Social media has become an integral part of our day-to-day lives. Businesses of all size and shapes have started making the most of available mediums. Today we will try to anatomize tips on social media for small businesses. There are a plethora of small businesses eyeing social medium to promote their business/services. However, majorly these small businesses are failing or not being able to make optimum use of social media for their business growth. There are many theories and strategies on how to effectively use social media for established brands, but the topic social media for small businesses is seldom addressed. According to Digital state of eMarketing India 2017 Octane Research:60% small businesses promote their business on social media. 50% focus on SEO and 35% use multichannel marketing funnel.
70% small businesses consider content strategy as their primary marketing activity.
52% business owners are using social media as to efficiently address customer engagement.
More than 20% of business owners said that they are making 50% plus profit using social media.The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on an application of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is important to address the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media for small businesses.Social media for small businesses is a great way for emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional mediums. Social media for small businesses gives brands an edge of control over the content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way dialogue process, it helps businesses to instantly identify what is benefitting them. Social media for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth, which is one of the best tools for emerging businesses.Social Media for small businesses | 10 Tips to effectively use Social MediaDefine your Target Audience
The first and foremost important part that small businesses should focus on is to define their target audience. This helps small businesses to device their social media strategy accordingly. The target audience should be defined basis age group, sex, location, users’ online behaviors, their likes, interests, and preferences. For niche products, business owners can even target users based on their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone. Audience targeting plays a very crucial role in the outcome of the results. For e.g.: a local shop selling footwear should not target users with interest in entertainment. The shop definitely won’t get the desired results.Set achievable goals
Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must understand this basic fact. Generally, when a new business starts selling on social media, there is palpable excitement is achieving more than set targeted sales. Businesses need to set goals which are upwards and forward. To achieve enormous goals, small businesses start updating social feed with multiple updates in shorter duration. This leads to user’s disinterest in the product/service. The set goals should be in sync with brand’s core capabilities and expertise. For e.g.: if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn’t set a goal to repair maximum shoes in their area.Choose the right medium
By now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid campaigns can be conducted at a relatively low cost as compared to traditional mediums. It is in this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the bandwagon and creating profiles on all the available platforms. Creating social profile doesn’t hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is advisable for SME’s to first identify the right platform through which they can maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won’t get a plausible response as compared to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.Promote your core product/services
Since each and every business is riding in the social media wave, it is important for a them to promote their core product/services. Nowadays, we see a lot of businesses promoting their services as well as promoting peripheral products/services, which revolves around their core product/services. Majority of the times, this SME’s doesn’t have capabilities to fulfill a requirement, which can lead to a bad word of mouth for their business on social media platforms. Let us go back to our example; if a shoe seller is trying to aggressively promote socks instead of shoes, it is not going to benefit the business in the long run.Create quality content
Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the target audience, setting achievable goals, choosing the right medium and promoting the right product/services let us now take a look at the type of content a business should promote on their social pages. A business should always focus on creating good quality content rather than not-good quantity content. Even if the business updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant to their business, advocates about its core products send across a clear message it is considered as a good quality content. Antagonistically, if a business posts multiple updates which aren’t even relevant to the business’s products and services leads to users considering the business as fake/spam. Also, new businesses should try and refrain from promoting other businesses on their social platforms initially.Create a content calendar
Making a small business successful on social platforms is no small task. It takes a lot of efforts for the businesses to keep up their conversion ratio. One such effort is to create a content calendar. Small businesses must anticipate important events and create a content calendar accordingly. Ideally, a content calendar must be planned a month in advance but an even weekly content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to avoid any last minute hassles, strategize much more effectively and it also helps in creating curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.Test and re-test
Social media is highly unpredictable. The content a business posts today, might not work for tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always test their content before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also applies to the platform a small business chooses to promote. Small business owners must always don the consumer’s hat before posting about any product feature, updates, schemes or offers. A consumer’s perspective is the key when testing the content that has to be uploaded.Look for inspiration
Small businesses must always look for inspiration from a competitor who is successful in the same category. Copy pasting competitors idea or content is not the answer. Small businesses must look for the kind of content its competitors are putting up and derive their own strategies subsequently. Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to create their own content that is appreciated by one and all. It helps in increasing brand consideration, brand visibility thereby increasing conversions for the business.Calculate ROI
Even a small promotional budget is not justifiable if there is no mechanism to calculate its return on investment. It is more important in case of small businesses. It is very important for a small business to keep a tab on the budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI related to it. If a certain promotion is not doing well or the business is not getting desired results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to generate quality conversions.Analyze and Re-strategize
There can be umpteen instances where a particular campaign/promotion might not work for a business. That doesn’t mean that the promotion is wrong or the product/service is not good. Doing an analysis of the campaign is as important as setting the objective. This helps the business to formulate their upcoming strategies in more effective ways. At the end of every campaign, brands must note down the learning’s from that campaign and identify if the content/idea was appreciated by their fans or not. This helps businesses to skip the non-performing updates from future communications.Final Thoughts
Social media for small businesses is definitely beneficial and fruitful. If followed correctly, small businesses can benefit tremendously from the power of social media promotions.

There are a multitude of home based business opportunities and finding the one that works for you is crucial if you are striving for a work/life balance or simply want to be your own boss. A multi level marketing (MLM) business is one of the viable opportunities for a home based business. Making an MLM business work for you as a home based business requires proper planning and research.If you are looking for a get rich quick scheme this is not it. If you are willing to put in time and effort to make your business work, this is one of the ways to go. There are many MLM business opportunities on the internet. Some are scams and some are viable money making opportunities if you are willing to put forth the effort.To make this a viable money making business requires first finding a company to work with that has good products and services and one that has been around for many years and is not a “fly-by-night” company.To succeed in a MLM business requires several steps, some of which are discussed below.1. RecruitmentThis is very important because MLM businesses involve network marketing and made up of downlines and uplines. Uplines are those who recruited you and others whereas downloads are the people that you recruit. Those recruited including you will sell the company’s products and services and well as the business model to others.Commissions are made on the sales or purchases made by others. If you have a significant downline making sales and purchases, your income potential will be immense. To put it simply, you can only succeed if your downline if successful which means that you need to properly manage your team or downline to keep them active and motivated.Uplines and downlines must work together towards a common goal of success. Without the upline or downline, your MLM business will become fruitless and will not function properly.If your do not work to increase your network or downline, you will have no income and shall become ineffective in your MLM home based business. There shall be no marketing of goods and services and no one handling customer needs and desires which will lead to no consumptions of the company’s products and services.2. Maintaining Minimum SalesIf the company provides good products and services, you and your downline should not have a problem marketing the products and services to others. Keep up with the sales and purchases and related expenses on a daily basis to determine whether your business is progressing the way that you want it to.3. Training DownlineReputable MLM companies should provide the tools that you need to enable you to train your downline to become more effective representatives of the company. Since this is network marketing, relationship building is crucial to success. You and your downline need to have the same vision. Effectively training your downline may be the difference between success and failure. In addition, the MLM company should provide tools to help you become more effective in your efforts that you put into the MLM home based business.

Like other niche industries, the travel industry is an entity of its own. Consequently, the ideal marketing solutions for this industry are travel-specific and dedicated to this large and very dynamic field. Marketing to the travel industry involves its various sub-categories like hotels, tour operators, airlines, etc.Yet like most marketing done today, travel marketing is intensely data-driven-it has to be in order to be cost-effective and ultimately successful.

It’s All about the Numbers
A careful examination of data reflects a minutia of details that are important to businesses working in the travel industry. Depending on the data you examine, it might tell you whether it’s profitable to market your boutique hotel to families or what time of year it’s best to market your airline ticket specials. Marketing, of course, is an investment so it’s important that the investment pays you back. Choosing a travel marketing specialist with reliable data is, of course, the ideal way to begin your strategic marketing plan.

Data for Business Optimization
How can data help specific travel-related businesses market better to increase business? Agencies that capture data find it so important that their entire business models are completely based upon it. Moreover, it has fallen to their expertise with managing this data to update it. When businesses contract with a travel marketing firm they have access to the data sets they need to make the smartest decisions about their marketing campaign-and ultimately about their money. Of course, it isn’t always easy to understand the numbers or the trends within those numbers so companies have also come to rely upon the optimization specialists in their preferred travel marketing agency who understand how to transform data into an actionable marketing plan.

Translating the Numbers
How can data help you if you are a car rental company or a hotel chain? In other words, what can a travel marketing agency do for you? Whatever the business-hotel, car rental, cruise ship, airline, or some other tourism-based endeavor-a travel marketing agency can help the business expand its customer base, tailor its operations to its most successful offerings, and inevitably make more money. It does this through various measures depending on the business in question.

In the case of hotels, for instance, a travel marketing firm can drive bookings through the hotel’s website, increase brand awareness with data-backed results, reach likely customers, and even find ways to engage frequent flyers. Similarly, travel marketing agencies can increase bookings for cruise and airlines by recommending timely offers. Moreover, it may increase profit for these businesses by identifying ancillary revenue opportunities.

Working with the Experts
While a company’s own marketing executives have definitive know-how and a level of business-specific expertise that is immensely important for any company, the travel marketing agency has a broad level of travel-specific expertise that regularly looks at the big travel picture-a perspective that can be essential for a travel-related business. Working with a renowned agency is a decided way to expand and improve business through carefully wrought marketing solutions that are based on reliable data. Chances are if you are a business that relies on tourism or travel, this data and these experts could dramatically help you too.