Social media marketing for small business: Build brand awareness, expand your audience & more

For businesses of any size, social media platforms provide powerful tools and opportunities for reaching new customers and building brand loyalty. One of the best things about social media is that you don't need a huge budget or a full marketing team to do great social media marketing. For small business owners and sole business professionals especially, social media strategy is integral to success.

What is social media marketing?

Social networking is an essential part of our everyday life. It's common for people to have more than five social media accounts across different social platforms, all of which they log into daily.

While these social sites began as a way to facilitate communication between friends, families and followers, they quickly became a useful and important digital advertising tool. A social media presence can make an enormous difference for a small business which might not otherwise have the resources for traditional marketing campaigns.

YouTube marketing: Capitalizing on video & reels

When you search for guides on social media marketing, Facebook and Instagram are often the main focus. While these social channels are some of the best to use, they're not the only ones. YouTube, while not often thought of as "social media," video content is valuable and effective for reaching and expanding a target audience.

YouTube, the most popular visual platform online, has approximately 2 billion active users across the globe - how many of those users could be members of your current or future audience? Including YouTube content production and promotion in your social media marketing strategies can yield significant results.

While the learning curve might seem intimidating, there are myriad resources to help you reach the right social media users with relevant content on YouTube (check out Hubspot's guide for getting started).

LinkedIn marketing: Industry professionals & connections

LinkedIn is crucial in modern social media marketing strategy. You can leverage LinkedIn's advertising tools to generate leads and boost brand awareness, but merely having an active business presence on LinkedIn makes an enormous difference.

What could be better than a platform where you can learn from industry professionals and find potential partners or employees while also advertising effectively? In addition to the marketing tools built into the social media platform, the opportunity to post and share high-quality content makes LinkedIn an essential part of your marketing strategy.

While influencer marketing might seem like a tactic reserved for platforms like TikTok and Instagram, LinkedIn has its own fair share of social media influencers. Connecting with these influencers is another way to enhance an effective social media strategy.

Social analytics & reporting

Social media networks can provide excellent analytics for small businesses to aid growth and increase engagement. Some of the most important metrics you can track with social media management tools include:

• Audience volume & growth rate.
• Social media engagement rates.
• Overall impressions & exposure.

Whatever effort you put into marketing on any social media site should be tracked, so you can determine your return on investment. As a small business, your time is especially valuable - you wouldn't want to spend too much of it on a social media calendar if you don't know it works.

Marketing success on social media channels is more than just the amount of social media followers or social media posts you have. If your business goals include growing your target market and communicating your brand values while also learning how to create content and track industry trends, you need effective social media marketing.

Trying to combine your business planning methods with your new strategies and brand awareness efforts? Don’t worry, we’ve got something awesome for you.