3 Ways to Have Reach Without Followers: A SmallBiz How-To

A Small Business Digital Media Presentation of Vermont Small Business Marketing Associates

@VSBmarketing | www.VSBMA.com

3 Ways to Have Reach Without Followers: A SmallBiz How-To

Do you focus on ‘Likes’ and ‘Followers’ in your online marketing strategy without putting emphasis on reach?

Here are three ways to achieve reach for your small business.

Part 1: Take The Hashtag To Heart

The reality of hashtags as a search booster has not hit many small business owners, especially those relying on Facebook for their primary social media presence.

The ability to search by hashtag is new to Facebook, and the importance of this functionality has been slow to sink in with administrators.

Take The Hashtag To Heart

Hashtags connect content in social networks and give relevant content visibility. When a network user searches a keyword or clicks a hashtag, they see a dedicated news feed of all the posts within the network that include that hashtag.

The content they see there goes beyond content in their own news feed and does not have to be related to what they already like or follow.

What does this mean for small business?

If network users do not follow or like your page, they still can see and find your content, and that’s what reach is all about. In Facebook, you can see your page’s reach score in the insights section.

You also can see the number of people who saw your posts at the bottom of each post. Even if your business page has no likes, you will still achieve reach with a dedicated hashtag strategy!

Add hashtags to everything you post.

In Facebook and Twitter, add hashtags to everything you post. Share content that is related to your business (see ‘Share Trending Content’ in Part 3), and add as many hashtags as you can imagine that are relevant to that content.

Add hashtags to everything you post.

Watch content from other companies – especially large companies – in your industry to see what hashtags they use. Follow their lead, and use those hashtags too.

Add hashtags to everything you post.

You should have two or three hashtags that are relevant to every post you ever make for your business. Add them always!

One should be a geo-related hashtag, and the other should be a business descriptor.

Create New Hashtags

Another great strategy to employ is hashtags for events. If you have an event, giveaway or contest for your business, create a hashtag just for the event, giveaway or contest. Use the hashtag every time you mention those campaigns in social media networks.

Use hashtags from other events.

Keep an eye out for other events that may be relevant to your business, and check to see if there are hashtags for those events (if there isn’t one going around, create one!). Share info about those events, and use the related hashtags.

Part 2: Stay Engaged

You can create reach for your business by being fully engaged in social networks. Like other pages, share content from other pages, like posts on other pages, and comment on other pages. Every time you engage in one of these ways, your activity (and your business) is visible to other network users.

Don’t Spam

There is a fine line to be drawn with engagement to ensure your activity does not become spammy. Relevance should be the core of your engagement strategy. If it relates to your business, then it is relevant. If it does not relate, it’s spam.

Part 3: Use a Social Search Engine To Share Trending Content

To obtain the best reach for your small business, share content that is trending. How do you know what is trending? You can watch ‘trending now’ tags that some networks make available, or you can use a social search engine.

Share Trending Content

One great social search option is Topsy.com, a social search engine for Twitter. Topsy can help you decide what to share, even if you do not use Twitter. If it’s trending in Twitter, it likely will trend in Facebook, too. (SocialMention.com is another option that provides search results across a bigger group of social networks.)

See detailed analysis of trends.

When you search a keyword or keyword phrase relevant to your business in Topsy, you will receive a results page full of useful details to drive what you can be sharing.

See specific time frames.

You can see how many mentions your word or phrase received in the past hour, 15 hours, one day, one week, or one month. If the number of mentions is low, the topic is not trending, and vice versa.

Review what is being shared.

The results page also will display all the tweets that mention the search word or phrase so you can scroll through and review them. Select different time frames to view all the results from that time frame. What was trending for the past week may be different than what was trending over the past hour.

Review what is being shared.

As you scroll through the results, you will notice some topics that are being retweeted often. That’s a good sign the topic is trending, and you should share that content.

Review what is being shared.

You can click the ‘Photo’ and ‘Video’ results links to see what images and videos are trending. If you see the same photo many times, it’s clearly popular. Consider sharing it.

Review what is being shared.

Each photo or video will display a number in the lower right corner to indicate how many times that image was shared. Click the number to see the tweets.

Be Open

It’s easy to be uber-focused on a few activities in social media and ignore the growing opportunities that come with the maturation of social business. You may be paying too much attention to posting status updates about your own company activities and watching how often you get a page like or follower.

Be Open

As you test the new waters of social media, remember that your reach is everything in marketing. Using hashtags, staying engaged and sharing trending content will build your reach, and subsequently get those likes, too.

Visit VSBMA’s Small Business Digital Marketing How-To Center

at www.VSBMA.com for more social media and content marketing Tips ’n Tricks.