Of the 7.8 billion people on the planet, 5.3 billion are mobile phone users and 4.3 billon use their phones to access social media every single day, writes Louise McDonnell (pictured). 

Practically every waking moment of the day is an opportunity to engage a customer or potential customers.  

Social selling has tremendous proven potential to increase revenue.  However, having a social media presence alone does not ensure success. Some SMEs in particular are making such a bad job of their content on social platforms, they actually risk alienating more customers than they gain.

Reports about businesses whose videos have gone viral, reaching millions of customers, can leave some people feeling disillusioned when they don’t find immediate success.   This can result in businesses having a stop start approach to social media. 

They start with high hopes, don’t get the results they anticipated, and then stop.  However, it’s completely okay to have social media content (posts) that reach just a few hundred or a few thousand people.  Keep going!

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The groundwork you do initially pays dividends in the future.  It can take a few months to gain traction and start seeing results in the form of sales and leads.  If businesses realign their expectations and keep showing up on social, consistently, they are more likely to succeed.

Businesses that spend time every week planning their social media content will not only save time and money, but they are also more likely to create better quality social media content that is aligned to business goals. 

You cannot run a business on hope.   While frequent posting on a variety of platforms will help maximise organic reach (non-paid for), essentially the number of people that see your posts, I strongly recommend not depending on it.  

The best way businesses get results, fast, is to pay to direct their most strategic content at the most appropriate audiences.  Rather than seeing paid advertising as a cost, it should be seen as an investment.  Tracking the performance of ads with pixels and other tracking codes is essential to establishing the return on ad spend. 

Handy Hacks for Starters

• Share personal stories, occasionally, to put a human face to your business. 

• Create educational posts based on the most common questions your customers ask you.  This is a great way to build trust and warm up cold prospects.

• Post about failure as well as success; connect on ‘what not to do’ sometimes, as we learn as much from failure and can relate to not always getting it right.

• Remix and update old content sometimes, especially popular posts – musicians do it with tracks all the time!

• Short surveys and open-ended questions can start engagement, especially where replies are incentivised.

• Product recommendations, sneak peeks and gift guides for special occasions are fine, especially with stylish images.

• Fast moving short form video was very popular in 2021, and this trend will continue into 2022. Consider tutorials, advice or a clip showing how your product is made.

+ Louise McDonnell is author of ‘2022 Social Media Planner & Guide’. See www.louisemcdonnell.com