Want to be found?

Some people can post a picture of their dogs or kids to Facebook and see 100 Likes overnight. But small businesses with growing audiences might have a harder time trying to get the same results organically. If you want to realise the long-term potential of social media, you can't just focus only on promoting your products. It's that old 80/20 rule again!

For brands, keep it casual and give consumers an emotional context to identify with. There’s nothing wrong with featuring your products, but give them a nice little scene to live in, a story. Focus on answering questions such as “What will I feel if I own this thing? What will it say about me?

But remember the 80/20 rule - only sell for 20% at the most. For that 80%, show what you are interested in, what others are doing, your team, what you are involved in. Show your personality.

"Great content is about helping people, not pitching to them relentlessly or trying to rework your marketing messaging into a bunch of different formats. Put yourself back in your consumer shoes for a moment; is this piece of content something you’d be glad you spent your time consuming?" - Sysomos

Get active on social media: 

The reality for small businesses, is that it's mainly the business owner who's responsible for managing their own social media.  Another reality is that it's an absolute must.  The average person now spends more time online than they do sleeping. So if you want to reach your customers you can bet that one of the best ways to get in front of them is to be active on social media. A great advantage of social media is that it's a cost effective way to reinforce your brand, generate leads, increase website traffic and engage customers with news about how your business can help them.