There aren’t many businesses that exist today without being present on social media. From advertising to sharing helpful information and growing a community of like-minded followers, there are many benefits for small businesses that create an authentic presence on social media. The catch? You need to know where to go and what to share to make the most significant impact.
Whether you own a swim school, gymnastics or cheer gym, dance studio or music school, this guide breaks down exactly what your business should be sharing on social media to make the most significant impact.
5 Benefits of Social Media for Small Businesses
To make the most of your social media footprint, you should first understand how to leverage them to benefit your business. Here are five of the top benefits of using social media for small businesses.
Social media boosts brand awareness
With billions of people connected to the socialsphere worldwide, one of the main benefits of establishing a presence on it is to boost brand awareness. We didn’t say it first. Recent studies show 78 percent of small businesses are successful at attracting new customers through social media.
Social media increases organic traffic
Organic what? Organic traffic refers to the visitors that land on your youth activity center’s website as a result of unpaid or organic search results.
While social media can effectively attract new customers to your business, it certainly isn’t the only means of driving traffic. Ranking high on search engines is another very effective way to introduce new potential customers to your brand. Having active social media accounts is one of the best ways to increase your ranking when potential customers are searching for the programs you offer at your swim school, gymnastics gym or dance studio.
Social media builds your online reputation
While it’s good to establish a presence online, you also need to work on customer engagement to build a reputation. Social media is the best tool for a business to proactively interact with customers and engage in positive conversations that all prospective customers can see.
Social media gets your brand message out there
One of the best ways to express the message and voice of your brand is through an authentic social media presence. Whether you’re sharing testimonials, employee recognition or helpful articles, you can use social media to communicate what your brand is all about.
Social media leads to better customer service feedback
With the option to slide into DMs and publicly comment, social media has become one of the most common means of communication for customers who want to reach out to small businesses. Being responsive allows you to provide better customer service.
5 Best Social Media Platforms for Small Businesses
Just like youth activity centers, not all social media platforms are created equal. Wondering which one to join to benefit your small business best? Here are the basics about the top five platforms out there today.
Whether you come from the gymnastics, dance, swim, cheerleading or music industry, every small business can benefit from having a Facebook account. Your Facebook business page can be used for everything from posting important business updates to photos – think #TiltItTuesday, instructor spotlight, athlete of the week and so much more!
Customize your Facebook business page to highlight contact information, your business website, hours of operation and class offerings you have for current enrollments.
We’ll say it: Twitter is one social media platform that doesn’t work for every business. It’s ideal for those who want to share short updates and links to blog posts. Twitter makes it easy to interact with your audience via tweets, which are short messages of up to 280 characters.
LinkedIn is the number-one professional networking platform today. No matter what industry you’re in, if you’re interested in using social media to hire staff or connect with other local businesses, LinkedIn is the place to be.
Even with its recent changes, the ‘gram still lends itself more to visual content. Since most gyms, dance studios, cheerleading, swim and music businesses have fun photos and videos to share, this social media platform would likely benefit any children’s activity business. You can use Instagram to share photos and videos of classes or how-to videos that teach viewers simple skills at home.
Take it one step further by adding links to your Stories and add a link to your website for any prospective students to register online! Hot tip: You no longer have to have 10K followers to add links to Instagram Stories.
YouTube
YouTube is the world’s leading video-sharing platform. If your children’s activity business has anything to teach to viewers, sharing short how-to videos on YouTube is a great way to attract new customers through creative ways of teaching.
Best Way to Utilize Social Media — Have a Plan
Regardless of which social media platform you choose for your children’s activity business, the best way to utilize it is to have a plan. Follow these steps to get started most effectively:
- Set SMART goals
- Create a social media calendar
- Decide which platforms will be best for your business
- Know your audience
- Pay attention to trends
- Create a social media management platform account with a popular agency like Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Loomly.
Knowing which social media platforms to use and what kind of content to post can work wonders for a small business. These days, everything and everyone is online. The more familiar you can get with the space, the more you can grow your customer base.
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