Timing is everything and that especially goes for various marketing efforts. Marketing is about striking while the iron is hot and taking advantage of golden opportunities. In order to access these gateways however, you’ll have to be consistently active and engaging on your social media outlets.

By becoming socially active, you’re expanding not only on your social media presence, but a platform that your audience can engage on. Such elements that are important to share via social media can be seen as some of the following:

• Useful, alluring, and interesting content created by your business
• Re-posting already shared and well-liked content  by others
• Providing thanks, praise, and input by responding to others’ comments and posts

Share Small Business Content

The most favored pages by Google and viewers are the pages that have taken the time to be created with original content. These pages are well ranked organically and generate further traffic to the site. Audiences who are reeled in by these business pages are intrigued by the information presented. This information can come in the form of a blog or news/event updates.

By maintaining a blog, it gives incentive to further curate content for your social media accounts as well as newsletters. However, whether or not you keep up a blog, it behooves your business’ online reputation to do the following:

• Create content that facilitates your social media agenda
• If your intent is to garner recognition and brand awareness, share quality content that receives a good amount of shares. This gives your business credibility as a valuable resource to others. Be sure to share links to pertinent information that will lend usefulness to various users. This establishes trust between your business and online visitors.
• If you want to strengthen a connection with your audience, create and share questionnaires, surveys, and quizzes. Prompting contests that require input are also a good launching pad of creating engagement. For example, Facebook provides surveys, questions, and polls in order gain insight of their targeted demographic. Twitter Q&As and chats via @ChatSchedule.
• Create incentives for audience viewership by offering free samples, downloadable PDFs, or other relevant pieces of information that can be put to good use. Provide these rewards by linking to a landing page on your website that can also greet new visitors. Use welcome mats and the occasional newsletter subscription inquiry in order to cultivate a mailing list.
• Be consistent with content output as those who are subscribed to your newsletters or customers of your business will depend on your reputation of information.
• Post on time and on schedule. This doesn’t mean to inundate your likers or subscribers’ newsfeeds, but posting relevant information at a time they’re most likely to see it is encouraged! Times in which it’s most likely that someone will see posts have been categorized in the following:

Devoting to a schedule of expected posts can help secure and increase your business’ visibility.

• If time isn’t on your side or you don’t have a designated social media guru to run the show, you can always curate content in advance and automate when you want it to be posted. Plugins and tools such as Jetpack and Hootsuite.

Become a Valuable Source!

When you share content from others, you reap the benefits! You become a reliable intermediary that others can count on for useful information.

Benefits of Sharing Small Business Content:

• Attract those who invest in the content that you are taking the time to share.
• Potential for new demographics to learn about your product/services via the content you shared.
• Inviting new clientele into your network.

In order to stay ahead of the ever growing social media curve, always do your homework! Stay updated on current events and your eyes peeled for popular blog topics. When you research for posts to share, invest in why you’re sharing it such as writing a caption, “Economy on a steady rise” so your audience will be more prone to as well.

Lastly, be vigilant of any comments users may make and try to keep your responses within a 24 hour timeframe. This shows you appreciate those who’ve taken the time to give an opinion and perhaps may give you an outlet to provide them with more information. This can also help you be on the lookout for any mentions of your business and thus strengthening your connections by just the click of a retweet or repost.