Social Media and Business: Challenges of Small Business Owners

Small business owners often complain that using social media is not easy.

To create an effective social media presence, you need to have a well-thought out plan, and time to execute them. Time, for a small business owner, is often a luxury that they do not have (more so for the one-person business).

Social media also requires nurturing and cultivating your fans, friends and audiences. But you may not have the resources to hire a dedicated team to do and manage social media activities for you. If you’re a one-person business, it is very tough to add another layer of tasks in your already crowded and stressful day. Plus, with the number of social media sites — and the various strategies you need to do for each of them — it can become pretty overwhelming.

However, it can no longer be denied that social media has become an important medium for reaching your target market and engaging with potential customers. Some small businesses, in fact, have been successful in leveraging and using social media to grow their business.

One small business that is able to use social media to grow their business is MyDestination.com. In the article “Lessons on How to Use Social Media”, they share some lessons that they have learned in using social media, as follows:

1. Keeping your social media strategy focused upon your target audience is essential for the success of a start-up. It’s vital that those people who are engaging with your brand are those who are likely to be interested in the products and services of your business. Your Tweets, Facebook shares and other social actions need to reach the right people for them to have any impact.

2. A blog can be a great way for a start-up business to create some initial traffic to a site and boost their social media presence. It will allow your social channels to have something to promote and also great content for people to interact with. You can also ‘show off’ your industry expertise through a blog, aiding you in becoming a reliable and authoritative business.

3. It’s vital in a start-up company to grasp an understanding of how your business can best use social media and implement strategies with minimum risk, using simple concepts rather than expensive campaigns, when budgets are tight. Educating yourselves and reviewing other successful social media campaigns will allow for this.

For more information on how social media is affecting small businesses today, below is a very interesting infographic: