7 proven social media strategies for local businesses

We share some of the best social media strategies which have helped local businesses gain followers, increase sales and improve engagement on facebook, twitter, instagram and linkedin.

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Social media is a powerful marketing tool. However, justifying the time to manage several accounts isn’t always the priority – especially when you’re seeing minimal return on investment.

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Interestingly, 84.13% of respondants for a survey from Statista stated that their company’s social media accounts are managed by the owners of the companies. While there’s nothing wrong in doing this, it does add another responsibility to an ever-growing list of jobs.

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The reality is that many small business owners don’t know where to start or how to keep things going.

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But with the right social media strategy in place and a pinch of luck, there’s no reason why you can’t turn it into a profitable form of marketing.

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To get you started, here are 7 proven social media strategies which have worked for local businesses.

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Proven social media strategies for local businesses

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Focus on your community

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One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a local business is to set your sights on competing with large national businesses in your industry.

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The bottom line is their budget is too high and they probably have a whole team working on their social media strategy every day.

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As we mentioned in our previous blog on Local Marketing Strategies, you need to build up a localised online community of supporters and advocates who fly the flag for your brand.

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There are several ways you can do this, including setting a location in your profile, tagging each post and including local hashtags.

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You can also start to influence the audience you build by running paid ads on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The idea is simple; run a paid ad promoting your company page and set your target audience within a certain radius of your business. You can even base the search criteria on age, jobs, salary and various other factors.

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Focusing your social media strategy on your community includes how you communicate with your audience as well. Forget strict corporate compliance and automated responses. A local audience wants authenticity and a conversational tone.

Have some fun with your post content and encourage people to engage by posing questions or running polls. Make sure you reply to people who interact with you on social media and engage with strong social influencers or groups that your customers are interested in.

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Share your feedback

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When you get positive feedback from a customer, scream and shout about it. Customers are nosy and will often do their research before deciding on a product or service.

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So, retweet customer praise, add it to your Facebook/Instagram story and reply to their kind comments. This isn’t something you usually get from bigger companies, so own it and take the initiative. After all, you should be proud of all your hardwork.

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Be a storyteller

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Another successful social media strategy is the art of storytelling. While Twitter’s 280-character limit might not give you much room to play with, you have a lot more freedom to expand on your points on LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook.

This doesn’t mean you should use this opportunity to waffle. Your content needs to pack a punch within the first line. Once you have them hooked and tapping the ‘see more’ button, then you can elaborate.

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Tell the world how you feel, give real-time updates and offer a snapshot into your world.

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However, this rule doesn’t apply if you’re selling a product or service. If you want to sell the product or service features in more detail, create an explainer video or direct them to a landing page or specific website page. In this instance, the key is to drive intrigue, not to oversell.

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Create visual content

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Sometimes pictures speak louder than words. Social media demands beautiful imagery, engaging infographics and compelling videos.

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If you have a popular piece of gated content – such as a white paper, blog or video – consider making them into free, digestible segments for your social media feeds. It’s not only a fantastic way of encouraging people to download or get access to the full version, but it also adds depth to your social media channels.

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Visual content can provide value and position your business as a thought leader or industry leader. Some key examples of how to do this, include:·      
• Turning segments of a white paper into a colourful infographic or Flipagram      
• Taking juicy 10-30-second parts of a video training course    
• Turning a quote from a blog into a graphic

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Think quality, not quantity

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You don’t have to post all the time on your social media channels. Generally speaking, 2-3 posts a week is usually more than enough, although it depends on what type of business you have.

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The key to any social media strategy for local businesses is to make your posts relevant and personal. If you have nothing interesting to add, don’t post for the sake of it. Sticking to the good stuff will enable you to build relationships on social media and develop an engaged following.

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Conduct competitions

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Competitions are one of the best ways of generating an audience quickly.

Here are some competition ideas to get you started:

• Ask social media users to come up with a name for a product or service  
• Ask social media users to answer a question or complete a puzzle  
• Ask social media users to come up with a brand story for you  
• Ask customers to share a selfie or picture of them at your business or using one of your products

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Every competition needs to be incentivised with a great prize. You should always get entrants to like your page and/or share your post as well to maximise organic exposure

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If feasible, use social media ad features to boost the competition to a local audience to ensure you attract the right people.

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Establish the best times to post

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Most social media networks now use some form of algorithm to filter the results they give people. Unfortunately, this means if you post at a different time to when your target audience is online, they’ll probably miss your content.

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Below, you’ll find some effective times according to Sprout Social. While these times are certainly handy to consider in your social media strategy, you may want to experiment and see what works for you.

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Over to you

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There’s no denying that developing an effective social media marketing strategy is one of the best ways of connecting with prospects on their preferred method of communication.

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Get it right and there’s no reason why you can’t use it to generate leads, build real engagement and improve your following within your local community.

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If you’d prefer to leave the heavy lifting to a social media expert, Design in the Shires is here to help. For more information on prices and plans, Get in touch with Design in the Shires today.