3 Questions Every Small Business Needs to Ask About Social Media

The first week of May marks the beginning of National Small Business Week, and here at PBJ Marketing, we're familiar with working with companies of all different shapes and sizes.PBJ's broad suite of digital marketing, branding, and advertising solutions can help transform even the smallest businesses into an industry juggernaut. However, according to a recent Marketing Land column, small businesses need to consider which digital marketing solutions will be most beneficial to their company.One such consideration is Social Media…1. Does your small business have the cash to do social media the right way?Back in the day, social media used to be called “unpaid media,” well, those days are over. These days, you have to pay to play. Where does all this money go? There are three major areas:

• Content – Blogs, videos, infographics, and pictures are all valuable content to a social media campaign, and creating it is a full-time job. Do you have the capacity to do this yourself? If not, you'll find yourself paying for an agency, freelancer, or employee to do it, and for a lot of small businesses, this option isn't in the budget.
• Monitoring and analytics – One of the biggest upsides of utilizing social media is the ability to track followers' conversations and engagement. But is your business prepared to invest in social media monitoring tools?
• Ads – It's an undeniable truth that without spending money on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn ads, your small business will be difficult to locate on social media – event with razor sharp content.

2. What is your social media strategy?Running a small business' social media accounts is nothing like managing personal accounts. To start, you need a solid social media strategy with clearly defined goals. A plan should highlight which social media accounts should attract users in addition to a strict posting timeline.Additionally, you need to incorporate your social media accounts into traditional marketing. Emails, sales pages on your website, and handouts should contain social media buttons or prompts to follow, like, and connect on social media.3. Does your small business have the resources to run a successful social media campaigns?Many businesses – both large and small – learn the hard way that you need a dedicated team to ensure your social media accounts are utilized to the best of their abilities. What often happens is a small business creates active accounts for a short period before letting their social media presence go into hibernation.Social media is great for finding new business, but consumers who check your company out of Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and see that you haven't been active since 2013 will view your business in a negative light. Before you get started, make sure you can allocate the man hours to keep your social media accounts up to date.Regardless of the size of your business, social media is a valuable tool. From fielding feedback from current clients to presenting your brand to new customers, we live in an age of two-way communication.