10 Common Social Media Questions from Small Business Owners, Part 1
For a small business owner, knowing the ins-and-outs of social media can be an overwhelming task. Especially if it’s just one person who is managing the ‘social media’ side of the business, it’s easy to overlook the little changes that occur everyday on the major platforms.
Just how in school the teacher says “there are no stupid questions,” the same goes for questions regarding social media. It’s better to ask and know rather than try and find out.
With that said, here are 10 common social media questions that we get from small business owners.
Table of Contents
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
1. Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), or Both?
Most businesses can benefit from having a presence on both social platforms, but one thing to consider is to what extent and how you will use them.
Facebook is great for sharing content and news about your brand while X (formerly Twitter) is great for direct engagement with your target audience.
A business may want to use Facebook to share photos, deals, and news (Naked Pizza is the example shown) while using X to engage with users relevant to their business or as a customer service tool.
Not all businesses can benefit from both. In some instances, such as when the business has no consumer-facing interface, only one platform may fit.
2. How Many Followers Is a Good Number?
The best answer is to not worry about your numbers. Yes, it’s great to be able to say you have 1,000 followers, but what matters is the engagement level of your community.
A simple way to put it: Would you rather have 100 followers who promote your brand, share your content, and talk about you to their friends, or 10,000 followers who are not engaged with your brand?
3. Should I Reply to All Posts?
You can, but we suggest you pick the right battles. The best way to determine if you should reply is to weigh the value of the comment.
Is it answering a question about your business? If you let it go, will it hurt your brand? (For example, a rumor about your brand.) Will responding cause more bad than good? (For example, a sports team replying to a fan angry about a loss.)
When a user is asking a question about your business (product details, hours of operation, etc.), you should always consider these top priority for responses.
4. Do I Need to Hire Someone to Manage My Social Media?
The position title for someone who manages your social media strategy and presence is typically a Community Manager. To determine if you should bring someone on, consider the following:
- How many hours are you currently spending on social media?
- Where are you in your social media strategy: just starting out, building community, advanced?
- Is there someone internally who can take over the role and is versed in social media?
- Where do you want your social media efforts to be in 6 months?
Depending on how you answer, it should give you a better feel for whether or not you need to bring someone in to help manage your presence.
5. How Do I Get People to Find My Business?
One of the most effective ways to get people to find your business on social media is word of mouth. If you have a physical location, use a combination of in-store signage and employees telling customers where they can find you online.
You can even offer an incentive for customers to connect with you by offering special deals available only online. This taps into Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience, giving people a reason to act now.
Another way to reach your target audience is through paid advertising.
For Facebook, this means Facebook Ads. Through their ad platform, you can create and customize advertising campaigns to fit your target audience.
For X (formerly Twitter), paid advertising comes in the form of Promoted Posts and Promoted Accounts.
If you don’t have a budget for advertising, use local publications to cover your business and include notes about where readers can learn more. For example, a local newspaper featured a bakery and how they made their special cupcakes. At the end of the article, it noted where readers could watch the full video and sign up for a special invite-only tasting event on the bakery’s Facebook page.
What questions about social media would you like us to answer in Part 2? Let us know in the comments below!
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework: Complete Gamification Framework
- 5 Dominant Techniques in Social Media Marketing
- How to Build an Effective Content Calendar for Twitter
- Revenue Model for Twitter
- Books by Yu-kai Chou