If you want to be competitive in today’s business world, you probably know that you’re going to have to use social media to market your services. There are billions of internet users worldwide, so you will be reaching a huge audience by marketing on the internet. Plus, since 81% of businesses are marketing online, you’re going to need to as well to stay competitive.

If you’re a marketing professional, you need a social media account, and in fact probably already have at least one. So you’re probably wondering now how you can make the best social media posts with great social media tips for small business to show off your goods and services and be as competitive as you can be.

Here, we’re going to give you our top 5 social media tips for small business on how to create the best social media posts you can and make sure your business is more successful than it ever has been before!

1. Create and Share Engaging Headlines

If you’re going to use an SEO blog (or any blogging platform) as one of the forms of social media that markets your product, it’s important to use engaging headlines throughout your article. Engaging headlines make a person who’s clicked on the post want to stay and read more. They’ll be curious about how the headlines are expanded on.

One way to make headlines engaging is by using keywords. Keywords make people see the same thing over and over throughout the article. This means that they’ll be more likely to read the rest of the article because their interest on the topic will be piqued.

When you use keywords, it’s important to incorporate them throughout the article. Use them especially in headers. That’s what the people skimming are probably going to look at first, since they’re usually in bigger font and short enough to read really quickly.

Relevant headlines make your article easier to find in search engines and advertisements. They also make it easier for people who see a post to skim and figure out if the post is what they want to read.

Your headlines should ideally be quick three to five-word summaries of what that section of the article is about. Make sure it’s the main idea of the section or something that could be used to find it. This will ensure that you’re reaching the audience you want to when people make Google searches or searches within the page.

Buffer put together a list of the most common three word phrases in headlines that went viral:

Image Source: “How to Write The Perfect Headline …” (Buffer)

2. Keep a Consistent Brand Voice

Any good business has a consistent brand voice. By this, we mean that you should have a certain way of talking about your product that packs a consistent personality to your posts. If you have this, your business is going to feel more authentically human than you will if you sound like a marketing robot.

In order to find what your brand voice is in the first place, experiment a little! Have the person that’s making the post try a couple of different things like participating in groups and discussions. See what people seem to engage with more and see what kind of voice your audience seems to find the most authentic.

Have someone that had a good voice for what you want make the posts. Don’t try to be something you’re not- if you use too many big words or too long of sentences, your posts are going to start to sound like a research paper. And trust us, no one scrolling Facebook wants to take a break from their scrolling to read a research paper!

Having a consistent brand voice is more than just authenticity, though. It’s also having one personality that you stick with throughout all your posts. Does your business personality like to make bad puns? Use a consistent catchphrase? Go with that!

Pro-Tip: You can use your logo and company motto consistently in posts. This will let people see it many times and start to like and think of your logo as its own personality!

3. Don’t Be Afraid Of Emojis

Did you know that emojis in posts make user engagement go up by 15%?

People like things that they can interact with because it makes them feel like they have some part in what they’re reading or seeing. Audience engagement is important. It’s fun to be able to take little quizzes or post comments saying what you think, so people are going to want to engage with your posts if you make it so this can happen, but people are going to take these quizzes and things more if there are cute emojis.

In basically any social media platform, there’s going to be an option to use emojis. It’s easier if you’re making a post from mobile for obvious reasons, but if you’re on a desktop, there’s usually a section during posting where you can browse emojis. If not, there are sites all over the internet where you can easily copy/paste whatever emoji you want!

When you’re deciding where and when to use emojis in your post, think about the way that you’ve structured it. What parts of the post are the most relevant to what you’re saying? If you’re going to use a happy face with hearts anywhere, that’s where it should be. You’ll draw attention to the most important part of the post that way.

Also, think about where you can use cool emojis. Everyone likes fun emojis that they don’t see in other places often, like the fireworks or the emoji that has two swords crossed over each other. Think about where you can use fun, rare emojis. This is a surefire way to boost audience interest.

Emoji’s On Instagram

The social media platform that benefits the most from the use of emoji is by far Instagram. When users scroll through Instagram, you want your content to stand out from the rest of their feed. Emoji are a great way to do this. According to Quintly, the use of emoji’s lead to a 15% higher interaction rate over posts with no emoji use:

Image Source: “Emojis Lead up to 47.7% More Interactions on Instagram” (Quintly, 2017)

4. Always Include a Visual

Did you know that half of all internet traffic comes in the form of video streaming and pictures? People really like to be able to see what you’re talking about. It helps to visualize and understand what’s going on. Besides, videos are a great source of entertainment and information.

This is definitely something that you can take advantage of in marketing your product. When you’re posting on pretty much any form of social media, from Twitter to an SEO blog post, there’s an option to include images. If there isn’t, you can put links on anchor texts to engaging videos.

There are also social media sites like Instagram or Youtube that are exclusively for sharing the pictures and videos that people want to see. If you don’t have these forms of social media, consider making an account. The best social media posts to get traffic are fun and interactive ones like these.

Also, think about the kinds of pictures and videos you post. Sure, graphs are great but think of creative ways that you can get your message out there in a way that people of all ages will like. Funny internet memes are popular and can be used to spark interest in a topic.

Just get creative with what you’re posting, use social media tools if you must to make marketing easier. You’ll be sure to reach a lot of people and make your service more enticing.

5. Share Relevant Hashtags

Like we said before, it’s important to have not just anyone finds your posts, but to have the right people find your posts. This means that you not only have to use hashtags, but you need to make sure that your post appears in search engines both within and outside of the website when people search for the topic.

One way to do this is with hashtags. When people type the topic that they want to know about in Twitter or Facebook- or even Google- they want to find the best social media posts about that topic, not about some other random thing. Using hashtags in your post will make sure that these users are reached.

Hashtags are also a great way to encourage people to interact with your content. Not only do they make it easier to search for you, but there’s nothing that gets the adrenaline pumping more than trending a hashtag. Be sure to encourage this and you’re sure to have more success!

You want your page to appear when searched within the social media platform itself. This means you want your page to be one of the top pages that post about similar content. Post #often and post #well and you’ll get your content out there!

Have The Best Social Media Posts!

Now you know how to make sure that you’re making the best social media posts, interactive, and show up in search engines with the above social media tips for small business.

Let us know how it goes and continue to follow our blog for more ticks of the #digitalmarketing trade!