I wrote this post in 2016 and I believe it’s still valid. Part of my plans this year is reaching out to at least 20 small business owners across Africa and assisting them in growing their businesses on Social Media. From my experience, I know what small business owners faces in their bid to sell their products/services and made their voice heard online.
The noise is just too much, social media seems to be saturated with hate and negative news, the questions most business owners faces are numerous. From how they can filter through the noise? to how they can stand out from the crowd? etc, attempting to provide answers to these question may slow down productivity, especially if its a one man’s affair.
As a small business owner, how can you succeed on social media with little or no budget, let’s look at the lessons we’ve gathered over the years.
Table of Contents
As a small Business owner, this is how to design your success on social media
1. Don’t get lost in the crowd
The crowd thing is a big problem, most businesses are just adding to the noise instead of creating a niche for themselves. As a rule of thumb, find your own voice, don’t do what others are doing, watch, monitor and create a space for your business.
2. Have a Plan
This is always my first advice to business owners: have a plan, know why you want to do on Social media. Once you have a plan, the plan will drive the process. Succeeding in Social media is a process, it’s doesn’t happen immediately
3. Define your Space
Let’s say you have a product like body cream meant for pregnant women, your audience here maybe unlimited because anyone can purchase the product based on the success stories from your page for any pregnant woman related to them. But you still have to define a target audience.
Your plans may include, getting a few local pregnant women to test the products and providing feedback via their pages, it may also include having a free medical outreach for pregnant women depending on your budget among others. Your number one goal here should be creating a space first for your product before looking at the profit.
4.Engage with your audience
Engagement ranges from small things like replying to messages, commenting and sharing your fans/followers post and occasionally celebrating your most engaged fan, either weekly or monthly.
5. Have fun
Don’t see Social Media as a Market space, see social media as a relationship space, build strong relationship first and have fun. It’s the relationship that will help you grow your business.
If you are a social media owner and you will like us to assist you to promote your business for free, kindly send us an email: (editor@motivation.africa) let’s engage.