Getting Started on Social Media (video)

By Joshua Botello

Social media marketing has become the ubiquitous first step for business owners to take in digital marketing. It’s easy to start, free and most already know how to use the platforms. However, new business owners who are not well versed in marketing fundamentals forget the basic tenets of marketing for millions of users on each platform. These business owners think all users are potential customers and if they cast a wide net they will hopefully capture some of that business for themselves. In this article, we’ll cover 5 steps to getting started social media and how you can expand your business with digital marketing.

Step 1# Know Your Customer

One of the first basic tenets of marketing is to “know your customer”. If you have been in business for any length of time, you should know who your customers are. You may know them personally or you may be familiar enough with them because they buy often. Why does this matter? Well, many business owners are distracted by the insane amount of users on each of the social platforms like these:

• Facebook: 2.5 Billion Monthly Active Users
• Twitter: 330 Million Monthly Active Users
• Instagram: 1 Billion Monthly Active Users
• Linkedin: 310 Million Monthly Active Users
• Pinterest: 335 Million Monthly Active Users
• SnapChat: 360 Million Monthly Active Users
• TikTok: 800 million Monthly Active Users

Sounds impressive right? If even 1% are my customers, I’m set, right? Not necessarily, on the flip side, none of those people could be your customers because you don’t know who your customers are. The ultimate heartbreak. Don't worry, I'll help you fix it right now. If you know your customers list them out. Remember these are your best customers who repeatedly buy from you. This will be vital information in the next section.

Step #2 Create a Persona

So now that you have a list of your best customers, we need to create a buyer persona. Don’t be afraid of the newfangled marketing term. All personas are information that your best customers have in common. Once you’ve made the list of who they are, it's now time to figure out what they have in common. Create a table and beside each name write down their approximate age, gender, income (if you know), where they live (in the city or somewhere local) and what they like to do.

You may not necessarily know all this information. Fill out everything the best you can or give a range to make sure you have all these fields filled out. Once you start doing this process, you will start seeing patterns. Now, try grouping these people by age and gender, these are the most common. You should be able to make 1-3 groups of customers who have a lot of these characteristics in common.

Remember, when I talked about what they like to do? You want to find common threads and build a background and give it a name. Check out the example below for a local hardware store:

Bob

45 years old

Lives in Yourtown, USA

He makes $60K -$100K per year

He likes sports and camping and he’s concerned about appliances and repairs for the home.

Step #3 Pick a Platform

Once you have your customer list and persona finished it’s time to get to those customers online. If they are online at all. Remember, social media and even digital marketing in general, are not a one size fits all approach. Knowing your customer is the key to all this. If your customers are not online that doesn’t mean you have to be either. But if you think social media is right for your customers, let’s get a little insight on which platform to choose.

Wait. Can’t I just hop for all of them and figure it out along the way?

You could if you wanted to waste a lot of time. Please, don't.

We are trying to be strategic. So based on our example persona we need to pick a platform. If you want more information on social demographics heads to Sprout Social’s post here.

We need to figure out, based on our persona, which platform to choose. So I chose the age range that fits our customer and knows we need to decide. Base on the numbers:

79% of 30–49-year-olds use Facebook

47% of 30–49-year-olds use Instagram

26% of 30–49-year-olds use Twitter

37% of 30–49-year-olds use LinkedIn

35% of 30–49-year-olds use Pinterest

It looks like Facebook wins. We will start up a page on that platform and start planning out our marketing. Speaking of planning...

Step #4 Understand your funnel

You need to understand how social media marketing will work. This means how we get customers to know, like, and trust you. Check out my video about building a following on Facebook to get your current customers online. But what we need to do is get people more like Bob, to find us on Facebook. And don’t just start posting things all over the place. That does work and takes a lot of time if you don't know what you are doing. Remember to think strategically. Here are the steps:

Build Awareness (Know)

You want people to know who you are and that you are on Facebook. You will need to create a business page or even create an Ad (don’t worry I’ll get to that) or have a lot of your current customers who are already on Facebook, share your information. Remember the goal is only to get people to know you exist in this step.

Build Interest (Like)

Alright, now we are getting into the good stuff. Your current customers know your Facebook and they may have shared your information with friends and family to follow you. Great! Now what?

If you are just there, people will quickly forget you. You need to post something. What? Well, remember that persona you made? You want people to like what your business does, that means creating posts and content that play on what interests or concerns people have.

Bob likes outdoor stuff and is concerned about repairing his home, so we can create small tutorials or share tips on fixing little things in the home to help him and others like him out. Now you have become valuable and your followers will actively look for your information and share it with others to build more followers and get more customers to know about your store.

Make a decision (Trust)

Ok, so building followers is fine and dandy, but we need paying customers. That's just the reality. We need to build some trust and get people to purchase. The best way to do that is reviews and testimonials. You can use people like Bob to create a little written testimonial (or even better a video) and have him expound on the great work and price your store offers. Sharing this far and wide will get your followers to start purchasing from your store if they haven't already.

Step #5 Consider Advertising

Now, that you have built a small little following with current customers and even new customers and have figured out a funnel that gets people in the door, you may be satisfied with the modest increase your efforts have produced. And that's just fine. However, you can supercharge what you have learned and take it to the next level.

How? Advertising.

“Wait, I just did all this for free,” you ask. “Why should I pay?”

Realistically, only a small percentage of about 6-10% of people who follow you see your stuff when you post it due to each network's algorithms. Advertising changes this completely. You can budget how much money you spent (as little as $5 a day) to reach the kinds of customers you want. Remember that your persona will still apply, but now you can expand to neighboring cities or even counties! Instead of reaching dozens of people, you have the potential to reach thousands.

Conclusion

So, if you are a business owner and want to get started in digital marketing, social media isn't a bad way to start. The key is to know who your customers are and are strategic with your platforms and efforts. The reason why many businesses who start out and eventually come to the SBDC for help is not knowing what to do with social media when it comes to marketing. Our clients see how other businesses use content and advertisements but do not understand the planning or strategy behind those decisions. Are you ready to get started? Let me know what you think.

Funded in part through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, conclusions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.