As a small business owner and operator increasing awareness of your brand should be a primary focus of your marketing strategy. Also, being a small business, it is unlikely that you will have the budget to invest in advertising on a large scale. One of the best marketing opportunities to gather momentum and bring awareness to your brand is with social media. There are several things that you can do to with social media to help quickly build an audience and establish your brand.

Get Socially Active
Building your social media brand can be easy with a proper social marketing strategy. In today’s digital environment it takes more than having a Twitter and Facebook profile. You MUST be active on these accounts. Engage with your consumers and build an audience. As some of the current social media cater for different audiences, look at where your business naturally fits within this space – Instagram, Snapchat etc.

Regularly Create Content
Creating relevant content to engage your audience with. The goal is to produce content that your audience will want to share spreading your influence further across other social media platforms.

Embrace Video Content
Video is everywhere in social media today and increasingly more of it is live feed videos on platforms like Live Streaming Youtube and Facebook as well as Periscope and more. This new level of personal interaction with your followers is having a tremendous effect on businesses.

  • Nearly all users admit that product videos help them in making purchasing choices.
  • More than 60% of consumers that watch a video about a product say they are more likely to make an online purchase after viewing.
  • The real estate market has shown that a listed property with a video will receive more than 400% inquires then listed properties without.  

Everyone loves Free Things 
There no better way to spread the word your brand then by getting it into the hands of your customers. Everything from key fobs to pens and Koozies to carry bags. Having your company logo put on some of these kinds of items and giving them away helps to draw attention to anyone that might see or interact with it. Merchandising is still a valid way to entrench brand awareness with everyday objects.

Request Reviews
More than 90% of customers today read product and company reviews before making a purchasing choice. When asked 7 out of 10 consumers will leave product reviews when asked.
Build your reputation on positive reviews all the while helping your SEO. For any poor reviews you get, you should contact the reviewer in an effort to resolve and make your customer happy. Often if you are able to use good customer service, and a poor reviewer is happy with the end result, they will change their review to reflect that.