Social Media can help small businesses accelerate growth by building credibility, attracting new customers and improving SEO rankings.

A survey from 2015 indicated that 53% of small businesses said that they actively used social media. This number grew to 71% in 2018 with a further 16% saying that they were planning to. It is evident that business owners of all types will have to learn how to leverage social media to solidify and grow their business or they will risk being left behind.

Attract Potential Customers

A social media presence will give your retail business credibility when customers attempt to seek out information about the products they would like to buy. Knowing that they can investigate on their own time will give them peace of mind and further encourage them to consider buying from you. Understanding how geo-tagging on social media sites will give small and medium-sized businesses a way to connect with potential customers in any given location. While having many followers and likes is nice, it is much more important to connect with the right people, the ones seeking you out. An omnichannel retail strategy is incomplete without these features.

Retail business that can identify their true potential customers will also be able to build a demographic profile of the people interested in their products. This will allow businesses to understand current trends and better predict future developments by establishing customers’ pain points and goals. In turn, this knowledge will help businesses tweak their brand identity as needed and, more importantly, modify their overall eCommerce strategy to fit the needs of their customers. The results of a demographic analysis of your clients might end up surprising you.

Advantages Of Being A Small Business

Small to medium-sized companies can make their size work by creating a welcoming and personal shopping environment.

In a survey about buying local, 53% of the respondents said that they wanted to shop at small businesses because they enjoy the service they receive. Use this to your advantage and use your small size as a strength. By creating a presence on social media sites, you can bring attention to your establishment while also highlighting the friendly ambiance your customers can expect if they shop with you. And if you have done your homework by obtaining powerful POS software, you can hope to turn a customer into a long-term one.

Another major advantage of being a small or medium-sized business is that it is possible to maintain a healthy communication channel between the business and the customers. Small businesses can more easily respond to customers because large businesses receive so many comments that the majority are drowned out in the noise. Try to create a system where your business can respond in less than 24 hours as 80% of all customers expect a reply within that time period.

The beauty of social media isn’t just posting, but more importantly engaging with your customers and starting a conversation no the social site, inviting others to then join is and be interactive.

Drive Traffic To Your Website/Blog

Most importantly, a strong social media presence can direct people to your website and blog. Search engines like Google are increasingly placing weight on social trends. By driving customers to your website and delighting them with high-quality content, you will increase the likelihood that they share links to your website which will in turn give you a better ranking on Google, the web’s top referrer.  Social media is very tightly connected to SEO and can help not just improve consumer confidence, but also help improve your keyword placements on search engines for new potential customers.

Using Social Media to Help Sell Your Products

With the right retail technology, you can integrate your eCommerce website with social media outlets such as Facebook and Instagram.

1. Display ‘Likes’ from social channels on your website to show how popular each product is with your social followers.
2. Display ‘Share’ buttons on your products, making it easy for customers to share products they like on their social news feed.
3. Pull your recent social posts and display them on your own eCommerce website.
4. Most importantly, pay to advertise with social channels and sell your products on their news feeds.
5. Leverage social media analytics to monitor performance on your social channels.

With the right eCommerce provider, social media integrations are easy and can significantly help your retail shop sell more by building more brand validity in the social world.

Retail software has the potential to give your customers and employees a wonderful experience but if no one can find your business, you will not be operating at full strength. By creating a focused social media presence, your point of sale architecture can begin to perform at its maximum potential.