Social Media Marketing on a Budget – How to Grow Organically
You’re just starting your own business. You’ve made a nice website, paid for a photoshoot of your products, organized delivery and now you’re sitting with no money and no customers.
Everyone’s telling you that you need to go social, make a Facebook page and Instagram account in order to increase engagement. But you just can’t afford a Social Media Manager to do all this.
No worries, we got your back. Today we’ll talk about organic DIY social management. In other words, we’ll tell you about social media marketing on a budget and how to increase your social media organic reach without spending tons of money.
Alright, let’s start.
Contents
Social media marketing on a budget. First things to do
1. Look at your business and define your target audience.
Marketers recommend narrow the entire audience to one person – the so-called Buyer Persona. Who are they? A man, woman, kid, what age, how they live their life, what they like and what content consume?
2. Define social platforms you’ll need to reach your target audience.
In most cases, Facebook and Instagram would be enough. However, study your audience first – if they are heavily consuming YouTube – you must be there, Twitter – as well. So let’s assume that you will be working with your audience on Facebook and Instagram – go ahead and create a page and account on Insta.
TIP: Don’t use just a personal profile – a business page is packed with proper tools, insights and posting mechanisms we’ll talk about further.
3. Once created, start filling it with content – updates, images, videos, GIFs, whatever.
The only thing you have to invest in at this stage is a proper tool for social media marketing. There are tools that can help you improve your social media performance and boost your social media strategy.
You’ve probably heard of Buffer-ish apps to manage your socials, but they are quite expensive and weird. Have a look at PublBox – an easy functional service for effective organization of your social networks. It’s designed just for beginners, like you.
If you don’t have image-editing skills, PublBox Graphic Designer tool will help you make brilliant posts.
When you have like ten posts, just invite your friends to like your page. It’s simple, free and you’ll have first followers base.
How to get more social media followers?
Now the most interesting and challenging thing – content marketing. If you grow organically, you need to have proper content. It’s usually called “thumb-stopping”, meaning that the person will stop at your content while scrolling Facebook feed.
What are the pillars of a truly thumb-stopping content?
- nice-looking images and videos,
- burning topics,
- entertainment,
- education, etc.
Just have a look at your feed and define what posts attract your attention.
Build a content plan – schedule of your posts
For instance, on Monday you tell me about your product, on Tuesday – about its production, on Wednesday – your team, etc. Just browse the Content Strategy tool in PublBox – it will create a plan for you, based on your business and needs.
You probably will be shocked when we tell you that you need to post at a certain time. And even more when this time is early in the morning. Why so? Because of the algorithms. You’ve heard that scary word but don’t worry – there’s nothing to be afraid of. Just use the following methods of hacking Facebook algorithms.
Post at 5 a.m.
«But there’s no one on Facebook this early!» Yes, but nobody posts at 5 a.m. – that means your post will slide into feeds of more people because it will experience less competition from other people and pages. And no, you don’t have to wake up at 5 or stay awake – you can schedule posts in PublBox. It will give your post more reach and engagement.
Use pictures
Don’t post just text updates – they are the weakest in the Facebook distribution algorithm.
Post stories
Although they belong to so-called ephemeral content – people like them because of it. That means they won’t see them tomorrow so they watch them right now.
Post provocative content
No, not naked girls, but the content which provokes discussion, questions, and more engagement. Post a macro detail of your product and ask what is that thing for? People will comment and guess.
More comments – more reach – more potential customers. You can even make a contest with a giveaway. It costs nothing for you but generates a lot of attention.
Use hashtags
This advice is mostly for Insta – hashtags (#) are great for better discoverability of your content and your brand. Find up to 10-20 hashtags relevant to each piece of content and add them to your post. Use the geolocation as well.
Include call-to-action
They say that content turns into content marketing after adding call-to-action (CTA). Let’s say you produce handmade wallets. If you post just a picture of your wallet – it’s just content, but if you include description and link to your landing page – it’s the content marketing. Use it to generate leads and get customers.
Use influencer marketing
Find opinion leaders. No, we don’t mean you have to ask Kanye for a shoutout – use search in your location and find the most attractive guy in your neighborhood with a solid number of followers. DM him and offer your product in exchange for a post on Insta. Probably, he won’t respond. But DM 100 guys and you’ll get a reply eventually. If he recommends you to his followers – some of them will turn into leads.
Go live!
Streams are on top of social distribution algorithm so why not using them? Go live from you your shop, your cafe or office – whatever the business you have. Engage people to ask questions, answer them, showcase your work.
Be consistent on social media
Post every day, keep up the good work. If you miss a couple of days – you’ll lose some reach and engagement.
Time to implement!
These are the most basic things of organic reach. If we decide to count all of them – it would be a huge book. But use these things simple hacks to manage your social for no budget and generate leads. It’s not a short trip but a long way, so be strong, consistent and creative.
Don’t forget about a website too. After all, social media works best when accompanied by a website.
