There was a time when social media was solely for connecting with friends, family members and also establishing new relationships with people. But as the world kept evolving, people discovered that they could not only use social media for casual conversations but also use it as an opportunity to market their products & services earning profit from customers they would find online.

This article is going to focus on how small business owners can use social media to earn profit from the products or services that they sell online. A small business owner is basically a person that owns a business considered small in terms of its work force, sales volume and organizational structure. Since the business is manageable, the owner can actually manage the social media platforms of his business on his own rather than hiring a person to do the job for him/her. That saves him costs in the long run.

Below are the six tips small business owners can follow straight away and earn big from social media

Create business social media accounts

As a small business owner, you need to separate your personal social media accounts from your business accounts. That means that if you don’t have business accounts, you need to create accounts on social media platforms that suit your business and fill in all the necessary details that describe your business and the type of products/services that you offer in simple language. A well-described business attracts potential customers to check out your page because it has almost everything they’re looking for.

Make online customer research

Since you’re already physically dealing with your customers, before you get online, you need to first make research and know the time when your ideal customers usually be online and use that time to post content so that you can be able to get the highest engagement and also qualified leads.

Set goals and objectives

Goals and objectives are essential if you want to succeed online with your business. Before you post anything, set SMART objectives which are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Goals and objectives will help you focus by choosing metrics that will have the hugest impact on your business. A good SMART objective would be to increase online sales by 30% in the next 6 months.

Create a content calendar

When dealing with social media, you need to have a plan of how you want your content to run throughout the week so that you can get the best possible engagement from your audience. This is possible by creating a content calendar that helps you to post different types of content each day rather than by being too salesy by posting only your products and services which can get boring. A content calendar helps you to make research and come up with more engaging and fun content that can also educate your audience at the same time.

You can follow the 80-20 rule where by 80% of your content is used to inform, educate and entertain your audience while 20% is used to promote your products and services.

Post consistently

When you’re posting, make sure that you post consistently throughout the week so that your online presence is felt by your customers who will always be interested in the kind of content that you post. Make sure that you post at least every day and when posting your products, make sure the pictures are clear and attractive in such a way that will make your customers comment, share and like them and probably become leads.

Engage with your audience

Always engage with your customers online because it shows that you care about them and you’re willing to solve their problems. Sometimes it can become overwhelming going to various social media platforms back-and-forth responding to people’s comments. The best you can do in this case is use social media management tools like Hootsuite and Buffer that can help you place all customers’ messages and comments from the various social media platforms in one dashboard. That can help you respond faster to your customers’ queries.

Track your performance

As you get busy with posting on social media, don’t forget to track your performance and know how your business is fairing on the various social media platforms. Some social media platforms like Facebook have inbuilt analytics that can help you know which content is engaging with your audience and that which is not. That can help you know the kind of content to post often that can build traction to your social media pages.

Following the tips above will not only earn your small-scale business profits but it will also expand your digital presence to new audiences and you won’t regret it.