In today’s digital world, having an online presence for your small business is essential to succeed. A small business social media presence is the best way to connect with your clients, attract potential customers, and grow your business. Your customers are already searching for your small business online. A strong digital presence ensures your small business is at the forefront of someone’s mind when they decide to make a purchase decision. Social media works to show why potential clients should support your business over others.
However, it is true that social media can be a daunting task for many small business owners. Social media marketing is extremely crucial for all businesses, but it is also time-consuming and stressful to make unique content, develop a social media strategy, and constantly engage with your audience while growing your business online. Plus, as a small business owner, you are already extremely busy on a daily basis keeping up with administrative tasks, managing employees, and focusing on the success of your business.
At Succeeding Small, a social media management company based in Colorado Springs, we are experts in social media marketing. We have invested in the highest quality research and education to figure out the best practices for a successful social media presence for small businesses. Our team of digital strategists provides businesses with a consistent, carefully crafted online presence designed with your customers in mind. We pair our extensive knowledge of social media algorithms with our copywriting and graphic design skills to maximize your digital marketing efforts and get your clients to convert. Our digital marketers have the most up-to-date knowledge of ever-changing social media algorithms and trends to ensure your small business gets visibility online.
So, if you are ready to strengthen your social media strategy for your small business, attract new clients, and grow your business, keep on reading to see the social media trends for 2022.
Paid Social Media Advertising
As more and more small businesses use social media to attract customers and grow their online presence, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. Customers are searching online for products and services from small businesses, but ensuring they find your small business out of the plethora of others can be challenging.
The organic reach of your brand, which is the number of social media users who saw your content online through unpaid means, is slowly declining. For example, according to Hootsuite, the average organic reach of a Facebook post is around 5.20% in 2021. As the competitive market for organic reach becomes even more saturated, small businesses are especially at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting customers through organic search on social media.
This is why a paid social media advertising campaign can be extremely effective. Paid social media is a great method to diversify your marketing strategy online. While you may be hesitant to use paid social media advertising due to a limited budget, this strategy can actually be cost-effective and customized to fit any business budget. Small investments into your social media presence can dramatically increase your digital reach, build your brand awareness, as well as give you insight into target market data that will be helpful for future marketing efforts.
Organic Social Media
Organic social media marketing is an important part of any small business’ marketing strategy. It is the free social media content that is posted on platforms. This includes pictures, videos, stories, and more that are not paid for in an advertising campaign.
While paid social media advertising is extremely effective at expanding the reach of your brand, organic social media is a vital aspect of social media.
When you post an organic post on social media, the people who see your posts will largely be your followers and anyone who saw the shared post. This means that organic social media is less about finding new audiences and followers, as paid social media excels at attracting new followers, but the main goal of organic social is to connect with your customers.
Organic social media is essential to establish your brand, build relationships, and support your customers. It is also a great way to share information about your business with your followers. The best and most effective social media marketing strategy will recognize the importance of organic social media and work to make this strategy as effective as possible for your small business.
Social Commerce
Over the past few years, especially since the beginning of COVID-19, online shopping has become more popular than ever. As a small business owner, you may have an online store for your customers or even an app that your clients can download, but have you considered using social media to sell your products or services?
Social media platforms have begun to embrace e-commerce for users, or more adequately named, social commerce. Social commerce is when a business sells products or services directly through the social media platform. This allows users to complete their entire shopping experience within social networks.
All major social media platforms have social commerce for their users. For example, Facebook users can purchase products from the Facebook Marketplace all within the app. Plus, think of the Instagram store, where you can search for products, add them to your cart, and buy directly from businesses without having to leave the app.
Facebook and Instagram are not the only two social networks with social commerce capabilities. Pinterest, TikTok, and Snapchat all offer social commerce to social media users looking to make purchases without having to leave their social media accounts.
As a small business, social commerce is a great way to engage with your customers and encourage them to purchase your products or services in a place that they are already familiar with. Social media is not just a way to create awareness of your brand, but a comprehensive social media strategy that incorporates social commerce can be a viable revenue path for your small business.
Influencer Marketing on Social Media
With the rise of content creators on social media, more brands have started to realize the potential that social media influencers can have on businesses. Influencer marketing relies on a social media strategy that leverages endorsements from content creators on social networks.
Statista research shows that influencer marketing reached an all-time high in 2021. The market was valued at 13.8 billion U.S. dollars globally. This trend of social media influencer marketing is expected to continue into 2022.
Influencer marketing on social media used to be reserved for large corporations and influencers with millions of followers. However, this is not the case anymore for social media marketing for small businesses. More and more small brands are seeing the impact that social media influencers can have on small businesses, especially local influencers.
Micro-influencers, or local influencers, can drive conversions for small businesses. On social media, these influencers have smaller audiences but are able to connect more personally with their followers, which can drive engagement and brand awareness for your small business. By seeking out local influencers, small businesses are also able to build better community partnerships and trust among the target audience without needing to spend thousands of dollars on a bigger influencer with a mass follower base.
Short-Form Video Content
Over the past year, short-form video content has boomed, especially since the rise of Snapchat and TikTok. Social media users are familiar with major social media platforms adding short-form video capabilities, such as Facebook Stories, Instagram Reels, Instagram TV, and YouTube Shorts over the past years. Short-form video content will continue to grow in popularity in 2022, and small businesses looking to grow their business should hone in on this social media strategy.
A study by Animoto found that 93 percent of businesses that have used video content on social media landed a new customer because of a video that the customer saw on social media. Even more so, another study by Vidyard found that half of the viewers will watch an entire video if it is under a minute long.
This means that businesses that incorporate short-form video content into their social media strategy are not only growing their audience but are also retaining the attention of their followers. In a world where social media is highly competitive and time is limited, capturing the attention of your target audience is what every brand strives to do. Short-form video content is the key. By leveraging short-form video content on social media, your small business has the chance to build awareness, connect with your audience, and encourage followers to support your business.
Building Relationships on Social Media
For many people, social media is used to connect with like-minded communities. For users, the intention is no different from businesses. Social media users seek out businesses on social media platforms to connect with them, especially when it comes to customer service.
All small businesses know the importance of fantastic customer service. Have you ever thought about how social media can improve customer service for your business? With the popularity of social media platforms in today’s digital world, more and more customers are seeking out brands on social media for customer service support.
On platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, customers can easily message your business privately to resolve customer concerns. Additionally, social media is the easiest way to engage with your customers to see their feedback, review their concerns, and acknowledge their suggestions.
Being actively engaged with your customers on social media is one of the most effective ways to build long-lasting relationships. When you use social media to support your clients, your small business is able to create better engagement, foster relationships, encourage leads, and build trust among your target audience. At the end of the day, your customers want to be heard, so the digital presence of your small business must support your customers.
Strengthen Your Social Media Marketing Strategies With Succeeding Small
Social media is one of the most important tools to grow your small business. These social media trends for 2022 give great insight into the importance of social media marketing. If your small business is looking to build relationships with your audience and attract new clients, then you will want to make sure your social media marketing strategy follows what social media users expect from businesses online. Our strategic partners can help you with your social media needs.
If you are ready to succeed, then contact the team at Succeeding Small to get started!
