7 Challenges of Marketing a Small Business on Social Media (and Their Solutions)

With nearly 75% of the world’s teen and adult population using it, social media is an essential part of any company’s marketing plan. Yet 93% of small businesses report that they struggle with social media challenges, and it’s easy to understand why. Small business owners are limited in terms of time and budget, meaning that they have to deal with limitations that other, larger companies simply don’t face. 

But this doesn’t mean that small businesses can’t have success in social media marketing. With a bit of creativity and some high-quality tips, your small business can benefit from all of the advantages of social media marketing such as its ability to help you grow your brand awareness, reach new customers, and make more sales.

To help you out, this guide will offer the solutions you’re looking for to the most common social media marketing problems that small businesses face. Let’s dive in. 

Challenges of Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

The Problem: Not Enough Personnel

The average small business with any staff at all only has ten employees, but a whopping 81% don’t have a single person on staff. This means that, as a small business, the chances that you have a dedicated person helping you out with social media marketing are pretty low. In fact, you’re probably doing it all by yourself. 

With dozens of other things to worry about, that certainly represents a massive limitation on how much of your energy you can put into social media marketing. 

The Solution: Stay Focused

As a small business, nobody is expecting you to be able to do the work of an entire social media marketing team. While your business is still growing, keep your focus tight. Don’t bite off more than you can chew; it’s totally okay to only be on one or two social media platforms if that’s all you can handle. You can be just as impactful with a single social media platform as long as you’re strategic about it. 

The Problem: Limitations on Time

A smaller team – or a team of one – also means that you have limitations on your time. After all, you only have 24 hours in a day. There’s only so much you can get done if you’ve only got a few hours a week to dedicate to social media marketing. 

The Solution: Pre-schedule your Posts 

One of the best ways to save time when it comes to social media marketing is to use a scheduling tool. With this time-saver, you can plan ahead as many weeks or months as you need to make sure that you keep your platforms filled with content. Plus, you’ll be able to skip the step of actually having to go into your account to post and publish things manually. 

The Problem: Choosing the Right Platforms

Focusing on just one or two platforms will be able to help you deal with your lack of manpower, but how will you choose which platforms you’re going to use? It can be a stressful decision to make, with the wrong choice potentially turning into a major waste of your time and resources. 

The Solution: Be Strategic

When choosing which social media platforms to focus your attention on, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind.

• Who is your target audience? Knowing the customer you’re trying to reach will be tremendously helpful in choosing what platforms to use. For example, if you’re marketing toward Gen Z, TikTok is an obvious choice. But if you have a bit of an older customer base, Facebook could be better. Selling to businesses? Try LinkedIn. 

• What is your brand identity? When choosing your platforms, stay true to your brand. If you’re all about relatability and authenticity, YouTube and TikTok are good choices for you. If you’re more professional, you might want to stick to LinkedIn and Facebook.

• What are your goals? Different social media platforms are best suited to different marketing goals. If your main goal is making sales, you’ll want to choose a platform where you can link directly to your products such as TikTok and Pinterest. If you’re more interested in thought leadership, you should consider platforms where you can post long-form content such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. 

The Problem: Balancing Multiple Platforms

Even if you only choose two or three social media platforms to market on, juggling multiple social media profiles can be tricky. How do you make sure that you don’t neglect one of them? How can you make enough content for both? And how do you find the time for all of that? 

The Solution: Pick your Battles

There are several things that will help you here. First of all, be realistic and only choose the platforms that you can actually focus on and commit to. It’s better to have one or two active profiles than it is to have six that are barely active at all. 

When you do narrow it down to the platforms that you genuinely have time for, it will help you to use the same content on multiple platforms. You can use a social media scheduler to post the same exact video or photo on more than one account so that you don’t have to put any extra work into updating multiple profiles. 

The Problem: Coming Up With Ideas and Creating Enough Content

When it comes to social media, the more content you post the better, with most platforms recommending a posting frequency of several times a week, once a day, or even more. So how can you possibly come up with enough creative ideas and make enough content to keep your socials full of fresh, up-to-date posts? 

The Solution: Plan Ahead

Planning ahead is your best friend here. Rather than trying to think of content to post that very day, give yourself more time. Putting together a content calendar full of ideas for the next week or even month ensures that you will have enough time to gather inspiration, brainstorm, and get creative. 

Some other tips that will help include:

• Consult resources – In addition to pre-made video templates that you can customize and schedule in minutes, Promo also publishes a blog (that’s where you are now!) full of social media content ideas and advice. 
• Look at competitors – There’s nothing wrong with checking out what the competition is doing. Follow your competitors and allow them to inspire your own content.
• Tap into the conversation – In addition to competitors, follow accounts and hashtags relevant to your niche. That way, your feed will always be full of potential sources of inspiration.
• Repeat what works – Using social media analytics, review your previous posts and see which ones were successful for you in the past. Do more of what works.
• Be purposeful – When it comes to content, the most important thing is being able to offer your audience real value. So think about the purpose of the content you want to make. Are you educating? Inspiring? Entertaining? Let your purpose guide you.

The Problem: Budget

Let’s address the elephant in the room. One of the biggest limitations that small businesses have is money. The main reason why you don’t have a social media marketing manager is probably that you can’t afford one, not because you don’t want one. So how can you succeed on social media when you’re focused on keeping your business financially afloat? 

The Solution: Repurpose Content

There are a number of ways that you can save money on social media marketing. In addition to doing it yourself and using affordable DIY tools such as Promo’s online video maker, there’s one more secret you should know about: reposting content. 

There’s no rule saying that every piece of content that you post on social media has to be original. In addition to posting the same content on multiple platforms, you can also repost the same content on the same platform. A single photoshoot can result in dozens of Instagram posts. As long as the content in it is evergreen, you can link to the same blog post from your Twitter again and again. 

In fact, you don’t always even have to post original content. As long as you credit the creator, you can even post content on your social media that somebody else made. One of the best ways to do this is to use user-generated content. This just means asking your users to make your content for you. For example, if you’re a makeup brand, you might put out a call asking people to send in photos of them wearing your newest lipstick. All of the photos that are submitted to you can be used on your social media accounts. 

The Problem: Knowing What’s Working

Sometimes, being an untrained small business owner turned social media marketer can feel like the blind leading the blind. You can make content, sure, but how do you know what’s working and what’s not? Are you even getting anywhere with all of that effort you’re making?

The Solution: Use Analytics

Thankfully, most social media platforms come with robust analytics that you can use to track the success of your posts. Make it a practice to frequently check your stats to see which content is performing well and which isn’t. Always check in to see if you’re approaching your goals or not making any progress at all. 

This data is going to be incredibly useful in informing your future social media strategy, telling you what type of content works and what doesn’t. In fact, it can even give you information about factors you may have not been considering such as at which time of day is best to post. 

Social Media Marketing Made Easy… Well, Easier

Social media marketing is an entire industry of its own, with so many factors affecting whether or not your efforts are successful. But just because social media marketing is involved doesn’t mean that it has to be impossible. We hope that the tips above gave you some useful suggestions on how you might be able to make it work as a small business on social media.

And don’t forget to keep an eye on Promo’s blog, because we’re working on a solution that will make your life much easier by helping you save time with social media marketing. Stay posted!