Technology, Internet and Social Media have gone through a lot of changes. It has brought so much impact into our daily lives and even in many marketing strategies of every business today. But how shall we keep at pace in this world of technology and be able to cope up with change?
These are some ideas to keep your small business marketing and social media going at sync: 

1. Employing affordable tools to do heavy liftingSocial media is so massive that almost 1.65 billion people have a Facebook account and 350,000 tweets every minute. Of course you cannot scroll and see what everyone is posting but with the use of the right tool, you can be able to see what’s on trend. What you need is a tool that can crawl the web and find a high quality content to share for you. Tools like DrumUp lets you stay active on social media.
2. Share only what resonates with your readers
   Invest a good amount of time knowing your audience because only from there you’ll understand their behaviour. Say for example you run a coffee shop Facebook page, you must then be posting all good things about the primary and secondary products you sell. Posting something that will engage your customers to your business. Relevance is the key on posting.
3. Organise your efforts                        
   Good planning is important for every business. This will save you time and be wearier of the things that you must do for today and the coming days. It serves as a guide for your future activities. Suppose that you have 10 themes for your social media that your market would love. You should allot these themes to your calendar on a cycle of 1 -10 and then back to start. This way the audience could see variety to your social media page.           
4. Include content from diverse sources in varying format
   It is not just about posting something new but also posting something differently with a personal touch and unique style. You can use several formats such as videos, blogs, gifs, vlogs, infographics and more. Visuals are important nowadays as it increases willingness to engage by 80 percent. 
   
5. Make the best of your content
   It is fine to reuse and recycle old posts for as long you do some minor changes which will make it more interesting for your audience. You can also use some hash tags to make it easier to find over the internet. Another way is reposting old stuff and re-purposing it. Just pick up a new angle to discuss and get an easy way to get results.
   
6. Add your own voice to every post
   This means more personal touch in every post that you do. It will always portray personalisation and authenticity. You can state an opinion, add personal greetings or ask a question. But it is important to consider what your audience would love to read and what topic would excite them. 
   This is what makes a business stand out amongst the crowd, it builds trust and loyalty and the rate of retained customers are a lot higher through effective marketing and social media strategies. Adding your voice to every post shows what you believe in, how you feel and your business ethos.   
   Overall, the greatest asset a small business can provide to its market is personality. The more you engage your business towards your clients, the more your customers will be intrigued and feel valued. A lot of businesses nowadays miss this important rule as they focus on the sales side to their business than the experience and customer service side.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

If you’re not using Facebook for your business or not sure how Facebook can help grow your business, then you need to read this article…
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In this article you’ll discover:

• What three things you should be doing on Facebook
• And how these steps will help grow your business

What you need to do:
Engage daily with your audience, by posting memes, quotes, articles and videos to entertain your audience. Once per day is enough to start increasing your engagement. Keep up with the latest news & trends in your industry and keep your audience updated.
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How will posting daily help my business?
Users on social media want to socialise and be entertained. If you provide quality posts, you’ll get people talking about you (increase your brand awareness) and you’ll get people following your page.
As your followers grow, you can mix in your special offers and promotions every week or two. But you shouldn’t post too often about your products/services as people will stop following your page.
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Always remember this golden question your audience ask… “What’s in it for me?”

What you need to do:
Blogging is a way of educating your audience about your industry & product/services. As well as entertaining, people also want to learn and better themselves.

The more you blog the better, but you should aim for at least once a week. You should be blogging about stuff related to your industry that can teach them something new.

​There are several benefits to blogging, but I’ll cover that in another post. But what you need to know now, is that blogging increases also your followers AND you become an authority in your field.


How will blogging  help my business?
​Blogging can help in two ways:

1. By directing them to your blog page from Facebook to read your full blog

• People will read your benefit-driven headline and your exciting opening paragraph on your Facebook post.
• They’ll then click on your link to read the rest of the post and land on your blog page.
• On that page you should have your lead magnet offers or your promotions with simple forms that will entice your readers to take action. This is a simple way to generate email leads which you can feed into your sales funnel.

2. You should have Facebook pixels on your blog page. What are pixels?

Basically, it tells Facebook that a Facebook user has visited your website. So when you create a Facebook ad campaign, you can tell Facebook to show your advert to those visitors.

This is known as retargeting. Even if you don’t capture their email address when they read your blog through your offers, you can still target them through Facebook ads. But what should you advertise with FB ads? This is the third thing you should be doing…

What you need to do:
Finally, you should be advertising to your target audience using Facebook ads.

NOTE: You should not be advertising your core products on Facebook

• Advertise free useful valuable information (related to your product) in exchange for their email address,
  
• Don't advertise your main products. Because people don’t usually click on a Facebook advert and buy.
  
• Followers click on a Facebook advert if there’s something free or valuable for them. Remember the golden question your audience ask…

​How will Facebook Ads & Lead Magnets help my business?
As an example, we at Tick Square offer a free eBook (how to use the internet to grow your business in 3 easy steps) as one of our lead magnets. We advertise this on Facebook with an attractive heading, a good image and a call-to-action button

By understanding a Facebook user’s behaviour. You can set out a Facebook Strategy that’s designed to generate leads. From these leads, you can start to generate sales by sending them well-thought out emails or follow-up calls.
So here are the 3 Facebook Steps for your business that will generate leads:

1. Entertain - Posting once a day
2. Educate - Blogging regularly
3. Facebook ads - for your lead magnets

By Omar Tikrity, Co-Founder of Tick Square Ltd | LinkedIn Profile

Did you know that 70% of small businesses say that they’ve found new customers through social media? Your business, whatever it is you sell, needs to be using social media to grow your brand and increase your sales.

Not having social media for your business today, is like pulling out a Nokia in a meeting when everyone else is using an iPhone.
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Having social media is not just about attracting new clients. But it’s also about relationship building. The better business owners understand social media, the better they can use it for their companies.
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Here are 8 benefits that business owners need to understand about social media...

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