Social media marketing is not just a trend – it's becoming one of the most popular marketing methods around and if you're not using it, you're missing out. Period.

Want some proof? Here are some quick stats:

• Of the 4 billion+ internet users, 3.2 billion of them are active social media users.

• 50% of people say that they don't trust a brand until they see proof (often through form of social media)

• People are 71% more likely to buy from you after a positive experience on social media.

What Can Social Media Do For You?

Great question! As a small business owner myself, I understand that you don’t have the time to focus energy on something that isn’t going to benefit your business. And I respect you for questioning how social media can help. To keep things brief, here are some of the main ways social media can help your brand:

• Brand Awareness: 60% people say they discover new products through social media. There are a number of ways that people find new brands on social media, for example: through Instagram’s explore feed, Facebook suggestions based on friends’ likes, or, better yet, another customer sharing their personal experience with their friends and followers in stories or posts.

• Humanization: Giving your brand a personality allows people to relate and connect to you more easily. Honing in on your target client and speaking to them as someone who understands their struggles or lifestyle, has similar hobbies, etc, will go far with your fans and customers (present and future).

• Trust & Credibility: Over 50% of consumers don't trust a brand until they see social proof. They are looking for an established brand that has a strong and engaged following.

• Top of Mind: Posting & interacting on social media every day will keep ensure you're maximizing your reach and your followers will continue to see your brand... recall is everything.

How Can Social Media Affect Your Bottom Line?

Social media is not a stand alone marketing strategy. It actually will help your business grow in many other areas as well… almost as if they were all tied together, what a thought! So, what other ways can social media help boost your business?

SEO: Being active (in the right way) on social media will naturally improve your business’s SEO. Think about it, if your social media channels are linked to and from your website, that builds online presence and credibility. Additionally, if you’re posting consistently with content that is relatable to both your customer and your business, then you will naturally be creating SEO-friendly content that is directly feeding back to your business.

Web Traffic: A good mix of your content should be directly trying to drive fans and followers back to your website to learn about and buy your products or services.

Leads: When fans and followers eventually end up on your website, they’ve officially become leads! This is how you know they are interested enough in what they’ve seen on Instagram, Facebook, etc, that they’re looking for more information on you. You can speed up this process by pairing paid ads with your organic social media to reach new clients that may not be in your direct circle right now.

Sales: Let’s be real, the very top level reason we do any type of marketing is to make sales, so it may be a trickle effect, but social media wouldn’t be such a popular avenue if it didn’t help with sales, right?

How Can I Apply That To My Small Business?

So, that was a bit of an information overload and I know what you’re thinking – HOW THE HECK DO I DO ALL THAT? Well, don’t fret. I’ve paired the above with 10 simple tips you can start today to boost your small business on social media. Hopefully these will help you break everything down into actionable tasks.

Tip # 1: Dominate One Platform

Ask yourself this question: Where does your target customer spend their time?

If you're just getting started or don't have the time to manage 4+ social channels, don't stress yourself out about jumping into all of them – it’s just not feasible. Pick 1 or 2 of the platforms you think will benefit your business the most, and own them.

Hint: Facebook is pretty much necessary for any sort of social media life these days. Many people go to Facebook first when looking for location, hours, and reviews. It’s important, if using Facebook, to make sure that your business information is up to date on this platform.

Tip # 2: Create a Calendar – Use a Scheduler

Putting together a social media strategy and planning your posts out monthly will help you in SO MANY WAYS. You'll be posting consistently and continuously, you'll be able to take the time to create quality content that your followers want to see, and if you use a scheduler (there is no excuse not to) you won't have to remember to post every single day while you're busy actually running your business. All of this adds up to consistent results and growth!

A few of my favorite schedulers are Buffer and Planoly.

Tip # 3: Be Visual

You like looking at pretty things, right? So do your followers. So give them something pretty or interesting to look at. Catch their eye and make them stop scrolling and actually engage with your post. Finding beautiful and engaging imagery can be hard sometimes. A few places I go to for inspiration are the top photos on Instagram hashtags that relate to your business, stock photo sites, like Pexel or Unsplash, and Post Planner.

Tip # 4: Post at Optimal Times.

This is where the numbers come into play and the math geeks get excited. You should be constantly analyzing past posts to see what time of day you're getting the most reach and the most engagement. I know, I know, Instagram doesn’t show you the exact time you made a post, but there are ways to get around this! If you’re using a scheduler, it should track dates and times of your posts for you (another reason you should be using a scheduler).

Hint: Did you know that Instagram can help you figure out your optimal posting time? Instagram has some great insight features available, the only downside is they live inside the mobile app and can’t be exported.

To find this helpful feature, navigate to your business profile, click the 3-lines (also known as a hamburger menu) in the top right corner, then click "Insights." From here, click “Audience” and scroll all the way down to the bottom, where you’ll find a “Followers” chart.

This chart gives you the average times your followers are on Instagram. You can toggle between Hours & Days as well as tap to see a specific # of followers who are online at what time. How cool is that?! Usually, this chart looks like a bell curve, like the example used here. I recommend posting about 3-5 hours before your peak. This way you can capture the feeds of most of your followers, without sacrificing posting too early and having your post burn out before the majority of your following gets a chance to see it.

Tip # 5: Use Hashtags

Don't hate on the hashtag yet because it's still a great tool for social growth! You’re allowed 30 per Instagram post and technically as many as you can fit in a Tweet. That said, I have some guidelines to using hashtags:

1. Do your research! Find hashtags that relate to your business and your post. It’s ok to stretch a bit on the connection, that will help you reach new people, but you should not be using #pizza on your posts if you own a coffee shop that doesn’t sell pizza (unless, of course, you’re promoting an adorable new to-go cup design that has a slice of pizza on it). Instagram's search page will help you with this. Start with one hashtag that directly ties to your business, and see what related hashtags Instagram has to offer.

2. Don’t shoot too big or too small. There is a sweet spot when it comes to how many uses an ideal hashtag has. I tell my clients to shoot for anything between 10k & 500k uses. Anything less and it won’t help you find anyone new, and anything more and you run the risk of your content getting lost in the hashtag shuffle as soon as it is posted. I generally use about 5-8 “popular” hashtags for relevancy. These are hashtags that directly relate to your business or brand (#pizza for a pizza shop, #coffee for a coffee shop) and have a large number of uses (usually 1 million+).

3. Don’t continuously use the same 30 hashtags for every social media post. Sure, you can use a few consistently that are directly tied to your brand (like #pizza if you’re a pizza shop), but you should try to change up many of the hashtags for each post. Spend a few extra minutes curating a specific list that is unique to that day’s post. If you’re photo or caption was taken in a specific location, try using a local hashtag. If you’re post is speaking to the upcoming weekend, try using a few popular weekend or Friday hashtags. Changing up your hashtags will (1) keep you constantly reaching new people, and (2) will keep you from getting shadow banned on Instagram.

4. In regards to Twitter; while you can, I would not recommend filling your tweet full of hashtags. #How #annoying #is #it #to #read #this #sentence? Pick 1-2 relevant hashtags to weave into your tweet, and maybe 1-2 more to tack onto the end.

Need some ideas for what hashtags to use? How about those fun hashtag holidays – #nationaldonutday anyone? Got branded hashtags? Use them in EVERY SINGLE POST (this will encourage your followers to use them when they post about you too). Is there a dog in your post today? Add a few dog-related tags to capture all the dog parents out there. Lastly, add in any local or industry specific tags as they apply to your post message.

Tip # 6: Audit & Duplicate

This is simple in theory, but not so much in execution. You want to look at what works and what doesn't work on your feed, and replicate what works. What’s hard about this is that it can take time and a keen eye to determine what specifically is working and why.

Here are some insights you’ll want to look at:

• Engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares, and saves) will tell you that your content resonates with your audience enough that they actively did something beyond looking at your post.

• Reach and impressions will reinforce that your content resonates with your audience. Increased reach means that Facebook, Instagram, etc felt that people were interacting with your post on a level worthy of pushing to more people. Additionally, increased reach and impressions can give you an idea of how your growth strategies (ie: hashtag strategy) are working. Instagram, for example, will tell you exactly where your impressions are coming from. Just scroll to a post and click “View Insights.” Some engagement stats will pop up, but if you drag this screen up, you’ll be able to access more specific insight data like profile visits, new follows, and website clicks taken as a direct result of your post. At the bottom, you will see Impressions broken down based on where they came from – Home, Hashtags, Location tag, Explore feed, and Other. If a good chunk of your impressions came from hashtags, you know that your hashtag strategy is working. Make sense?

Tip # 7: Social Listening

This tip is super time consuming but can bring in a lot of new customers. Let's say you own a pizza shop in San Diego and your specialty is gluten free pizza. Here are 2 examples of how you can monitor and get involved in a conversation:

1. Someone posted a picture of an awesome gluten free pepperoni pizza they just ate - Like/favorite/retweet the pic. Maybe respond mentioning that you also make gluten free pepperoni pizza and the next time they get a craving for a gluten free pep pizza, they should look you up.

2. Someone looking for the best gluten free veggie pizza in SD? Reach out and tell them about your awesome gluten free veggie pizza! Maybe offer them a coupon to further entice them? It’s up to you!

Tip # 8: Videos

Taking a step further into the visual realm, videos are AWESOME for engagement. People have short attention spans, which means it’s important to have eye catching content (refer to Tip # 3) and making it easily digestible. Videos are probably the best way to do both! I know a lot of small business owners may not have the time for this, but at the very least, throw some IG stories out into the world. Answer some common industry questions, show them some behind the scenes shots of a day in the life of a pizza maker. Put that front facing camera to good use.

Tip # 9: Combine Organic Social Media with Paid Ads

With all of the wonderful changes to Facebook's algorithm, it can be SUPER hard to get your message out there to the masses and pull in new customers. That's where paid ads come in. They're cheap, they offer powerful targeting, and with the right message, they can get you some awesome results. Whether you're looking for engagement, new client leads, or sales, Facebook ads are probably the most effective paid medium on the market right now.

To read more about how organic and paid social media work together, click here.

Tip # 10: Don’t Try To Do It All Yourself

I get it. Your time is limited and you're thinking, "How the heck do I do all of these? I'm already overwhelmed!" Well, you can always enlist help. Delegate social media duties to someone on your team, or hire an outside expert (like me, hint hint!). Because, let's be honest, social media is probably not your strong suit anyways. Having someone dedicated to growing your business on social media, especially if that someone has years of experience building and growing brands on social media, will take a huge weight off of your shoulders.