SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SMALL BUSINESS

Are you tasked with social media marketing for a business or brand? If so, you’ve seen plenty of statistics thrown your way. But which ones are worth paying attention to?

Here are 4 statistics we think you should pay attention to and why (Source):

Who will you find on social media?

The short answer is almost everyone! But where you will find different demographics of people — meaning different target markets — varies by age, education level, career and gender.

As a spa owner, you only have so much time available to manage your marketing efforts because you are also juggling dozens of other management tasks from ordering supplies and greeting clients to setting up schedules and, possibly, making sure the garbage is taken out at the end of the day. You don’t have time to be on every possible social media network.

Instead, focus your energy on the top networks your best customers are using.

In most cases, that will be Facebook (used by nearly 3 of 4 American adults), and Instagram (used by more than half of all young adults under age 30, an age group less active on Facebook).

Social media is a fast-moving medium. Unlike a billboard, which is there for days or weeks at a time for all passing motorists to see, a social media post is fleeting. The half-life (or the time it takes a for a social media post to achieve half of the total views it will acquire) can be less than a half-hour on some platforms. It is really only there to be seen for a short time.

(See our best tips for healthcare providers on social media, including how to keep accounts and content fresh here: How To Conquer Social Media To Increase Web Traffic For Healthcare.)

You already know that social media posts have a fleeting lifespan (Get More From Your Content: 21 Life-Lengthening Tips), so it is important to not only post frequently, but to target your posts to the time of day your followers and target market is most likely to be using social media.

If your social media accounts are well-established, the best strategy to follow is to use the insights available through both Facebook and Instagram to see when your specific accounts get the most traffic and when your followers are most active, both by days of the weeks and by time of day. Schedule your posts to hit just when the most followers are active to maximize readership.

(Dig further into the data with the instructions here: What Your Small Business Can Learn From Facebook Insights.)