In today’s digital landscape, small business owners are faced with the unique challenge and opportunity of building a social media presence. While social media can be a highly effective tool in developing and nurturing a customer base, it can also be difficult for small business owners to keep up everything that is required to run successful social media channels alongside their other many responsibilities.
Posting on social media and managing social media accounts can quickly become its own full-time job, especially when posting manually. While it’s sometimes necessary to post on social media without much planning—to let people know about a last-minute business hours change, for example—business owners will quickly find themselves burned out and frustrated if they are only relying on manual posting.
By planning posts ahead of time and utilizing automation tools, business owners can see a drastic reduction in the number of hours required to run successful social media channels. Today’s AI technology makes it easier than ever to delegate some of the heavy lifting to automation tools like SocialPost.ai. This means that your social media channels look active and engaging, even on the days when life takes over and your attention is directed elsewhere—a common occurrence for business owners.
If you have ever set the intention to regularly use social media as a tool for small business, you know that at one point or another, you’ve been pulled away from your initial intention. Running a small business means wearing many hats, and days can easily get away from you. Urgent issues require immediate attention, and before you know it, another week has gone by, and that content schedule is sitting there, unused.
When it comes to social media, consistency is key. Both your audience and the algorithm will reward your consistency with engagement, because both are looking for regular, high-quality content that is delivered on a semi-regular schedule. This doesn’t have to mean that you always post on the same days or at the same times. It does mean that if you regularly go weeks between posts on your channels, you may begin to lose followers. You are also far less likely to show up on feeds, searches, and explore pages, because the algorithm is unlikely to point towards an account that doesn’t post regularly.
Automating your social media posts is a way to safeguard yourself against those unavoidable schedule disruptions—whether you have a last minute order or have to cover for a sick employee, your social media platforms will continue to look active and direct new and existing customers to your content. AI automation tools can work like a digital assistant, helping you hit your intended number of posts while you turn your attention to other more pressing issues.
At the end of a busy week, you can look back over what you’ve accomplished and feel confident that you’ve hit your goals when it comes to social media. Over weeks, months, and years, this consistent approach to posting online will ensure that your online following is engaged, loyal, and growing over time.
By posting consistently, you’re hitting a key standard in growing your online presence and effectively using social media as a tool to help your brand stand out. A strong online presence with regular content is a sure way to engage audiences who have come to expect social media content from their favourite brands. Not posting regularly means that any posts you do make are less effective, making the effort to results ratio low. This can be where some business owners become frustrated with social media because it isn’t working the way they expect it to. Some may even give up at this point, leaving pages inactive for months at a time.
Connecting with audiences is easier than ever—that’s because one-on-one consultations have given way to savvy audiences doing their research online, and learning about brands by the information that’s available there. Less time is required to connecting with individual leads, leaving busy leaders more time to do other essential work.
This vast digital landscape also provides a unique challenge: the digital marketplace is saturated with content and competitors, especially for small businesses in all industries.
Small business owners can leverage this opportunity and stand out from the crowd by using social media to their advantage. Posting consistent high-value content is a reliable way to acquaint your audience with your brand, what you do, and what makes you uniquely able to meet their needs. Potential customers can get to know you through social media content, online reviews, and word of mouth.
Take the example of two local bakeries. One business posts once a week: an aesthetic shot of completed cakes and other baked goods. The other posts four times a week, and includes a “bake with us” video that shows audiences a behind-the-scenes look at how their favourite treats are created. Both bakeries might be exceptional, but the second approach—consistent and transparent—is far more likely to come to mind when it’s time for a follower to buy a birthday cake.
Don’t let the word authority feel too serious—anyone who is committed to their craft can stand out as a trusted expert, and that’s how and why so many small business owners get started in the first place. By regularly demonstrating your knowledge, process, and engaged presence, you can win over audiences that want to see the people behind the brand.
Posting high-value content doesn’t have to take over your schedule when using digital tools like social media automation. There are many strategies that can allow you to maximize your presence online without making it a full-time endeavour or needing to hire someone else to manage your accounts.
When it comes to positioning yourself as a trusted leader in your industry, there are few things that will be as effective as regular, high quality content posted across all of your social media channels. If your main competitors are other small businesses, then your advantage is even greater: rely on digital tools to do the hard work for you, and rely on automation to post on your behalf even when life happens and requires you to focus elsewhere.
While this may become the norm in the future, using automation to post online is not yet a regular practice, helping you to stand out from the rest of a market—even a highly saturated one.
As a small business owner, your number one priority is likely operations (although you might sometimes feel that every priority can feel like a first priority). This is a normal reality for many business owners. Running a business is a lot of work, some of it planned and much of it emerging as time goes. That can mean that less “urgent” tasks like marketing fall to the wayside, and although your business might have everything it needs to function, it’s lacking a key component: an influx of new customers or clients.
This is where regularly posting on social media can make a meaningful difference. Regardless of your industry, it’s likely that your audience is online and using social media. While the platform may vary depending on your demographic, your potential customers and clients are out there somewhere, and regularly posting is the best way to connect with them.
In today’s digital-first world, social media is often the first place that customers hear about a business, leading them to pay a visit, make a purchase, or make a further inquiry. It’s also where existing customers can stay updated and learn about new products and services. These regular posts can trigger established patrons to share the information with someone else who might be interested in the offerings.
In short, regular and current posts are the best ways to make your brand discoverable and top of mind. If regular posts feel like a challenge because of an already overextended schedule, there are automation tools that can help.
Let new and existing customers know that you’re open for business and present—online, as well as elsewhere—with regular posting. Automations ensure that you don’t miss key days and weeks, making it possible for your customers to discover you. With automations, you can worry less about hitting the post button yourself and focus more on the other tasks that keep your business running and thriving.
Your employees keep your small business running, and they’re essential to maintaining a positive environment for your customers and clients. Unfortunately, the fast-paced nature of running a business can make it difficult to acknowledge employee efforts as often as you’d like to.
By integrating employee appreciation into your social media content, you’re achieving two things at once: you’re encouraging a positive work environment that recognizes the hard work of your staff while also giving your audience a peek behind the curtain at your business’s internal culture.
Posting online about your staff can encourage and motivate them, letting them know that you do recognize their efforts and that acknowledgement should go beyond a paycheque. It also lets your customers know that when they patronize your business, they’re supporting an environment that treats its team well. This can be a huge motivator for customers—many of them have experience working for small businesses, particularly retail. They can feel good about supporting a business that clearly appreciates the people who keep it running.
Social media posts about your employees, including employee spotlights, achievements, and team updates create an inclusive and positive culture that can elevate your business as an attractive option for those seeking part or full time work—this is especially important if your business is expanding and your team is growing.
This is just one more type of content that can be automated with the use of AI. By automating employee-centric social media posts, you can be sure that you’re on schedule for getting out these important posts and not falling behind when it comes to acknowledging your staff. A consistent practice of posting about your employees is a relatively small gesture that can have a meaningful impact.
Employees that feel appreciated and acknowledged are more likely to put in the work to help your business thrive, provide excellent service to your customers, and stay on for extended periods of time, creating less turnover and need for training within your team. They’re more likely to act as good references for your business—often the most important reviews come from staff themselves. Don’t miss an opportunity to let your employees know how important and valued they are to your business and vision. Make it easier when you automate employee appreciation posts.
We’ve already talked a bit about how vital a business owner’s time is. Often, the business owner is the only person who can complete key tasks and processes—there’s no way to have another member of your team sub in if you can’t make it to an important meeting, deal with an urgent client issue, or make decisions on the business’s behalf.
When it comes to running a business, every minute is essential. Unfortunately, that doesn’t reduce the need for completing a huge variety of tasks. Social media often falls to the bottom of that list, even if is seen as essential. Other tasks are often fires to put out, and require immediate attention with no option to defer the task to a later time.
If you find yourself pushing your social media work to the bottom of the list and cramming in a post whenever you can, it might be time to consider some new options when it comes to social media. Your online presence shouldn’t fluctuate based on your daily workload, although that’s often what happens.
Automating your social media posts can create a more regular and even presence online, even when your other tasks take over. This is also a great option if you find yourself getting lost in different rabbit holes on social media. Logging on to post can quickly turn into research—what are other businesses doing?—or even thoughtless scrolling. While there’s time for both, there might not be enough of it during a business owner’s day.
Save yourself the distraction and stay off social media—much easier done when your content is already queued up and ready for posting. This way, the time you spend on writing, designing, planning, and posting content can be used on other tasks. You can better focus on the things on your plate without feeling like you’re missing on something essential.
And posting on social media as a business owner is essential—it’s one of the keys to engaging your existing audience and drawing in new customers and clients.
The online world moves quickly—often shifting through trends in a matter of days or weeks. Staying on trend can make a huge difference for small businesses, improving their visibility at key moments. However, staying well-versed in trends as a small business owner could easily become an impossible task.
Automation with AI can make it much easier to post content that’s on trend, keeping your brand topical and relevant. Whether you’re trying to keep up with your industry or talking to a broader audience, tapping into key trends is a smart and impactful way to stand out in the crowd. Automating these posts can make it much easier to hit on the right trends at the right time, without doing hours of research yourself.
Save yourself the time of sorting through what’s in the moment and what’s already passé—automate your content, and never fall behind the trend cycle.
Hopefully this post has given you some ideas of how automating your social media content can make a huge difference to your small business’s brand in a positive way. Automation makes it easy to stay consistent, build trust with your audience, attract new customers and nurture existing ones, improve employee culture, better manage your schedule, and keep up with trends.
If you’re curious about what automation looks like, head over to https://SocialPost.ai and get started today. This online AI tool helps you with both content creation and posting, taking the most cumbersome parts of social media off your plate so you can focus on other things. SocialPost.ai offers automation, scheduling, analytics, and personalized content, working as your own personal social media personal assistant.
The best part? It’s free to use with no credit card required. That means you can begin automating your social media content right away. From now on, social media isn’t something you have to tackle alone as a busy small business owner. You can rely on the assurance of personalized content created by your own personal AI automation tool.
Get started today and watch your social media presence grow effortlessly.