Currently in the United States and Canada, It is estimated that 70-80% of small business owners are utilizing social media.

Now when I first became a Wizard of Ads Partner in 2012, that number was only 50-60% of small businesses. So that number’s gone up and yet there’s still a lot of small businesses that are struggling with their social media presence.

Here are the top nine reasons why small businesses are still struggling with their social media accounts.

Why You’re Struggling

1. Inconsistent Posting

There are a lot of small businesses that think they could post every now and then… and get away with it. And the truth is You can’t. Consistency is key. You wanna consistently be posting.

If you post more sporadically, your content won’t be as efficient.

2. Ignoring Engagement

Remember it’s social media. It’s not sales media. You need to be engaging with your potential customers online.

Not just posting. This is commenting, liking, and going in engaging with people who may not follow you yet. It’s all about finding unique and creative ways to engage with the people around you. It’s social… social media.

And that also goes for negative comments too. You gotta know how to respond. My best advice is to delete the comments and block them.

3. Poor Quality Content

Quality of content can mean a variety of different things. Is your content relevant? Is the picture or video blurry? Is it easy to understand whether it be text or through vocal words?

All of these things can play a factor in the quality of your content. And if the quality of your content isn’t high enough, then odds are your potential audience isn’t gonna engage with it.

4. Not Adapting to Changes

Social media is always evolving. So our strategies and the way we interact on social media need to be evolving too. The algorithms are changing, and so is the way that our potential customers are utilizing social media. Ensuring that the small businesses that we work with stay up-to-date on those things is vital to their longevity and their long-term social media success.

This does include social media trends. Everything from trending audio to trending styles of social media content, and what kind of content works. Again, the easiest way to do that is to engage and interact with other social media users to see where those trends and evolutions are leading.

5. Focusing Only on Promotions

Small businesses that only focus on promotions miss a lot of engagement. If you’re too focused on only promotional content, you’re gonna start pushing customers away.

They want to socialize when they come to social media platforms. They’re not coming for promotions.

The easiest rule of thumb to follow here is the 80/20 rule. I suggest that 80% of your content be relevant and engaging and only about 20% be promotional or trying to sell your product/service.

Now that doesn’t mean that you’re not trying to engage with that other eighty percent and get your potential customers onto your website to look at your products but we’re not sell sell sell sell selling. Remember, social media. We wanna be social, social, social, social.

6. Not Using Your Analytics

The analytics are there for a reason. They’re for us to see what’s working and what’s not working and to see ourselves improving or where we need more improvement.

Not using your analytics is hurting you. And a lot of small businesses might not even think to check their analytics. That’s one of the reasons we need to be one step ahead of the game for our clients.

7. Limited Resources

As we all know, Lots of small businesses are running on limited resources, whether that be money, whether that be time, at the end of the day, limited resources are one of the main reasons that small businesses struggle on social media.

A lot of times, business owners are either wearing too many hats or putting too many hats on some of their employees to wear which might include social media. In reality, they could be paying us to do a better job on social media whereas we won’t be having to, spread ourselves so thin.

8. Choosing the Wrong Platforms

Yes. There are so many social media platforms now. Both general social media platforms and industry-specific social media platforms you can choose the wrong social media platform for your business to be on.

Now I know oftentimes we talk about how we’re trying to reach a majority of people rather than trying to pinpoint a smaller audience.

And I agree. And social media agrees.

But for some of our clients, there are certain social media platforms that will work better for them than others, and knowing the difference based on those clients’ needs is valuable and important because when left to their own devices, some small businesses pick the wrong platforms to be on.

Last but not least, we’ve got…

9. Lack of Skills and Experience

One of the main reasons that small businesses struggle with social media and their digital presence in general is their own lack of experience and lack of skills in digital marketing.

And the truth is that’s not their fault.

At the end of the day, as experts this is where we come in. Being successful on social media requires a set of skills that not many small business owners have. Everything from photography and videography, photo and digital editing to graphic design, to copywriting, to knowledge of algorithmic strategies, and how you can leverage those algorithms to your advantage.

That takes years of experience and years of trial and error to cultivate those skills.

Now that we’ve covered the nine ways that small businesses tend to fail on social media, let me talk about five reasons that social media is important to a small business’s digital presence.

Why You Should Step Things Up

1. Brand Awareness

Social media allows your small business to increase your brand awareness in an organic setting where you’re engaging with your potential customers one-on-one.

If you’re posting consistently and you’re engaging with your audience and you’re engaging with your followers. You’ll be creating brand awareness in a very relational and very organic “non-salesy” way.

2. Engagement

As just mentioned, you’re engaging with your customers one-on-one. You have the opportunity to take that relationship you’re building with your potential customers and strengthen it outside of your general advertising.

This also allows customers to ask small businesses more personalized questions and get more personal customized responses back.

3. Increase Traffic

A healthy presence increases traffic without spending quite as much money because of the organic opportunities that social media offers.

You can create sales funnels through your social media accounts that will lead your potential followers to specific products or product pages on your website to increase customer engagement as well as your sales rate for cost-effective marketing.

4. Boosting Content

Social media allows you the opportunity to see how a post does before adding money behind it to boost it or turn it into an ad. This allows you to save a little bit of money and the fact that you know generally how an ad’s gonna do before you actually put money behind it.

Also, social media has ample opportunity for completely organic brand awareness, which allows you to increase your engagement, and increase your audience without actually spending money, depending on your skill set and how you utilize social media platforms.

5. Community Building

Social media platforms give you the opportunity to bring your following and your audience together in a community environment.

You can create public or private Facebook groups. You can create Reddit platforms, You can create ways that will allow your potential customers to engage with you and engage with each other, building ultimately a tribe and a community around small businesses and your small business’s core values.

These are just five of the many benefits that social media advertising can bring to your clients. There are countless other ways that you can use social media to increase your brand awareness without increasing your budget significantly.

In fact, sometimes you can do it without increasing your budget at all. If you’re interested in learning more about social media and how your clients can be leveraging social media to their advantage… Please feel free to reach out to me. I would love to speak with them and I’d love to speak with you.

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