If you own or run a small business or nonprofit, you might not necessarily have the funds for marketing. Typically, you’ll run into these three issues:
- Owner is heavily involved
- Not enough staff or time
- Small budget
If you’re the employee handling marketing, it can be stressful and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! For small businesses and nonprofits, we recommend using the Groundswell POST method. This method lets you to focus on four phases of generating your social media plan. This way, you’re able to better allot the budget you have for marketing.
People
Online marketing begins with understanding your audience and users. What is going to make them interact with your business or nonprofit? How are they spending their time when online? If you’re busy tweeting, but your target audience isn’t on it, then why are you wasting your time? This can lead you to promoting yourself on the wrong social media platform.
Objectives
When you’ve figured out your target audience, you need to ask yourself why you’re on social media platforms. In most cases, it’s to generate more traffic from social websites to your website. More specifically, for nonprofits, it usually is to increase donations and volunteers. When you identify your objective, it’ll help you in setting up your social media campaigns and measure their success.
Strategy
If you’re unsure of what you’re doing on each social media platform, having a strategy won’t be much help. Learn how to use each platform so you can constantly update and engage your audience and users. Make sure your business or nonprofit information is consistent across all social media platforms. The last thing you want to do is confuse your audience.
Technology
When choosing social media platforms for your business or nonprofit, choose ones that best fit you. Look into reports that show where you audience or users are engaging the most online.
Using social media for your business and nonprofit can be easy and helpful if you let it! Find out what works best for your industry and run with it.