Opening Thoughts
Finding a business niche is such an exciting prospect. Although coming up with a fresh, profitable and inventive idea is the original foundation for any business, knowing how to showcase the brand on social media is another skill in the modern market.
Plenty of businesses have a great ethos, model and long-term plans. However, if they lack digital marketing expertise or cannot boost engagement online and attract customers, they face a challenge that can become systemic.
There’s also no definitive way to boost engagement. Some companies will spend thousands of dollars on Facebook ads, barely increasing their traffic. Others might employ digital marketing strategies, paying $500 a day and getting the same result.
It is business-dependent and depends on your route to find individuals, companies, business development experts or strategists who claim to have the key to unlocking higher engagement. Here are some of our top tips:
Do your Market Research
Understanding what drives online traffic in your chosen industry is imperative and should form the foundation of any effective online marketing strategy. For example, if you’re looking to launch a small business that deals with online casinos – whether it’s a software company or an indie slot game designer – it’s a good idea to find out what grabs the audience in this sector.
Casino companies use various techniques and approaches to onboard new customers. However, it’s not just marketing strategies that boost online engagement for casinos; the rise of impartial expert review sites has also helped to provide a welcome, neutral boost among a sea of paid posts and reviews that can sometimes act as indirect adverts for a site.
One site that bucks the trend is www.newcasinos.com/. They entrust their experts with breaking down some of the key factors and ranking casinos that pack more of a punch than some of their competitors.
Casino gaming is just one example, but regardless of the industry you’re looking to move into, see what the competition is doing and get a taste of how they’re promoting their online brand. It becomes easier to boost engagement when you understand the market appetite.
Invent a New Angle
It’s never a bad idea to see what the competition is doing and how they generate online engagement. While it’s a good source of inspiration, it’s another thing to outright copy their idea. It’s important to be inspired and not just take ideas.
Not only could it harm your brand and business, but it could also supply your competitors with even more fuel to work against you rather than with you. Originality in business goes a long way, especially on social media, where it feels like so many companies and brands are in the business of just sticking to the status quo.
How you choose to do this is where the skill lies. Maybe you want your page to be funny, and generate engagement that way. Maybe you want to start a competition that gets people talking about your business. Originality provides a level of authenticity, and while we appreciate this might not be applicable to all small businesses, it’s a factor that can generate the most engagement if the idea is both inventive and fresh.
Persistence and Time Investment
Some small businesses create a Facebook or Instagram page, post one post and then get a chip on their shoulder three weeks later when their business isn’t generating any leads. A timeline of social media management and posts is just as important for some businesses as the idea of being insured or taking out a business loan.
As with most businesses, short-term turbulence and financial loss are usually incurred in the initial weeks of launching. Likewise, social media is the same. Don’t expect people to flock to your page because you have had a logo professionally designed. Post consistently and frequently, ensuring you get your brand out there as often as you can to generate increasing levels of engagement.
Networking with Influential Social Media Pages
Often, the quickest way to generate engagement is to form partnerships with local pages that have a huge reach and appeal to your target market. One of the main reasons that small businesses avoid this tactic is that there’s a significant upfront cost depending on the page size you’re looking at.
For instance, if a small business sells football boots, a personal training program or something healthy and lifestyle-related, networking with a big meme page specializing in sports jokes or posts on Instagram is one example of a target market. Again, we know this isn’t cost-effective for some businesses, but in a world where Instagram appears to carry much more weight for the reputation of businesses than it probably should, this is one of the quickest ways to boost engagement.
Conclusion
We’ve tried to keep it generic today, and we know there are thousands of potential small businesses out there, all with unique designs and selling points. Generating engagement stems from a number of criteria. We’d say that doing the right market research, drilling into an original angle or idea, and networking with big names or pages in your field are the best ways to generate online engagement for your small business.
