Social Media and Small Business

The main objective of the research is to determine how small business use social media to improve their performance and profitability. Globally very many people participate in social media that interconnects different parts of the word. Small business has taken advantage of social media and advertises through these platforms improving the performance of their business (De Vries, Gensler & Leeflang, 2012). On the contrary, some small business performance remains constant due to lack of knowledge about marketing their products on social media. Currently small enterprise achieves success through investing in marketing their good and service on social media. Marketing requires an organized approach which is structured well to be effective and be able to influences consumption of the brands.

The following research questions were used to develop the study:

How do social media impact the performance of small business?

How does small business achieve performance through social media?

aWhat ways do small businesses use to market their products on social media?

What is the importance small business involvement in social media?

How do social media affect consumption of small business goods?

Ways that Small Business Use Social Media to Improve Sales

            Key points to improving sales of small business include the business trustworthy which entails creating trust in a relationship between the consumers and the business. The Small business trust by customers leads to new customers thus increasing the sales (Erdoğmuş & Cicek, 2012).  General engagement of the small business with the customers leads to loyalty and long-term customers. The good relationship existing within the business and the customers helps the business grow as the customers share widely about the services of the small business in their social platforms. Another way of improving sales is providing services by first come first served basis (Erdoğmuş & Cicek, 2012). Failure to handle customers in this manner leads to customers being unhappy. The unhappy customers share widely about the negative experience of the business on the social media. When customers are handled well, they share the positive responses in social media drawing other people to become customers of the small business. New customers on the business due to a positive response on social media improve sales.

 Small business considers providing exclusive offers that entail providing the social audience of the firm with goods used and that benefit them. The offer draws customer more close to the production, maintaining its loyal customers and creating new customers thus improving sales of the business (Hudson & Thal, 2013). Small business advertisements on social media go hand in hand with mobile devices which support most social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. A study reported that over 1 billion users of phones use the Facebook app to socialize. The small enterprise uses the advantage and posts their goods on these platforms. The customers of the small business help the business in spreading the information to others users using the social platform.

Small businesses also improve sales through social media by choosing the right social platform. For the small business to advertise its good, it must consider social platforms used by their customers and where targeted demographics are commonly active (Castronovo & Huang, 2012). The small business must make sure they are in this social platforms and actively participate on issues or matters on the platforms. The involvements of the business on the platforms provides purchase experience to customers and give the business the capability to reach a broad range of customers who later become loyal business customers. The effect of the social platform increases customers leading to an increase in sales.

 The Success of the Small Business in Social Media Marketing

The success of many small businesses that market their brands on social media depends mainly on the relationship between the business and the customers. The relationships on the social media play the biggest role in small business performance. Small business knows their customers better and therefore spent the time to understand them better (Hudson & Thal, 2013). Small business owners spent time online and reach their customers. Good customer relationships create loyalty, and therefore customer prefers good from that particular business. Small businesses consider quality not the number of matters of followers on the social platforms. Building relationships of high value are important to benefit financially. Small businesses are quick in responses as a result of connections that are not broad or layered. Small businesses use different approaches from large companies to win their clients and maintain their customers.

             A study showed that seventy-five percent of people within the globe buy goods after getting the knowledge about the goods from social media. Fifty-five percent buy goods through following a brand they have seen and followed on social media (Neti, 2011). The study also detailed social media as the leading marketing form compared to all other forms of outbound marketing.

 Ways Small Businesses Improve their Presence in the Media

            The presence of small businesses in the social media determines their success. The media provides a powerful platform for marketing purposes and proper customer and seller relationships (Heller & Parasnis, 2011). Ways that improve and maintain the presence of a small business in social media include small business listening to customers instead of promoting them. The small businesses must understand consumer needs, try to satisfy the needs and not utilize all time on social media to promote their products. The small businesses make the necessary commitment to the media making it a priority for business prosperity (Neti, 2011). The commitment helps in comparison of the business with the competitors leading improvements within the business.

            Small businesses must establish an objective before joining the social media. The objective should be in line with the goal of the business and always lead to the success of the business. The business aim at customer needs satisfaction, awareness of the businesses products and ways to improve their sales (Heller & Parasnis, 2011). Currently, there are many social networks all over the globe, and therefore small business must choose from the existing networks the best social media that fits the business. The choice is based on the business goals and the audience that the business intends to reach. The businesses can’t reach all the social networks present, and therefore to maximize efforts on a particular social media is a key aspect.

The small businesses use an automated strategy to maintain their presence on the media by use of tools such as Hootsuite software. The presence of the media is achieved by the business through planning at the beginning of the month all posts that the business intends to put to the media. The businesses can also outsource their posts on the social media to freelancer as well as several media agencies.

How Social Media Affects Consumption of Small Business Products

            Marketing of products produced by small businesses affects the consumption of the brands in different ways. The use of social media is of great meaning to all demographic factors within the small businesses. A study showed that the social media is used by many groups of people to acquire brands from businesses. The study detailed that social media influenced forty-seven percent of purchases within a certain group (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). The study detailed that in a group of three consumers in the United States, consumption among one of them is influenced by the media. Also, a study by Deloitte detailed that customers who use social media to do their shopping and to acquire goods are four times more compared to those customers who do not use the media (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). The study report concluded that small business performance and consumption of its goods is dependent on the social media. Social media plays an important part in small businesses brand consumption. The small business should invest in the strategies of marketing on the social media to improve consumption of their products.

Marketing Strategies Used By Small Business to Improve Sale

            Small businesses use different strategies to maximize sales within their premises. The strategies include content planning which involves the construction of the best ideas to entice the target audience on the social media. Content planning is of great importance since it determines the business competition from other businesses producing similar products (Hudson & Thal, 2013). The small enterprises provide a lot of social-content on the social media to maintain its presence on the media. The enterprises make sure they post regularly on the social media explaining the value of their products which in turn make customers interested and find it helpful. The value of the brand draws more customers to consume that particular brand.

            Small businesses provide a consistent image of a particular brand over the social media. The use of social media enables enterprises to post the image of their product across several platforms. Regardless of different environments within the social platforms, the small businesses ensure consistency of their posts on the social media and maintain the identity of their brands (Kwok & Yu, 2013). The small business uses the social media for purposes of promoting their customers. The promotions help in building customers loyalty which in return achieves long-term customers of the businesses improving sales within the enterprise. Also, promotions attract new customers to the small businesses brands and as a result increment of sales occurs (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). Through promotions on the social media, customers will follow the links of promotion which also lead to new brand links of the enterprise making them aware of the new products in the market. The businesses product promotion influences customers to consume the new brands of the enterprise.

            The small business share links to their products in a unique way which is original to attract more followers to link which leads to their brands on the social media. The links give way to the small business products within the media and those products that are not found in the social media (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). The business uses the social media as a link to their products found in other media which then customers find interesting and helpful resulting to consumptions of these products. The consumption leads to sale increase within the small businesses. Also, the small businesses use the social media to track their competitor’s business progress. The enterprise keeps track of the goods produced by their competitors to get ideas of how they can improve their products such that they outdo those of their competitors. Small businesses measure the success of their brands without data tracking. The measure of the success is achieved by the Google analytics tool on the social media which measures the most triumphant technique (Kwok & Yu, 2013). The tool also determines those strategies that worked well for the business which require emphasis and the strategies with the lowest results in achieving the success of the business.

Social Media Targeted By Small Business

            Small businesses target social media with the highest traffic and those that bring the highest benefits to the business. Some of the main targeted social media platforms include Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). The social media helps the small businesses to grow their sales, use customer-generated content to produce new brands and to retain their customers. A study reported that there are 2 million Facebook users monthly. The high number of users provides the small businesses with a wide rage platform to advertise their brands.

Conclusion

            Social media plays an important role in improving the performance of the small businesses. The study suggests that the success of small businesses is based on their positive involvement in the social media. The motives of small businesses to join social media are geared to advertising their brands to improve their sales. Since the study was limited to secondary sources, there is a need for further research on the impacts of social media on small businesses which might not be captured within the study. In summary, social media marketing of products produced by small businesses improves the performance of the businesses.

Bibliography

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Heller Baird, C. and Parasnis, G., 2011. From social media to social customer relationship management. Strategy & leadership, 39(5), pp.30-37.

Hudson, S. and Thal, K., 2013. The impact of social media on the consumer decision process: Implications for tourism marketing. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 30(1-2), pp.156-160.

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Paniagua, J. and Sapena, J., 2014. Business performance and social media: Love or hate?. Business horizons, 57(6), pp.719-728.