Marketers are always looking for new ways to promote their goods and services to a wider audience. Social media is the preferred method for many, but many local business owners find it difficult to attract customers through social media. Since you operate a business in a specific location and have local clients who require your services in person, this makes sense.

Finding the right social media platform, sharing the right content, and authentically connecting with fans and followers are just a few of the potential challenges. Additionally, poor time management is the leading cause of social media failure. The majority of local business owners are too busy running their operations to focus on their social media campaign. Because of this, being strategic in your social media marketing efforts is essential.

While the number of local businesses is on the rise, so are the social media challenges that small business owners face when trying to get their messages across social media platforms. This article will help you learn which social media challenges local business owners deal with and how to overcome them.

Common Challenges Local Businesses Face on Social Media

1. Managing multiple social media profiles.

Managing multiple social media accounts presents a challenge and problem for many who run local businesses. You have multiple profiles for various reasons. To ensure that no one is left out of the loop about the most recent promotions and events offered by your business, you must copy any information you post to one account and distribute it to as many other accounts as possible and the truth is, this can take a lot of time to manage.

It takes time and effort to keep track of multiple social media accounts. Building a single, unified voice on social media for more brand impressions and improved brand visibility will most likely go down the rabbit hole without the right strategic planning.

2. Not having a solid understanding of their target audience.

No matter how cool you think your product or service is, you can’t expect a successful marketing campaign if you don’t know what your target audience wants. This ought to be obvious, but many small businesses have still not taken the time to determine who their actual target market is.

Social media marketing a business can be intimidating. However, it will be much simpler if you know who your target audience are.

3. Not knowing which platform works best for their business.

Online marketing isn’t as easy as it might seem. Especially when you ask local businesses. 93% of small businesses report that online marketing is important to their business and 64% said they had at least one social media account. The problem is local businesses don’t know which platform works best for them, including their audience.

You should also be aware of the various social media platforms. You might feel overwhelmed if you have too many accounts, especially if you don’t have time to manage them all.

4. Not getting much engagement.

As a local business owner you might have found it difficult to communicate with social media users. These social media interactions may include comments, likes or retweets; these inform the overall engagement.

Getting engagement on posts is one of the biggest challenges that small business owners face when it comes to social media. Whether they’re trying to grow their following or get people to leave positive reviews, lack of engagement can really hurt your business.

5. Getting negative reviews from customers.

Let’s face it, there’s nothing unusual about getting bad reviews – not to mention the nasty comments their anonymous authors leave on your social media profiles. No one can guarantee 100% satisfaction for every client, no matter how hard you try.

But even if you do a great job, you may still end up with negative feedback; some of it will be deliberate trolling, but most of it will come from real people who were just on the receiving end of less-than-stellar customer service.

6. Not having any long-term strategy in place.

Social media is constantly evolving, so it’s important for businesses to have a long-term plan for their approach to social media marketing. Having a vision for what you want your business’s social media presence to look like in the future will help you stay on track with your campaigns and keep up with changes in technology and consumer behavior.

You also need a clearly defined goal that will help you determine what kind of content you should be sharing on different platforms, which ones are relevant for your audience and how often you should post updates.

7. Having a hard time engaging with customers online

As a local business owner, you have to interact with your audience. It’s where they are spending much of their time. However, many small companies struggle to make use of the power of social media and are far behind their competition in this field. The reason for this is that they fail to recognize the importance of customer engagement.

Customers expect a sustainable and helpful solution from your company when posting a query or asking for suggestions. Some of them will also post suggestions for your company’s products and services, and won’t be happy with anything but feedback from the official social media account belonging to your company.

Social Media Management Tips

So, how do you manage your social media accounts and make sure that they’re working for your business? Here are some tips:

• Set objectives for each platform.

Even if you’re passionate about social media, it’s still hard to find the time and energy to create excellent content for all of your platforms. That’s why it is important to define goals for each platform so you can make sure that each update accomplishes something.

In addition, you should figure out which kinds of content attract the most visitors to your website or landing page and which kinds of content perform best on each platform. For instance, if a person shares one of your Facebook posts, does this lead them to an opt-in page or to another type of conversion?

• Understanding how to create content that people will find interesting.

It’s easy to get lost in the noise of the internet’s vast expanse. But you need to stand out from the crowd because there are so many people online and so many businesses competing for their attention.

It may be challenging to determine where to begin or the type of content that will resonate with your audience, but you can begin with the following: developing a tone that readers can relate to, utilizing data, case studies, and examples, getting to know your audience, embracing memorable video content, making use of analytics to select new topics, capitalizing on current trends, and incorporating human touches are all important.

• Take advantage of automation tools.

In the end, it’s just a game of numbers. It is more likely that you will reach your intended audience if you are able to post relevant and engaging content to your social media pages more frequently. Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Postly, and Social Pro that automate tasks can be useful in this situation.

By scheduling and automating posts, these tools save time. They provide you with yet another opportunity to share information on your social media presence throughout the week or month, which has the potential to pique interest in your business or product that otherwise might have gone unnoticed.

• Using hashtags or geotagging images on Instagram.

Hashtags are an integral part of social media marketing and communications, not just for big brands but even local businesses as well. As a result, these businesses ought to make use of relevant hashtags so that their posts can be easily accessed by followers and potential customers.

• Posting at the right times.

Posting at the right times is a must if you want to get the most out of your social media. Reach out by adding comments, likes and mentions to posts that are from your competitors. This will boost your engagement numbers, which in turn will encourage your followers to double their efforts and increase their activity on social media.

• Clear call-to-action for each post.

A clear call-to-action for each post is key to making sure that you’re driving qualified traffic back to your site. The clear call-to-action leaves your audience wondering what you are up to next. It draws their attention and makes them want to take part in the action.

Additionally, social media platforms are an effective resource for marketing and the ideal method for increasing customer engagement with your company. You will be able to increase conversion rates and get responses from customers across all of your social channels if you include CTAs.

Many successful entrepreneurs have taken their businesses to a level on social media. It’s where they engage their customers, and direct them to their blog or website. Social media provides a great level of interaction, whereby customers can get to learn more about what the company is offering, and what’s going on in the company.

Also, with the advent of social media marketing, local businesses have been quick to hop on the wagon hoping that these online platforms are going to draw traffic and sales. While social media marketing can be efficient in drawing traffic, over leveraging these platforms poses numerous risks to small business owners.

The good news is that it doesn’t matter if your business is local, online or brick and mortar. Social media marketing is one important part of an overall marketing strategy that every online business owner must have. You can overcome these common obstacles with just a little planning and some successful strategies.

If your social media campaign needs assistance. We are here to help you manage your business more effectively and increase your chances of success by reducing the amount of time you spend creating content and growing your audience.