THE HERALD FRIDAY JANUARY 27 2017
35 Business
Internet coast gets nearer Making the most of social media ACCORDING to recent
research conducted by Instagram, up to 76% of small business owners don’t use their app to market their business. With over 400 million users worldwide, Instagram is arguably one of the most popular social media platforms to be on right at this moment. So, what is stopping small business
owners from taking advantage of all this potential positive exposure? Social media has been around
A DEAL to invest £1.3bn to
create an ‘internet coast’ in South- West Wales is close to being agreed. With an estimated development
timescale of 15 years, the Swansea Bay city deal plans to attract a further £2bn of investment and create thousands of jobs.
Divisions such as energy and
healthcare would benefit from a boost in digital technology in the Swansea Bay city region. The Welsh Government has backed
the deal in principle and Swansea Council is hoping that an agreement with UK ministers can be reached by the end of next month. Rob Stewart, Swansea Council
Leader, said if the deal is approved, it would be 'another game-changer' for Swansea. Proposals for a Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon have been backed by a review commissioned by UK ministers. Mr Stewart said: “Worth £1.3bn to
the regional economy, the city deal has the power to improve people’s lives by opening up thousands of jobs, creating far more opportunities and generating a cutting-edge digital environment that will allow innovation and enterprise to flourish.”
The projects, across the Swansea, Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot and Pembrokeshire Council areas, include: • A fibre-optic transatlantic cable from New York to Oxwich Bay for ultra-fast broadband
• Connecting renewable and conventional energy firms digitally and developing new systems and storage processes
• A 'cloud' enterprise zone to attract data companies
• Using the internet to improve health diagnostics, manage data and create personal treatment plans and tele-care
• A steel science centre The deal has been analysed
by Cardiff University and could potentially create up to 33,000 jobs over 20 years. Welsh and UK Governments
would contribute £241 million, £360 million would come from other public bodies, and the councils, higher educations and the other European Union and private firms would pledge £673 million. Meetings are also being held at the other councils involved in the scheme.
long enough now to have proven how powerful a marketing tool it is for businesses of all sizes – but only if they know how to use it properly. But according to the results of a poll, over half of small business owners are not marketing their companies on social media at all! Industry experts all say that we are
now in an age where customers are expecting businesses to interact with them online. For small businesses not to be participating on social media on a major scale is quite a concerning find.
With the recent poll conducted
by Instagram with small businesses, many business owners stated it was their own lack of knowledge of how to use the app as the main reason for not using it. Astonishingly, of those polled, 33% admitted to not using social media of any type for their marketing. Those small businesses already
using Instagram as part of their business marketing stated that they were using the platform to attract new customers. In fact, 92% of Instagram business users were there to attract and engage with new customers, with a further 41% wanting to support their local community and build their personality and core values on Instagram.
Which is the most popular platform for business?
Of all the social media platforms
available, Facebook still remains the most dominant force and the most widely-used platform for small business owners. In fact, 39% of small business owners say they use Facebook to help market their company and to raise their awareness, while just 7% are active users of Twitter for business and a slim 4% who regularly post to Instagram. The growing popularity of
Instagram among consumers with over 500 million monthly viewers using the site just goes to prove that it is a great platform for small businesses to find new customers. We are always told by experts to go where our customers are hanging out, and Instagram is certainly the place to be for a great many of your new potential customers. But with only 24% of small
business owners actually making use of Instagram in their social media marketing activities, how many missed opportunities are slipping past each day?
It helps if you have a highly visual business
To be able to use Instagram to its
full potential, small business owners should develop a plan and define their goals about how to use the site. Businesses can connect with new and existing customers in a visual way. It is a great platform for those who have visually appealing products that customers can appreciate seeing in their newsfeeds. It is a very impulsive media, so the ability to contact someone to ask questions and interact with quickly will encourage them to make a purchase. Facebook too is a great platform
for visual products, but also for more detailed information to help with your customer engagement. Twitter is great for those who struggle to come up with longer posts to write and you can also include a powerful image with your tweet for greater impact. Social media is here to stay and
having a stake in it can often be the deciding factor between success and failure for some small businesses. This stake is growing larger every day, so for any business who is looking to ramp up their online presence quickly and effectively, they will need to master the art of social media marketing to ensure their future business growth.
Management software and other options
We all know that small business
owners are incredibly busy and that they usually have to wear multiple hats within their own company. Making good use of social media management tools is the best option for busy owners who don’t have an awful lot of time to dedicate to their social media activity. Such tools as Buffer and Hootsuite are ideal for the beginners who are just getting to grips with managing their online activity. They are easy to navigate and getting into the routine of keeping them topped up with scheduled posts can become second nature after a short time. For those business owners who
really are not too computer savvy, but understand the importance of having a good business presence online, there is always the option of hiring an external social media management company to do all this work for you. It need not be as expensive as you may think, and it will certainly make your life much easier than trying to master social media by yourself if you are very unfamiliar with it. The investment can be paid back many times over in the number of new followers and customer conversions that can be made. If you have better things to do with
your time than to execute the same tasks over again, then automation of your social media is the key initially, but remember that you still need to present a human side to your business and that means interacting with your followers and answering customers’ questions in a timely manner.
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