Social media marketing is important for any business. Why? When coffee shops are plentiful, how else do you attract that one customer away from the Starbucks and Dunkin’ to your small business?
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Social Media Marketing
The answer is effective social media marketing. There are thousands of chain coffee brands that your business is competing with, so channeling the right customer at the time with your message is critical for you to get any green flowing in. Social media marketing has many benefits for any kind of small business.
This blog post will discuss how to accomplish this lofty feat: creating a customer base that champions your coffee over other options using social media marketing. So, grab a bagel and cream cheese with your favorite coffee and find out how to make your morning beverage one of the greats!
Social Media for Small Business
Small businesses have more on the line since they have smaller budgets. Smaller budgets mean less staff, fewer locations, and fewer overall capabilities. As a result, they need to use what they currently have available to effectively target their intended customers. Successful small businesses use the following social media strategies .
Lead with Objectives
Your business should start with its top three marketing objectives and evaluate how social media can accomplish them. Social media is not just a giant megaphone for your business. It needs to be used effectively, or it is just a waste of money and waste of time in someone’s feed that will be overlooked.
Build Authority
You can’t over-invest in LinkedIn when getting your business name out there. Yes, there are certainly LinkedIn alternatives , such as Slack and Xing, but marketing your brand on a professional social media marketing platform is the go-to method for attracting and maintaining authority. Authority is currency- The more you cash in, the more growth you will encounter.
Start Conversations
Posts are rewarded that show interaction. If your small business posts something on Facebook but no one responds, Facebook’s algorithm causes the posts to not be shown again. Just like you, they are trying to maintain customers to their platform, and if a post isn’t engaging, well, then it’s not doing its job and is worked out of circulation. The key to success is asking questions and responding to answers.
Show Appreciation
Social media is not all about you. You don’t tell your potential customers about the awards you’ve won or everything your business has accomplished. Instead, social media marketing allows your business to meaningfully connect with important people (like your potential customers.) You can even thank them by recognizing their posts through a like or retweet.
Stand Out
Social media is incredibly personal. And that makes social media marketing that much more important. It’s your personal brand first and your job second. In order to make it, you need social media marketing to cause a ruckus. This isn’t a time for conformity. Those days of blending in are over. In order to get noticed, your business needs to resonate with a particular audience and adhere to this branding across all platforms.
Have a Clear Goal
This should be pretty common knowledge, but every post has a purpose. Social media marketing produces lucrative results – but there’s a learning curve. You should know exactly what you are trying to accomplish, whether it’s increased sales or leads. Maybe it’s both. That is up for you to figure out. Use Facebook pixel or Facebook lead ads to track and measure results instead of turning to the likes, follows, or impressions route.
Dominate on One Platform
Before investing in social media marketing, you should know who your target audience is. Then, you are able to figure out the platform they predominantly spend the most time on. You can probably see where this is leading, but just to be transparent, you should pick and dominate the social platform that resonates with your customer the most. You can claim profiles on other networks, but spend a majority of time on the golden child platform.
When sharing content, do it on a four-to-one ratio. Try content sharing : hare someone else’s content four times for every time you share your own stuff.
Create a Calendar
Planning your social media activities allows you to post more consistently and get more results. You can create an editorial calendar , so you have a better strategy for what and when to post. Automation also helps tremendously to alleviate working posts on your own.
Use Visuals
People have short attention spans, so factor in photos and videos with your social media marketing strategy. Visuals are ideal to show off products or how services work. Instagram and Pinterest are specifically photo-heavy platforms.
Delegate
You only have so much time as a small business owner. So take a breath and give the social media marketing work to a team member or a small team to do. Add the social media marketing cost to your budget too, so you can plan for it the following quarter.
Coffee Shop Marketing
Well, we went over successful social media marketing strategies for small businesses, so let’s get to the gist of why it’s important for your coffee shop, what the social media options are, and how they can make your brand stand out in a sea of Starbucks and Dunkin’.
Why is Social Media Important for Coffee Shops?
- It increases customer engagement . People love expressing their views online. Sure, you can put out a survey in your shop to ask initial thoughts and recommendations, but you can also get the same message across more pointedly by engaging with their opinions on social media. This generates traffic, and people love to be opinionated behind the screen.
- It allows you to get feedback. High response rates to your social media questions and posts indicates you have appealed to an audience. Pay attention to what people reply to and like to dictate how you will structure your next series of posts.
- It tracks competition . Through social media marketing, you are able to keep tabs on your competitors. In fact, you can learn a lot from your competitors. (They are successful competitors for a reason.) Your competitors are seeking to also build and protect its brand reputation to successfully sell. It’s worth doing a little snooping to see how your coffee shop brand can rise above the rest.
- It creates better networks and partnerships. Without social media marketing, it would be almost impossible to get the content to the eyes of the customer at the ideal time. Following on social media allows for potential networking opportunities, which could lead to pretty cool partnerships. (Think back to the bagel with cream cheese at the beginning of this article. Could your small coffee shop network with a local breakfast bakery and campaign together?) The opportunities are limitless.
- It impresses potential customers . People look at companies’ social media pages to better gauge their brand identities and the products and services they provide. Think how you want your coffee shop to be portrayed on social and how social media marketing can enhance your shop’s identity.
What are the Social Media Options?
There are tons of social media platforms , and each serves its own purpose. Understanding what each channel is used for and how your audience uses them will help drive up engagement. It’s all about behavioral advertising and reaching you want to reach through a series of tactics.
It is highly popular, with nearly 3 billion active users . It is used to share photos (not as much as Instagram), but it is especially beneficial to share company updates. Facebook is highly customizable, so you can use it to highlight specific information that is important to your coffee shop, such as hours, contact info, and types of coffee sold.
Instagram had approximately 1 billion active users as of 2020 . It is a highly visual platform, which is beneficial to your coffee shop, if you are specifically marketing branding, coffee grinders, or the retro coffee shop interior. This platform is incredibly mobile, meaning you can’t take photos or post on the desktop version. If your coffee shop chooses to primarily utilize Instagram for social media marketing, the team behind the posts must have an eye for detail.
There are about 62.55 million Twitter users . Twitter is great for short updates and for sharing links to blog posts, such as this one. However, it’s not for every small business, and may not be the primary social media marketing tool for your coffee shop. You are able to share short tweets and post images and videos, but if your coffee shop doesn’t have a strong brand voice, this is not the platform to use.
This platform allows customers to save and show content by “pinning” it to their boards, and these boards can be organized by category. Pinterest is fantastic for niche businesses, and luckily, “food and beverage” are high on the pinning list. It’s similar to Instagram in that it’s visually heavy, but more categorical and organizational.
Snapchat
Snapchat is another mobile-only, visually heavy tool . And it’s known for its disappearing content. Your coffee shop can send videos and photos to others that will disappear when opened, or, in the case of stories, after 24 hours. Because posts are temporary, they don’t have to be quite as polished. This platform is good for smaller businesses, but if your coffee shop has no followers, they won’t be able to see your content.
YouTube
YouTube. Ah, the crown jewel of video sharing. With YouTube, your coffee shop can view, upload, rate, comment, and share video content. This platform is highly creative, so unless you have a full time barista-turned-video editor, this platform may not be working in your favor.
Stand Out
Congrats on owning a coffee shop. It’s definitely no easy task. You are walking now. But let’s get you running with the help of social media marketing. There are so many benefits of using social media for business .
In order to stand out, with the help of social media, you must be active on it, or have a separate team member or team designated to engage your intended audience. People want a brand they can relate to and a brand that is consistent. Social media marketing helps further your coffee shop’s brand identity to blow it past the competitors.
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Like our morning coffee chats? Like a little sugar in your coffee too? Well, here’s something extra sweet that you won’t be able to resist. 体育娱乐平台 Design Chicago offers professional marketing that can help your coffee shop and other businesses, large or small. Contact 体育娱乐平台 Design Chicago for the ultimate marketing experience.
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