Small Businesses like Social Media. This is always not for the fact that they are interested. But usually for the fact that, big players love it and gain from it.  The barriers to entry are little and there are plenty of social media marketing tools available, making it easier for businesses to increase their online presence in a more aggressive manner. This leads to teams getting dissatisfied after not receiving the desired results out of their effort. Small businesses need to clear the common social media marketing misconceptions first before diving blindly into it to get the best results from the same.

Social Media is not just opening an account and waiting for miracles to happen overnight. It is about targeting the right audience with the right content. Then, you can be sure of accumulating fans which might take months.

Most small and mid-sized businesses these days plunge into social media with aggression but, unfortunately they get idle after some days of action. This is usually due to the misconception which businesses carry regarding social media and its consequences. We will discuss some of these in our post.

• Number Game – The ‘They have’ so ‘We will have’ philosophy does not work with social media. If just by looking at the number of fan following a big company has you are trying to venture into social media then, you might better avoid it. Big companies have their own fan base who will respond to whatever they update. But, as a small or mid-sized company you need to gain attention of users first and then try and attract them more and more towards your brand with lucrative offers or other means. You can then prove the philosophy wrong.
• Instant Results – If you are looking for results overnight then I am very sorry to say that social media is not your cup of tea. You can instead look to divert your effort to other areas where you can expect return from day one. So, getting instant result out of social media is not quite possible.
• Wrong Expectations – If by engaging your audience you feel that you will achieve a 100% conversion rate then, you are mistaken. Social Media is all about generating awareness among the users about your core competence where you can expect a small percentage of conversion but not 100%.
• Spending more time – Just because social media has become a crucial part of small and mid-sized business’s marketing strategies and they spend quite a sizable budget on it does not mean that you need to spend sleepless nights. Spending more time on social media and populating users with irrelevant updates is much more harmful then spending less time but spreading necessary words. So, do not spend much time and effort. Rather use tools to make your work simpler.

The number of fans and followers does nothing for your social media marketing. The thing that matters is how well you engage them. Social media marketing is all about give and take. You can’t expect people to flock to your page when you’re not actively doing anything to bring them there. Think of ways to engage your target audience.

Thanks for reading!