Social Media or Not: Different Ways to Promote Your Business
- When promoting a business, having only one social media outlet minimizes the chances of recognition.
- Most small businesses are on Facebook and Instagram, and due to the recent outage, they were unable to receive and fulfill orders.
- Small businesses that only have one social media outlet risk the chances of potentially reaching a wide array of customers. Therefore, increasing their number of social media platforms will help maximize their chances of getting more customers and gaining more revenue.
Starting a new business can be challenging and can feel almost impossible to get past the beginning stages. It might also be difficult for small businesses to retain a sufficient number of customers to achieve a profit. Therefore, for a company to have a consistent stream of customers to sell its products and services, it is essential to expand its operations to multiple social media platforms.
Many small businesses jump-start their brands by designing their websites and promoting products and services on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. However, the most recent global outage caused by Facebook, which subsequently affected their other apps Instagram and WhatsApp, taught business owners who rely on these outlets to promote their brands.
The Lesson Behind the Facebook Outage
The Facebook outage on October 5, 2021 left its users disconnected from the platform for six hours. The blackout left non-business-related users unable to use the application socially, but more importantly, the disconnection from the rest of the world affected small businesses the most.
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Many small businesses not only rely on Facebook and Instagram to help them increase their consumer base, but the social platforms also help them make a living by giving them a base with a large audience to sell their products. However, the outage showed that these businesses are too dependent on one kind of social media company to help them achieve financial goals in their businesses. Moreso, a platform, such as a website owned by small businesses outside of social media pages, is just as important.
Therefore, a lesson to be learned from the Facebook outage is to follow the proverb: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." The meaning behind this quote is that when one puts all of their resources (eggs) in one place or service (basket), they rely on that place or service to do the heavy lifting for them.
When businesses are not as diverse socially, there is a greater chance of outrage when they cannot generate sales due to technical difficulties that are out of their control. In conclusion, if an outage were to occur, the best way to protect a company's sales and consumer base is by expanding to different social platforms or your own platform that will allow the promotion and sale of products.
Different Ways to Promote A Business
As mentioned before, being on a variety of platforms is vital to the success of a business, and many popular platforms can help establish and grow businesses' core brands. Outside of the Facebook suite of social products, there are several other social media outlets that can also move your numbers as a small business owner.
TikTok
TikTok is one of the newer social media platforms, and its increasing popularity is making it one of the best outlets to build and grow a business. Currently, TikTok has over one billion users per month. Having access to such a large number of users will make it easier to gain recognition, increase a business's consumer base, and drive traffic to its products and services.
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TikTok is an excellent tool for a brand or business to make videos of their goods or services. Users can create a video that entails making their products, using their products, or what sets them apart from their competitors.
Pinterest has been around for a decade, and due to its popularity, it has remained one of the most used social media platforms to this day. Pinterest shows the pictures posted by its users, and with its active 454 million monthly users, it is one of the best outlets for a business to house its brand.
When opening a Pinterest account, an employee of the company can post products sold by the business. If Pinterest users find the product to be of nice quality, they will potentially approach the business and use its services.
Similar to Pinterest, Twitter can post videos or photos of a company's goods and services. There are 206 million monthly active users on Twitter, giving small businesses a large audience to portray their products.
Furthermore, one of the best ways to connect with its customers is by having constant engagement. Twitter allows its users to tweet and retweet, giving companies the perfect opportunity to build rapport. This makes for one of the best social marketing strategies.
YouTube
Lastly, YouTube, which has over two billion monthly active users, is a great way to show potential customers the daily activities of a business. Also, for those who want to create short videos similar to an Instagram reel or a Tik Tok video, Youtube allows their consumers to create YouTube Shorts that are one minute or less.
The famous YouTuber and TikToker, Milad Mirg, has millions of followers and views by following this marketing strategy. Mirg is also an employee of Subway. He gained popularity by answering his followers' questions through voiceovers over videos of him working at Subway. This led to him signing a marketing contract with Subway.
Bottom Line
Small businesses can decide whether or not to follow a similar path as Milad Mirg, where they create content and videos of their daily tasks or by connecting with their followers by answering questions over voiceovers.
While social media makes it reasonably easy to replicate someone else's work, many social media users build their customer base from other trending ideas. This is an excellent way for small businesses to attract more customers and increase sales.
Large corporations typically do not restrict themselves to using one social media platform because it can negatively affect their chance of reaching more customers and selling their products. Therefore, in order to achieve multiple streams of success, it is essential to diversify and build a business based on various social platforms.
What are your thoughts on small businesses using more than one social media platform? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.