. Use Strong Visuals
Strong visuals can make your social media account stand out. They can make your content look more attractive, engaging, memorable, relatable, and understandable.
Including visuals makes it easier to convey your brand’s message, highlight important data, showcase your products, and express emotions. They can help you tell your brand’s story and share messages.
How can you use visuals to stand out on social media?
Start by choosing visuals that are easy to understand and that add value to your content. If possible, avoid stock photos.
You should also use a variety of visuals in different formats. For example, you can use images, videos, infographics, memes, graphs, illustrations, product photos, demo videos, and screenshots.
But there is a catch:
If you want to stand out on social media, your visuals need to:
- Have a consistent color scheme across channels.
- Show off your personality, for example, with the fonts you use.
- Maintain your brand’s theme and aesthetics.
- Be of high quality.
- Be optimized for searches. You can include keywords, descriptions, and hashtags (wherever applicable) to optimize them for higher search visibility.
5. Use the Right Tools
The secret to standing out on social media is taking advantage of social media tools that can help you automate numerous menial tasks. They can help you boost the productivity of your team and give them more time to engage with your target audience.
Which tools should you use?
You should leverage marketing tools like Hootsuite, Agorapulse, and Sprinklr to take care of different aspects of your social media campaigns.
You can use these social media marketing tools to:
- Manage your social media accounts.
- Schedule posts.
- Publish on various platforms at once.
- Engage your audience.
- Discover content.
- Monitor conversations.
- Analyze campaign performance.
- Monitor your competitors’ social media activities.
- Track audience engagement.
You can also use online design tools like Piktochart, VSCO, and PicMonkey to create eye-catching graphics. With these tools, you do not need to be a designer. They offer numerous templates for you to choose from and give options to help you personalize them to match your brand’s aesthetics.
Are You Ready to Set Your Brand Apart from the Competition?
Standing out from your competition on social media may seem challenging, especially if you are a small business. But it’s doable.
You just need to find ways to cut through the noise and set your brand apart.
You can start by building a strong strategy with well-defined goals and audience groups. You can then incorporate strategies like developing a consistent brand voice, using visuals, automating your menial processes, and tracking performance.
Doing this will not only help you stand out from others but will also help your business grow.
Are you ready to implement these tips to make your small business stand out on social media?
Would you like to get more tips for boosting your social presence and improving your customer experiences? Let us know in the comments section below.
