8 Easy Ways to Use Social Media to Market Your Small Business

Want to use social media to market your small business, but struggling to gain traction?

Wondering how to jumpstart your efforts, but not sure where to begin?

It can be confusing.

In fact, only 53% of small businesses say they actively use social media. The rest? They claim they don’t have the bandwidth, resources, time, money or energy.

And I get it. As a small business, running the day to day can leave you feeling stretched thin.

Add to that the overwhelm of marketing your business and you have the makings of a meltdown.

But here’s the upside. Using social media in your small business marketing isn’t rocket science. In fact, it’s pretty simple once you know a few insider secrets.

That’s where my conversation with one of the top social media authorities comes in.

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Peg Fitzpatrick. Peg is the co-author of Art of Social Media and works daily with Guy Kawasaki. Between her booming business and Guy’s, she manages a whopping 13 million followers.

Holy wow, right? Peg knows her stuff and she came ready to share her top tips.

If you’re eager to use social media to market your small business, read on and don’t forget tograb a copy of the Infographic at the end!

Only 53% of #smallbusiness owners use social media. Is that you? Here's how to get started...today!

How to Use Social Media to Market Your Small Business

  1. Build a Credible Reputation

Building a credible presence for your business on social media isn’t as complicated as it sounds.

Want to know why?

Because you don’t have to have a huge following to do it!

As a local business, instead of connecting with a lot of people — you just need to connect with the RIGHT people.

You can begin this process by building brand awareness. The best way to do this is to create an online presence that’s a perfect representation of who you are both online and offline.

Start by translating your brand through visual marketing. From your logo to your website, blog and social media graphics – you need to design a look and feel that matches your persona.

Find someone who can help create graphics that match that essence. Create captivating and professional visuals that represent you and your business.

There are so many people who can help you with this process — and you’ll be able to find someone regardless of what your budget is.

Or, if you have more time than money — you can choose from a myriad of tools (many of them free) and learn how to do it yourself.

If you do decide to tackle these graphics yourself, our ebook can teach you how to go about it. You can grab that at How to Create Visual Content for Maximum Social Media Impact.

Peg’s tip is to learn from the big brands!

Get inspiration from big marketing campaigns like ones from HubSpot and spin that around for your own business in a way that’s affordable.

  2. Attract Potential Clients

During our conversation, Peg told the story of her hairdresser, Betsy. Betsy owns B & B Style Salon in New Hampshire.

Betsy wanted to learn how to use social media for her small business — and Peg suggested that she use Facebook and Instagram to attract potential new clients.

If you’d like to do this for your local business also, the first step is to make sure the geotagging on your Facebook Business Page is setup properly.

You want people to be able to check-in when they’re at your business. Each time someone does that, it’s free advertising for you since all their friends will see their check-in.

The average Facebook user has 100 friends (and most are local) — so think of each check-in as advertising to 100 new potential clients!

Plus, that type of post is better advertising than a boosted post since it’s a check-in from a real customer (not a boosted post or ad).

Want even more check-ins? Offer special incentives for people to check-in at your business.

For example, in Betsy’s case, she posted a small sign that says those who check-in get $5 off their next haircut. You can give any bonus you’d like!

Peg’s advice…

Get into the hands of your customers. This means get on their phones!

Betsy also wanted to do a girl’s night out to promote herself as a hairdresser in her small town.

She updated her Facebook cover photo — plus she posted a Facebook post and an Instagram post.

By doing those 3 things, with zero budget, she was able to fill her event!

This is a great example of how a small business owner was able to attract the right customers.

Instead of trying to cast a wide net and attracting a bunch of people who may or may not be interested in her services, she focused on connecting with her target market.

The takeaway — even small changes can make a huge impact on your social media marketing!

  3. Connect With Like-Minded Business Professionals

In the social media world, relationships are everything.

Whether you’re on LinkedIn building your professional network or responding to your tweets — it’s important to set aside some time to connect with like-minded professionals.

As a small business owner, you’re probably cringing at the thought of spending valuable time engaging with peers on social media.

No worries!

Peg has some great advice for how to make it work.

She suggests you dedicate 1 chunk of time each week to work on your content for the following week (she does this every Sunday). This means find or create the content you want and schedule it.

Why does this help you?

Now that your content is setup for the whole week — you can pop onto social media 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night to respond to comments, answer questions and reach out to like-minded business professionals.

This will allow you to make those important connections since you’ll be focused on people during the time you’re online!

  4. Diversify Your Marketing Efforts

We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Just like with your offline marketing, you should definitely diversify your online marketing efforts.

Does this mean you should build a presence on every social media site?

Absolutely not.

What this means is that you should become laser-focused about who your target audience is.

Instead of focusing on the demographic of the customers you HAVE — consider focusing on the customers you WANT.

That information will tell you which social networks you should be spending time on.

As you learn more about how to use social media to market your small business, the social sites you should be on will become almost obvious to you.

If you don’t have a clear understanding about which social networks to be on, Peg recommends you start with a presence on this handful of sites.

Top Social Networks Your Small Business Should Use

• Facebook (be sure to setup the geo-targeting)
• Instagram (excellent for small business)
• LinkedIn (like an international Rotary Club!)
• Twitter (listening to the conversations on Twitter will provide valuable insight)

Once you decide which social networks you’ll use — be sure to cross promote that content in your other online marketing and PR pieces also!

By diversifying your online marketing, you’ll expand the reach of your business further than you can even imagine.

  5. Repurpose Top Content

As you learn how to use social media in your small business — you’re very quickly going to see how time consuming it is to create new content.

For that reason, Peg suggests that you become a repurposing master!!

I make this a daily habit. Repurposing content is a brilliant way to put new forms of content out there without recreating the wheel.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you send a tweet about something that you and your audience are passionate about.

Did you know you can repurpose that tweet into at least 13 other pieces of content?

Yep, you can!

Read 13 Ways to Repurpose a Single Tweet to learn more about how to do this.

Want to extend the shelf life of your content? Repurpose in an updated format!

Have you ever seen someone on social media who seems to come up with new, original content over and over and over? You start to wonder if that person ever sleeps, right?

That is someone who knows how to repurpose content. You can be that person too!

Peg has one word of caution here…

Don’t confuse repurposing content with duplicating your posts on every social network.

If you do that — people won’t have a reason to follow you everywhere because they’ll see the exact same content from you everywhere.

Instead, learn the language of each platform.

Give people a reason to follow you everywhere! Don’t duplicate your content exactly.

Look at each piece of content in a different way for each social platform.

For example, pull a quote out of an evergreen blog post you tweeted and create a quote graphic to post on Instagram.

Or take that helpful tip you gave someone on Facebook and use it to create a 2-minute tutorial on Facebook Live Video or scope it. You can even embed that video in a blog post.

Or take your notes from a recent presentation and create an infographic with that info. The options for repurposing are endless!

To learn more, you can click over to this post by Peg about how to repurpose your content.

  6. Make Your Time and Money Count

As a small business owner — you know time IS money.

We’ve all had those days when we get on Facebook to work, but then we see a post from a friend… and suddenly 2 hours goes by. Sound familiar?

If you want to use social media for your small business in the most efficient way possible, it’s important to FOCUS each time you log onto social media.

Sure, there’s time for posting those fun pictures and goofing off — but when it’s during your workday, be sure to focus on your goals!

If you find yourself getting off track, remind yourself why you’re on social media in the first place.

Be accountable…to yourself.

When it comes to money — you can make an impact with Facebook Ads with only a few dollars (which is very do-able for small business).

You can stay within budget and still make it work for you!

  7. Drive Traffic to Your Website/Blog

Your website/blog is the foundation of all your online marketing efforts.

It’s the place where your potential customers will go when they’re deciding whether or not to do business with you.

It’s what people will remember when they think of your business.

You can read 15 Ways to Get Leads on Social Media (Marketer’s Guide) to get an understanding about how to drive traffic back to your website/blog effectively.

The best advice — do your research!

If you want to drive a significant amount of traffic back to your website/blog, you can’t base your strategy on guesswork.

You can read more about this here: Top Ways to Manage Social Media (and Avoid Burnout).

  8. Use the Right Tools

As a small business owner — the right tools can be your best friends.

They’ll help you get organized and create a method to the madness.

Using the right tools will save you time, money and a whole lot of frustration.

Some tools that Peg uses are:

• Trello
• Evernote
• Post Planner
• Sprout Social
• Relay
• Canva

You can also click over to 13 Must-Have Marketing Tools for Engaging Facebook Images to find even more.

Conclusion

If there’s one theme in Peg’s tips — it’s that small changes can make a huge impact on the success of your social media marketing.

You don’t need a huge following or social media presence on every site.

You just need to put some data, strategy and tools behind your efforts.

Soon you’ll see that you can use social media in your small business without feeling overwhelmed or breaking the bank.

The infographic below summarizes these tips. I recommend you print it and keep it handy as a reminder that you can do this!

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5 Things Small Business Owners Should Know About SEO Friendly Web Design

As a small business owner getting ready to build your first website or redesign your existing one, you might wonder what you should be considering in terms of making your web design search engine friendly.

There are lots of things to take into account, but here are the five key things that you should know about SEO friendly web design and how it can benefit your visitors, too!

1. It Needs to be Responsive

For small businesses, especially local ones, having great rankings in mobile search is incredibly important. Why? For starters, 50% of consumers who perform a local search on mobile devices visit a store within a day of their search. What’s even more exciting is that 78% of mobile searches for local business lead to offline purchases.

If you want to do well in mobile search results, you will want to have a mobile-friendly design. Responsive design is the easiest to aim for because it offers a similar user experience to desktop visitors, tablet visitors, and smart phone visitors.

With responsive design, you don’t have to create multiple pages for different screen sizes. Instead, you create your website pages as you would normally, and the responsive theme or template will make sure it reshapes itself to fit on any screen size.

As far as platform goes, you can choose to run your website with static HTML template files with responsive design or content management systems with responsive themes. WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems that allows you to create a static website, blog, e-commerce store, forum, or anything else you want to run.

WordPress has also been widely respected as the best platform for SEO, as noted by Google’s former representative Matt Cutts. Combined with a responsive theme and an SEO plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast (which SEJ uses), it is a surefire winner for search.

2. The Important Parts Need to be in the Text

While search engines are able to crawl more types of media, text has always been the best option for search optimization. This is why everyone is talking about content marketing – you need written content for every page of your website.

Your goal should be to include text on every page of your website. Even a small amount of text, such as a 150-word product description, is better than none. If you post videos or audio, include a text-based transcription on the same page.

Also, don’t forget the text needed for each page’s SEO title (50 – 60 characters) and meta description (150 – 160 characters). Both of these elements should be unique and should include main keyword phrases the page is to be optimized for.

A common mistake many local businesses make on their website is including important information in images rather than text. Google Webmaster Guidelinesspecifically states to “Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.”

This tip is especially important for local businesses that put their address and phone number in header or footer images. Either take them out of the images or include a text version of them elsewhere on your website. In addition to being beneficial for search crawlers, it is helpful to visitors on mobile who want to click-through and call or copy and paste your address for directions.

And last, but not least, get some great text in your URLs. Make sure your website is set to show yourdomain.com/your-page-name-with-keywords versus yourdomain.com/p=?122. This helps boost the keyword optimization for your page and helps visitors know what content is going to be on the page when they see the link without additional reference.

3. You Must Optimize Your Images

When you do use images, you can optimize them with text for better search visibility. This not only allows you to further optimize your product page for a specific keyword phrase, but it gives your photo the chance to appear in Google image search results.

There are a few ways to optimize your images with text. First, you can rename your image’s filename to include specific keywords. For example, instead of uploading a picture on an air conditioning repair service page as IMAGE0001.jpg, change it to phoenix-air-conditioning-repair-services.jpg. This puts your page’s main keywords in the filename of the image.

Next, use all of the attributes HTML has to offer for inserting an image on the page. Continuing with the same example, you would have the following.

In the above HTML code, you have alt text, which will be shown if the image cannot be loaded on the page or if the visitor is using a screen reader. The title text will be shown when someone hovers over the image.

Optionally, create a caption directly beneath your image that explains what it is. This should be one short phrase or sentence that shows how the image is relevant to the page, such as Bob’s AC & Heating offers affordable air conditioning repair services in Phoenix and surrounding areas.

4. You Need a Clear, Text-Based Navigation Structure

Another rule straight from Google Webmaster Guidelines is to ” Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.”

Think of your website’s organization and plan your link structure accordingly. Depending on the number of pages your website has, this could be as simple as creating a main navigation bar linking to the main five pages on your website. Or it could be as complicated as coming up with categories, subcategories, and the pages within each.

For user experience purposes, you should not go more than three levels deep with your links. Take Amazon, for instance. You already see top products when you click into a main category page, with the option to further limit the results by subcategories.

In other words, don’t be the website that makes visitors go from the home page to a category page, then a subcategory, and then another subcategory before getting to what they want.

In addition to clear navigation for your users, you should create simple text links in the footer of your website for the main pages on your website. This ensures that search crawlers (and visitors) can’t miss them.

5. Don’t Forget to Redirect

If you are redesigning a new version of your website, make sure you don’t lose any of your old pages. For example, you might have a page on your old website with the URL yourdomain.com/your-page, and the new page ended up with the URL of yourdomain.com/your-new-page.

Once you delete the old page, people who visit that page will receive a 404 error, telling them the page no longer exists. If the old page ranked well in search for a keyword, and search crawlers find the page no longer exists, the old page will ultimately be removed from search results. Hence, any referral or organic search traffic you were receiving to that page will be lost, unless you redirect the old page to the new one.

Use 301 redirects to tell search engines that the old page URL (yourdomain.com/your-page) is now the new page URL (yourdomain.com/your-new-page). This will ensure you keep the traffic and SEO value for your page. Any links to your old pages will count towards your new pages when you use 301 redirects, which will help you maintain the domain authority you have built through your SEO efforts.

If you use WordPress, you can use a simple plugin called Redirection to create these redirects within your WordPress dashboard. Otherwise, you may need to contact your web hosting company or web designer to have them create a .htaccess file on your web server. The format would look like this:

redirect 301 /your-page /your-new-page

To make sure you have redirected the pages you get traffic to from the old URL to the new one, set your website up on Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools). It will tell you in the Crawl Errors report which links on your website result in a Not Found (404) error. These should be redirected to new links with similar content.

The same thing goes for updating the permalinks on your website. If you started with ugly permalinks (yourdomain.com/p=?122) and you want to update to keyword optimized ones (yourdomain.com/your-page-name-with-keywords), then you will need to redirect all of the old URLs to the new ones.

Another thing you can do as a backup for any links you may forget to redirect is a customized 404 page. WordPress users can use the 404 page plugin to create a customized page that visitors to their website will go to if a page on their website is not found or redirected properly.

This page should apologize to visitors for the content they were looking for not being found, and then direct them to the top alternative pages on the website instead. For example, you could include links to your homepage, main product page, main service page, contact information page, about page, support page, or blog.

In Conclusion

As you can see, SEO friendly web design isn’t just about search engines. Making your website search engine friendly will also make it visitor friendly, from the design to the functionality. Be sure to look at the various ways you can update your small business website in order to make it friendly for everyone, search engines and visitors alike.

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Is Social Media Worth it for Small Businesses?

A survey released by Manta shows that nearly 50% of businesses have increased their time on social media channels in the last year, according to Michael Fertik at Forbes. Another 55% of businesses surveyed are actively using social media marketing for lead generation and customer engagement. 

Yet, 60% of small businesses reported no return on investment for their social media marketing.

That may seem dire, but it does mean that 40% of small businesses are seeing some ROI. What are they doing differently?

“I do think a defined digital presence—coupled with realistic expectations—can be a source of significant support for most, assuming a thoughtful approach is taken,” writes Fertik. “Too often, however, it’s easy to make some rookie mistakes.”

The mistakes? The first big one is joining every social media network without considering where your customers are. Spending your resources on Pinterest when you are an auto mechanic may not serve your best interest. There are no barriers to entry to social media networks, so a lot of business join all of them without considering the significant time and effort, and yes, even money, that will be necessary to mounting an effective social media campaign. Go where your customers are and spend your resources there.

“It’s much better to slow down and look at the data before you invest too much in one channel or spread yourself across too many,” writes Fertik. “What type of customer is purchasing your products?  What social channels do they frequent?  What kind of content gets shared, liked or retweeted?  If the data say that your average customer is a city-dwelling mother in her early 40s who likes Facebook, then there is no reason to spend your time and energy on Twitter, at least initially.”

Another rookie mistake is not publishing enough. Or rather, more common, publishing a lot at first and then losing steam. Come up with a schedule that it actually something you can fit into your work time. If that’s just one post a week, then go with that.

Social media is not dissimilar to a hungry baby—it requires feeding on a very regular basis,” writes Fertik. “Don’t set a rhythm you can’t maintain.  It’s a one-way ratchet; you can always turn it up but it’s hard to back off without appearing ungraceful.”

As for what kind of content you should create, first ask yourself: What kind of content catches your attention? What content has value to you? Then ask yourself what kind of content will have value to your customers. What can you teach? What can you do to entertain? Are you funny? (If you are funny, go with that. People respond very well to humor.)

Spend a little time experimenting on social media. Put up a post that tells a story. Then put up a post that asks a question. See which does better with your audience. Offer a prize. Post a picture. Which post gets more engagement? This is how you refine your social media strategy: Trial and error.

It’s also really important to have specific goals for your social media marketing. “The first step in making social media work is to define your goals, and determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs),” writes Troy Frink for Tentacle Inboud. “Do you want to get hundreds of page likes, or do you want to drive traffic to your website and generate leads? Deciding on your goals should center around the actions that actually help your business grow. You want to generate revenue, so how do you measure that definitively on your website?”

Once you’ve established your goals and your putting out regular content, work to connect with your online community. “Small businesses should identify strong social influencers—bloggers that your customers read, individuals with robust followers—and start engaging with them,” writes Fertik. “Follow them on their social channels to spark a return follow. Share their content. Comment thoughtfully, respectfully and without self-promotion on posts multiple times a week.” 

Carefully and thoughtfully engaging with other people who share your concerns online will grow your community, which will in turn give your content greater reach.

Frink points out a cool example of using real-time social conversations to connect with customers on Twitter. Heather Physioc was running a social media campaign on Twitter for a cosmetology education website.

“To achieve real-time social media success, she created the following Boolean query in TweetDeck: cosmetology OR ‘beauty school’ AND think OR thinking OR want OR wanting OR consider OR considering. Instantly, the firehose of tweets was narrowed down to individuals who were expressing real intent and desire to attend beauty school,” writes Frink. “This allowed her to focus her limited time only on the people most likely to convert to student leads. She then reached out directly to each of these individuals to offer personal help finding schools near them, and answer all their questions about cosmetology education and careers. Also, when she sent links to content on the brand’s website, she included tracking parameters to be able to measure the success of these campaigns and continually hone them.”

Expect a little bit of negative response to your social media. Every business will get some. It is actually a sign that your social media messaging has some legs if it reaches someone who wants to air a grievance. Use a complaint to improve your messaging. (Or even your product or service.) Respond to criticism with what Fertik calls “prompt courteousness and pleasant professionalism.”

At it’s best, social media marketing can increase your small businesses visibility, give you a bigger reach and engage your current and future customers. Get in the game. 

To view the original article Click Here

12 Social Media Marketing Trends for Small Business

Curious about how other small businesses are using social media to get more sales?

Wondering which platforms work best for small businesses?

Social Media Examiner’s seventh annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report, a survey of 3,720 marketers, business owners and solopreneurs from the U.S. and overseas, reveals some trends gaining momentum, as well as some surprising stalls.

Discover twelve social media marketing trends for small businesses.

The majority of the study’s participants were either small business owners or marketers working for small businesses. Specifically:

• Thirty-seven percent of the survey’s respondents were involved with businesses involving 2 to 10 people
• Twenty-three percent were solopreneurs
• Eighty-two percent were involved with businesses having 100 employees or fewer

Get ideas from their experiences and future plans to help you shape your social marketing strategy when you download the report.

Social media beginners and experienced users both will find helpful information here about:

• Whether social media is working for small businesses
• How much time other small businesses spend on social media marketing
• What types of content small businesses use
• Where small business owners and their marketing staff buy the most ads

#1: Social Media Critical for Small Business

First, 96% of survey participants use social media marketing, and 92% of those agree or strongly agree with the phrase, “Social media marketing is important for my business.” Keep in mind that participants self-selected from a pool of over 300,000, and therefore are probably more interested in social media marketing than people who did not respond.

Nearly all survey participants use social media and view it as important for their business or company.

#2: Facebook Dominates Small Business Social Media Marketing

The majority of respondents carry out social media marketing on Facebook. The chart below shows that 93% use Facebook, ahead of Twitter at 79%. In the coming year, 62% of respondents plan to increase their use of Facebook for marketing purposes. Sixty-six percent will increase Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn activity.

Ninety-three percent of survey respondents indicated using Facebook for social media marketing.

Twitter is gaining on Facebook, however, and with its new advertising opportunities, will be an interesting property to watch over the next year or so. It’s much the same story forInstagram and Pinterest, both of which doubled their traffic from 2014 to 2015.

YouTube is more commonly used by larger businesses. Specifically, 71% of businesses with 100+ employees use YouTube, compared to 38% of the self-employed.

#3: B2B Small Businesses Use Social Differently Than B2C

Breaking down Social Media Marketing Industry Report averages is useful. B2B respondents for this survey report that LinkedIn is their number-one choice for social networking.

Those in the B2B space give LinkedIn the majority of their attention, but use Facebook and Twitter too, at respectable rates.

B2C companies, on the other hand, go to Facebook first and in larger numbers. This makes sense because B2B businesses are looking for the marketing people, facilities managers, buyers and others who rely on LinkedIn for industry connections and news. Facebook is comprised of nearly every consumer on the planet.

Seventy-one percent of B2B marketers want to learn more about LinkedIn this year. This said, just 18% of B2B marketers are using LinkedIn ads. These same marketers are using Facebook ads at a rate of 75%.

B2C companies can’t resist the huge potential consumer pool on Facebook.

#4: Most Small Business Marketers Don’t Know if Facebook Efforts Are Working

Despite the fact that 92% of small businesses agree that social media is important for their business AND that the majority use Facebook for their social media marketing, most also report that they don’t know whether their Facebook outreach is “working.”

“Working” may mean building brand awareness and relationships with customers. It could also mean bringing in more leads and sales. The bottom line is that the majority of small businesses either don’t know if Facebook achieves the goals they’ve set or it does NOT achieve those goals. It could also mean they have no goals or they haven’t bothered to measure their progress toward goals. Shockingly, despite the high numbers using Facebook, just one in three self-employed respondents characterize Facebook efforts as “effective.”

Thirty-five percent of marketers have no idea whether their Facebook efforts are effective.

Facebook’s domination of social media marketing despite the fact that most marketers are uncertain of its impact should concern small businesses. Without the benefit of a marketing team creating a strategy complete with goals and measurement, small businesses have a harder time evaluating marketing efforts. They may have simply embraced the notion pushed by marketing agencies and media that Facebook is THE place to be, an inexpensive way to market to a targeted audience. As a relatively new marketing platform with plenty of buzz, Facebook’s hype could be clouding its true potential for small business.

On the other hand, 44% of survey respondents have been using social media for two years or less. That short time frame makes the lack of clarity understandable. Most marketing efforts take a year or more to begin returning results. Small businesses may not be giving their social media efforts a chance.

#5: Small Businesses Plan to Expand Facebook Activities This Year

The Social Media Marketing Industry Report also found that, again, despite the cloudiness surrounding Facebook’s effectiveness, 62% plan to increase activities on it.

Sixty-eight percent of survey participants indicated they want to learn more about using Facebook for marketing. You’ll see below, too, that 53% plan to increase their ad spend on Facebook this year.

Social media beginners shouldn’t be concerned that they’ve missed the chance to get a foothold for their business on Facebook. Although Facebook has existed since 2006, many small businesses are still figuring out how to use all of its features to grow their customer base, engagement and more.

#6: Most Small Businesses Spend 6 Hours or More Weekly on Social Media

Because of the crush of responsibilities they have, small business owners worry about the time it takes to keep an audience engaged on social channels. Tools like Hootsuite and Post Planner cut down on time spent, but social media marketing still requires significant time. These figures give small business owners and marketers a clear idea of the time competitors are investing.

Thirty-three percent of study respondents report that they devote 1 to 5 hours weekly to social media marketing; however, a robust 25% spend 6 to 10 hours each week.

One in three respondents spend 5 hours or less on social media, but 63% spend more than that.

As shown in the chart below, solopreneurs and businesses with 2 to 10 people fall mostly in the 1 to 5 or 6 to 10 hours per week category. Still, 19% of marketers devote more than 20 people-hours weekly to social media.

Most small businesses spend 6 hours per week or more on social media activities, but a significant amount also spend 11 to 20 hours per week.

#7: Small Businesses Identify Increased Exposure as Social’s Top Benefit

Even though “increased exposure” is more difficult to measure than a metric like traffic or bounce rate, marketers and small business owners rank it the number-one benefit of marketing on social media.

Whether through social channel engagement, referral source data from Google Analytics or customers sharing in person or by phone how they found the business on social media, business owners and marketers believe social media gets them in front of more and wider audiences.

Small business owners and marketers put increased exposure via social as the top benefit.

#8: Increased Traffic to Website Is Number-Two Benefit of Social Marketing

The chart above indicates that 77% of the survey’s nearly 4,000 respondents have appreciated the traffic that comes to their sites via social referral (clicking from Facebook or LinkedIn to the website for a blog post or landing page offer). Google Analytics and other tools make getting this data possible, even easy.

More exciting, the longer small businesses use social marketing, the more frequently they report increased traffic.

With each year that business uses social media, the likelihood increases that they agree or strongly agree that social drives traffic to the website.

Like any marketing tactic, social media requires time before results emerge. Agreement with the statement that social brought additional traffic to respondents’ websites increased year after year, from 61% of those using it less than 1 year to 82% calling it effective after 5 years.

#9: Social Media Cuts Marketing Expenses for Small Businesses

Early on, social media developed the reputation of reaching audiences at a low price. Before 2014, Facebook was allowing companies to reach their audiences for free. That smart move brought lots of marketers to the channel. The prospect of a free marketing channel with a potential reach of one billion people proved irresistible. The perception that Facebook promoted offers online for little to no money grew.

With lots of companies hooked, however, Facebook started charging for marketing activities in spring 2014. With costs rising, returns cannot be as robust. And yet this year’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report found that 51% of businesses with 10 or fewer employees who also spend 6 hours or more on social media marketing still believe that it reduces overall marketing expenses. Enterprise-level companies with 1,000 employees, on the other hand, tend to hire staff to carry out social media. With additional labor, it’s not surprising that just 59% of large companies did not find cost savings through social media.

The majority of marketers spending 6 or more hours per week promoting through Facebook for 2 to 3 years or more agrees or strongly agrees that social media marketing reduced marketing expenses.

#10: Small Business Direct Social Sales Rise Over Time

The goal of all marketing tactics eventually is increased leads and sales. As mentioned above, social media has more challenges than search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads when demonstrating direct sales.

More than half of marketers who have been using social media for more than 2 years report their channels helped them improve sales. Seventy percent of those with a 5-year social media marketing investment report it helps improve sales.

70% of participants using social media for more than 5 years agree that the platform drives sales.

A recent Social Media Examiner research article brings attention to two important studies that may indicate social sales rising overall as well. Internet Retailer’s “2015 Social Media 500″ reviewed 500 leading merchants’ use of social media. In 2014 social commerce sales of just those 500 companies rose to $3.3 billion from $2.62 billion in 2013, an increase of 25%.

Leading statistics provider Statista also predicts a leap in worldwide social sales from 2014 to 2015. Where sales originating from social channels amounted to $20 billion in 2014, Statista sees it hitting $30 billion by year-end 2015. This 50% increase will get the attention of marketers and small businesses.

Finally, a January 2015 Shareaholic study of 300,000 websites revealed that as of Q4 2014, 31.24% of all traffic came from social media. These findings are all promising for social selling.

#11: Facebook Dominates Social Media Paid Ads

The low cost associated with social media ads is just one aspect that appeals to small businesses. The ability to target ads to a narrow geographic (down to the zip code) and demographic market provides another.

Marketers use Facebook ads twice as much as Google ads.

The success of Facebook’s paid ads has propelled its stock price from $20 per share in 2012 to $80 per share in May 2015. LinkedIn and Twitter ads have met with some success, prompting our survey respondents to consider them seriously in the coming year. Other social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and others have ad opportunities in development. The potential of ads on these latter platforms remains untested, which in large part may be keeping advertisers at bay at this point.

Moreover, 53% of our respondents indicated they would be increasing their use of Facebook ads in the future. Google and Twitter should have a bump as well with 38% and 31% of respondents planning to increase spending on these channels. Other channels have a more difficult road ahead as the vast majority of respondents indicated they have no plans to utilize them for ads in the coming year. Get the report to see just how unpopular LinkedIn ads are compared to Foursquare. It isn’t pretty. The report’s 12 charts indicating how marketers plan on increasing and decreasing advertising activity can help you position your business.

The reluctance to spend on smaller channels could be viewed another way, however. Less ad crowding on a channel at this point could mean less competition for attention to individual ads. In our recent discussion of Pinterest, we shared that Forrester Research predictsPinterest could surge in 2016, even though the traffic it sends to websites pales in comparison to Facebook’s referrals at this time. That platform has emerged as an online shopping list for consumers, as most use it to save ideas of what they want to buy. While Pinterest’s traffic referral numbers lagged behind Facebook’s by a large margin, users there have high buying intent. They are SHOPPERS.

The lack of interest in smaller channels could also reflect that marketers simply haven’t learned enough about these platforms. Aggressive marketers will undoubtedly experiment with the various channels to determine where the value exists for their brands.

#12: Types of Social Media Content

Once a small business determines which channel drives the most valuable (and intentional) traffic, the next step is to provide the content to engage that traffic.

Blogging and visual assets nearly tied at 70% and 71% respectively. The self-employed depend on blogging, with 79% of that faction reporting they blog. At this time, just 10% of marketers use podcasting, but some speculate that podcasting could be an opportunity. Requiring higher budgets and more technology, video content finishes third.

While marketers use visual content like photos and collages most often, they report blog posts are more important to their success.

Despite the easy digestibility of video and visuals, marketers pinpointed blogging as their most important type of content. Consumers now research their purchases thoroughly before buying, and the blog most likely provides more extensive information than the quick image or 1-minute teaser video.

Blogging not only provides the content behind social outreach, its search engine optimization features bring in more leads and boost search engine ranking.

Overall

Small businesses must invest every marketing dollar wisely, and yet taking risks on less-crowded platforms can pay off, too. When every step you take is informed by research, your chances for success (and your confidence) rise. Get your free copy of the 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social to Grow Their Business; 53 pages of insights from marketers and small business owners just like you.

If you’d liked to see the concepts outlined here in action, business executive-turned-landscaper Jeff Korhan has a great deal to share about how small businesses can build social relationships with content. This podcast builds a great story around the sometimes daunting facts and figures that surveys always involve.

How is your small business handling its social media marketing? Are your experiences similar to those shared by the survey participants? Have you had great success on a platform we missed? Leave your comments and questions below.

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