Written by Joseph Holevinski, Converge multimedia journalism intern and Senior at Gwinnett School of Math, Science & Technology (GSMST)
This day and age, social media influences everything we do. It provides us with entertainment, it allows for communication between friends and family, and it also is used extensively for advertising. Advertisement through social media has become a huge factor on how successful a business is, and for small business owners, a successful social media presence can increase your sales and grow your company exponentially. But how do you do it? How can small businesses utilize social media to their advantage? It’s actually a lot easier than you might think.
The first step to defining your social media presence as a small business is figuring out what platform works best for you. The main social media platforms that are the best to operate on are Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. All platforms have unique advantages ranging from formatting, the way information is spread, and demographics. While it is good to have accounts for your business on multiple platforms, it is important to think of the benefits of each platform.
Facebook is one of the oldest and currently the largest social media platform with over 2 billion users. Some of its largest benefits include its ability to have public and private groups. If you set up a Facebook group, users can join and be more directly connected to a community of people who go to or are interested in your business. This allows for you to make posts about upcoming announcements or new products and have your patrons get notified about it.
Another popular social media platform is Instagram. Instagram is better for documentation of your small business and its products. Instagram allows for you to have a profile of several images that serve as a portfolio of what you sell and can allow you to show off any new products.
One of the newest social media platforms and the fastest growing is TikTok. TikTok allows for a lot of creative liberty to show off a lot of aspects of your small business. TikTok’s platform utilizes short videos ranging from 7 seconds to 3 minutes. With this platform you can show off things that you couldn’t do as well on other platforms: document how the products were made, tell stories about customer experiences or post funny skits with employees.
All of the platforms can work to your advantage if you make sure you are interacting with the comments from users on your posts and taking suggestions from the community. Most importantly make sure to post regularly so your relevance is maintained. Social media is the future of small businesses, so go forth and post.
