Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses: 5 Strategies for Success

Social media has been one of the great equalizers for local businesses, especially when trying to build your local brand and foster a stronger community among your customers.

Branded social media accounts are free to set up and relatively easy to run—especially if you use social media in your personal life. Even better, the following you create through a social presence can become a long-term asset for your business, improving your ability to engage with existing customers while increasing the long-term reach of your social content.

But effective social media marketing for small business brands takes time, resources, and a basic understanding of strategic best practices. Looking for help? We’ve got you covered. Here are five social media marketing tips for small business leaders.

1. Set a Sustainable Routine for Your Social Media Activities

The best foundation for social media success is a strategy you can maintain over time. Every social media marketing plan for small business brands should first identify the constraints that your social activities must account for.

First and foremost is the amount of time you can dedicate to managing your social media presence on a daily, weekly and/or monthly basis. But you should also account for the different resources you’ll require, such as any social media marketing tools for small business campaigns and their estimated cost.

Create a schedule or routine that you can manage consistently. This will allow you to be consistent in posting to social media, which will lead to better engagement from your followers.

2. Respond Promptly to Comments and Messages From Your Followers

Engagement from customers and followers is a great resource for your brand’s social presence. Even when you aren’t posting original content as consistently as you would like, social media marketing for small business brands should emphasize quick responses to comments, questions, private messages or other interactions coming from social media users.

Many consumers use social media as a customer service communication channel, and they will regard your business more positively if you respond to their queries quickly. In general, two-way engagement with your social followers will cultivate stronger brand relationships and support your customer retention efforts.

3. Repost and Repurpose Content for Better Marketing ROI

Looking for a quick marketing hack for resource-strapped small businesses (and any business, for that matter)? Save all of the content you post to social media and look for ways to reuse it in the future.

For some platforms, such as LinkedIn and X, you can simply republish old content you’ve created to get more exposure and engagement out of that original post. In other cases, you may want to edit or adapt content to reshare it on that platform or to publish it on a different social channel.

This social media marketing strategy for small business brands is a simplified version of having a content management system for your business, but it can help deliver the same results: more content to fuel your social media activity, less work involved in creating social posts, and better marketing ROI as you repurpose past content that delivered strong results in the past.

4. Use Analytics to Figure Out What Works Best for Your Business

When you post to social media, pay attention to the kind of results you get in terms of views, likes, comments, or other performance metrics. When a social post performs well, make some educated guesses as to why: were you showing off your brand’s personality? Highlighting a special deal or opportunity with your business? Did you post a picture or video that was high-quality and entertaining?

By taking some basic steps to track performance and apply those insights to future social posts, you can build toward better social media marketing success as you refine your strategy.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Seek Out Help

Small business owners know their job requires them to wear a lot of hats. Small business social media marketing is definitely something your business can manage on its own, especially in the early going when resources are lean.

If you want to get more ROI out of your social presence, though—or if you’re struggling to keep up with social obligations alongside all of your other business responsibilities—it might be time to enlist the assistance of a digital marketing partner.

Cox Media specializes in helping small businesses grow their brand and their revenues through an optimized, active social media presence—and we can do the same for you. Put your social accounts in the hands of trusted experts and find out what a difference it can make for your brand.

Ready to get started? Contact us today.