Participating in social media is no longer an option; it is essential to ensure business success. With over 360 million blogs out there, bloggers and business owners of all niches and industries are constantly facing various social media challenges that will affect the outcome.
I’m sure you have experienced spending hundreds or thousands of dollars in social media advertising but getting very little (or none at all) return on investments.
Yes, we have all been there ourselves.
With all these social media challenges you faced in business, your mind has developed the following mindset:
- Social media marketing is only for the rich.
- Social media marketing is not a marketing strategy.
- Investing in social media is not an option for small businesses.
- You could make more money by spending more time on your brick-and-mortar business than the virtual social media space.
Long story short, you may come to a point where you consider social media marketing is a total waste of time. Lucky for you, we will share 3 common social media challenges for businesses and the solutions to make social media work for you.
Before you dive further into it, I suggest you sign up for my weekly newsletter for the latest social media tips and as well as a free 32-pages cheat sheet for Twitter Marketing.
Social media challenge #1:
Which is the best social media platform for my business?
Don’t waste your time trying to hunt down the best platform for your business. Every platform works extremely well. All you need is to focus on specific platforms to leverage them completely. Each social media platform requires a different approach, and what works for A may not work that well for B.
For example, Twitter marketing techniques like this one only work for Twitter and not on Facebook. So, how do you determine if that specific social media platform is right for your business?
Social media solutions for this challenge
Here are the breakdowns of several major platforms which you can use today:
- Google+
- YouTube
No, there isn’t the best social media platform, but there is certainly one (or more) platform that will perform better than another. The biggest question you need to ask yourself, your marketing team or business partners are:
- Who are your customers?
- What is their liking?
- What attracts them the most (visual, discounts, word of mouth, etc.)?
- How did they find out about you and your business?
- Ultimately, what does it take to grow your followers?
The more questions you ask (and answer), the better idea you would have to determine the best social media platform to invest your time in.
Social media challenge #2
We do not have enough time to spend on social media.
According to Business Insider, Americans spend at least 37 minutes on social media daily, and the figures will continue to skyrocket as it shifts through the different industries.
The figures are even more daunting for social media managers, where we spend around 8 – 14 hours a day on social media to make a living.
For startup businesses, time constraints are the common challenge faced by business owners and marketing teams. After all, there are so many platforms to be in, and managing all of them is a challenging job.
Want to know the solution to this? Continue reading.
Simple social media solutions for businesses
Step 1: Firstly, consider the social media platform that provides the best engagement. Find the top 3 social media platforms that your readers are engaging on, and you can even ask the same question to your customers.
Step 2: Build a unique social media strategy that involves sharing posts, images, and related content. You also need to consider the different posting times depending on geolocation – (if your customers are from different time zones).
Step 3: Utilize free social media management tools to schedule your posts and social updates. If you have a limited budget and want to make social media marketing works for you, you can consider using tools like HootSuite (under $10 a month and free available too) or Sprout Social (under $100 a month).
Step 4: The last step is to analyze your social media strategies every month. If needed, amend and modify the strategy to fit the market demands. You can refer to my guide on Twitter Analytics or Pinterest Analytics for more information.
Social media challenge #3
Social media advertising costs money
On average, the cost per click (CPC) for advertising on Twitter and Facebook costs less than $1.00 if you do your target marketing right.
At Social Media Rush, it is prevalent for our clients to say that they have limited or zero budget for advertising. Since we are working with startups and small business owners, this is not surprising. No offense, and that’s true.
However, the biggest challenge is to provide a social media solution that fits perfectly into their budget.
So, how do we solve this social media challenge?
Honestly speaking, we can’t. But can we help you to increase your return on investment? Absolutely yes! This can be done simply by:
- Putting a tough but workable budget for your online advertising needs (we usually recommend at least $20 a day, but we could go as low as $10)
- Setting ultra-specific goals for each campaign.
- Doing several A/B tests to maximize ROI.
- There are two ways you can go around this: doing it yourself or getting us to help you (with a small fee).
If you are adventurous enough to do it yourself, my suggestion is to start with a mini-budget. Get used to the whole process and slowly increase the budget and the number of campaigns.
Do you face any other social media challenges in business?
Numerous business owners face dozens of other challenges out there, and there will be challenges in social media regardless of the path you take. There is no avoiding such dead-lock, and the only way is to face them head-on. Looking on the brighter side, this is an excellent learning process for you and your team.
Summarise it:
For one, the real social media challenge that you will face is to be visible and maintain the visibility on social media for your customers. Without a good social media strategy, all your social media plans will be buried faster than quicksand!
Have better solutions for these social media challenges and SEO Firma Hamburg?