How To Begin To Make The Most of Instagram and Social Media For Your Small Business

     If you’re someone who runs a small business or are looking to start one and you would like to expand your brand online, I will give you a how-to on how to expand the reach of your potential consumers of your product or service. This how-to will give you the most important things you need when running an online business. 

    These tips do not guarantee an increase in revenue or sales, but they do give you a greater chance at increasing your business’s exposure to potential clients/consumers. 

Step 1: Fulfill a need

 

The most successful businesses are linked to a person’s love or passion for something and finding a way to give that product/service to the world. The work you love is never work. Building your business from a passion allows you to fully express yourself creatively through your craft, and through your brand. 

The first thing that you need to do when starting your business is to find a need that you fill. When you’re focused on the product over your market first you won’t know who to sell to. However, if you find the market of people that have a need, you can give them solutions. Social media makes it easy for you to find a target market and boost you potential clients or buyers.  Let’s say you plan to run a t shirt business. If you’re in an area where there are few shopping centers or they are quite a distance away leaving few options for new clothing, this is a perfect opportunity for your business to flourish. You have found a need in your community and have begun to execute plans of fulfilling that need. 

 

Step 2: Make it marketable and sellable

 

Find something that you are capable of selling and understand the type of consumer you are targeting. This is important in building the groundwork for what your business has to offer to consumers. 

When you are deciding your pricing, you don’t want to under or overcharge for what you’re offering however, when you are selling your work, talent, or idea you shouldn’t worry about overcharging. When your potential customers sees that your product or service fulfills their need, and they feel that you’re confident in the value of what you have to offer, then you won’t have to worry about if your product may be overpriced. 

 

Step 3: Create a page for your brand

 

Setting up a social media page is virtually simple. Simply select a social media platform of your choice and create a profile that makes your brand easy to find and encapsulates the desired focal point of what you offer as a business. There is a plethora of social media platforms to choose from and you’re not restricted to any. 

 

Here are some of the biggest platforms for social media right now:

 

-       Instagram is very beneficial for product-based businesses because you can make your page a portfolio of your released and upcoming products and keep your followers engaged through meaningful and entertaining content. Instagram has a feed and story feature. This allows for your business to circulate across the internet and generates more exposure for your business. Instagram has business features that let you change your profile from a regular Instagram account to a business account. 

 

-       TikTok, is a newer platform rising in popularity due to the number of users the platform has on it currently. The app focuses mainly on its users creating and recreating entertaining videos that their followers can view and share also generating more exposure for your business. 

 

-       Facebook is the top platform for promoting your business or brand. The number of features, that Facebook offers its users specifically for growing their business, makes it one of the top platforms to promote on. Facebook shares similar features as Instagram does. As of recently Facebook can be linked and intertwined with Instagram.  

 

Step 4: Create a campaign and follow it 

           Once you have your product and your page created, you want to begin creating content that promotes other users to connect with your page and what you have to offer. Connecting with users on these platform and with people you know is a great way to build a strong social connection for your brand, meaning that people will begin to register that your brand is attached to you, it is yours. Connecting with your followers creates a real connection even though it is virtual. This can be anything from commenting and liking the posts of others, to simply following and messaging users thanking them for following back and informing them of your product.  

Regarding your content, you want to create a plan of how and what you’re going to post and find new ways to improve it with each post. The most important part about content creating is being consistent with it. Create content that is both meaningful and relatable to your target audience. This will increase the likelihood of your followers to engage and be inclined to purchase your product and stay connected with your page. 

If the application has a story feature, utilize this feature consistently with a variety of meaningful and relatable content involving your product. This will keep your followers engaged on a consistent basis and brings new people to your page when they see that you make story posts. 

 

When beginning to follow accounts, follow those who share common interest in the realm of what you’re offering as a business. Meaning, that you want to follow and engage with users who follow accounts who your business may be modeled after. If you own a skateboard business, don’t just follow skaters, follow accounts who engage with popular skaters and pages who promote those popular skaters. Connect with accounts who follow the larger accounts that relate or coincide with the direction you want to take your brand. 

 

You also want to follow people who are experts in the field you are starting in; people who know what they are talking about and know what they are doing when it comes to them explaining what they do and how they do what they do. Influencers, entrepreneurs, some artists and social media marketing professionals are the best people to follow to see how to maneuver your own page and how they interact with their following consistently. 

 

Step 5: Be consistent and continue to enhance your ideas

 

Once you have your page and product created, you have an idea of the content you will be posting and you understand the niche you want to go for, the last and most important step is to be consistent; consistent with putting out content for your feed and stories, connecting with new people and continuing to engage with your current followers. The thing that will set your business page from others is your consistency, authenticity, and originality. 

 

Extra Tip: 

 

Social media isn’t the end all be all for your business or brand, but it serves as an online business card for the world to see. In person marketing and branding are also very crucial to the increase in exposure of your brand/business. Everything is trial and error and you will have to take these facts with a grain of salt because there is no guarantee of your business booming strictly from these tips, but with consistency there is a certain guarantee that you will start to see a change in your business over time. Social media enhances and evolves with time and so will your brand. Remember to stay grounded in who you are as a person and the process will unfold for you in you being true to yourself.