Using social media as a layperson and driving user-business engagement are two different things. While the former is fun, the latter is more complex and challenging, especially for small businesses with poor or no social media standing and have many aspects to deal with to grow their business.

Home to over 700,000 small formal businesses, South Africa offers a conducive environment for small entrepreneurs. Many of these businesses are run by the relatively young generation who understands the value social media can create. However, they often struggle with the support for making social media platforms work to their benefit.

SMO agencies in Durban with a flair for and expertise in helping small businesses leverage the social media space can make a positive difference. Let’s see how.

Numbers Speak – Significance of Working with a Professional SMO Company in Durban

Social media is a continuously growing and broadening horizon. While that’s great for businesses, many small entrepreneurs often think social media marketing (SMM) is too big and competitive for them. Hence, it is reserved only for the bigger players.

Yes! Social media platforms are competitive. But that doesn’t mean small businesses cannot achieve the traction they need. Planning a certain budget for it and partnering with a professional SMO company in Durban can help achieve positive outcomes. Besides, worldwide, millions of small businesses are wholeheartedly using social media.

Let’s look at some statistics to focus on the competitive aspect of social media platforms and also to realize why partnering with professional SMO agencies in Durban is crucial.

• In 2020, 85-87 percent of small businesses used social media. The number grew to over 90 percent the very next year!
• Nearly 65 percent of small businesses acknowledge that social media helps them drive tangible value and positive outcomes.
• About 75 percent of small businesses use Facebook to engage with their users.
• Social media recommendations influence 87-88 percent of consumer purchases.
• Around 77 percent of SMBs run social media ads for visibility and engagement.
• 60-62 percent of small businesses dedicate five or more hours to SMM.
• 93-95 percent of small businesses using social media depend on organic content!

Of course, there’s more to the above. But the above numbers adequately signify the grandeur of the social media canvas. However, with so much to do and handle, working with multiple social media platforms can prove overwhelming for small businesses. Here, SMO agencies in Durban with all their expertise and experience can help create the buzz about your business and contribute to making it a social media brand.

5 Ways SMO Agencies in Durban Make Social Media Work for Small Businesses

Social media optimization and marketing aren’t rocket sciences. But they aren’t as straightforward either. It takes targeted, consistent, and premium efforts to grow your social media presence, enhance its visibility, and create news about it. An SMO company in Durban can help a small business do what it takes to set the social media stage ablaze. Here are five ways SMO experts can help put a small business in the center.

• Devise an Effective SMM Strategy

Marketing your business on social media appears simple to many. But in reality, it isn’t. Why? Firstly, you already have millions like you in the room. Secondly, social media keeps evolving. Trends emerge and disappear only to give way to new ones. Thirdly, user expectations remain perpetually high and they too keep evolving with time.

Accordingly, you cannot merely post anything and expect people to engage with your business. You need a proper strategy that helps you identify what you need to do, with whom are you competing, what are your competitors doing and how can you outshine them and engage with your target audience.

Addressing all these aspects requires an expert and experienced social media company. Small businesses, especially those with an insignificant or no social media presence should particularly pay attention to their social media marketing strategy, as it is that strategy that will help them stay afloat and engage uniquely with their target audience.

• Create Immersive Social Media Content

Another crucial area where SMO agencies in Durban help small businesses is content. SMO agencies leverage their creative dimension to craft highly unique and immersive content in various forms, including text, videos, and infographics. These agencies touch every aspect of engagement via various types of content.

For instance, the SMO agency may come up with a short 1-2-minute video talking about the story and purpose that drove the inception of a particular small business. Optimizing it and promoting it across the social media space within the right target audience can help the business engage with prospects and pave the way to more opportunities.

• Ensure Accurate and Specific Segmentation

While knowing what to post, small businesses should also be able to determine whom to target amidst the billions of users active on social media platforms. SMO agencies in Durban also help small businesses with appropriate and specific segmentation based on the audience’s age, gender, profession, location, etc., and create content resonating with the users within that segment to get the required amount of traction and make a particular posting, update or campaign more meaningful.

• Track Competitor Activity

Competitors’ social media pages could prove a source of learning and inspiration. Tracking competitor’s social media activity and decoding their marketing strategies can help you create competitive ones for your business. The idea isn’t to copy what your competitors are doing, as that is neither ethical nor useful in any sense as users may quickly make out a copied strategy. However, you can seek some inspiration from everything good your competitors are doing and learn from their failures.

For small businesses, particularly those with a long way to go on social media, tracking competitor activity can help them enhance their competence and deliver more engaging content to their target audience.

An SMO company in Durban can help them do that, given the significant amount of effort involved in understanding what numerous competitors are doing and continuously tracking their activities to decide a specific course of strategy and action.

• Measure Engagement and Results

Often, small businesses keep investing for months and years in social media marketing but perhaps, never measure the returns. Many remain satisfied with the few likes and followers their account has. While being satisfied is subject to individual goals, are you reaping more than what you’ve invested, or are your efforts going in vain?

SMO agencies in Durban precisely help measure engagement and results through various analytical platforms. They constantly watch the results and communicate them transparently to small business owners. If a particular strategy doesn’t deliver the required results, SMO experts can discuss them and suggest alternatives. They can use the experience and learning derived from past campaigns and their results. An evolved understanding of the company’s business, target audience, and competitors would also help deliver better campaigns.

Conclusion

Small businesses have the world to conquer. Hence, they cannot ignore social media and the outreach and engagement it can create for them. However, given the various creative, technical, and strategic challenges involved in social media optimization, small businesses should prefer partnering with a professional SMO company in Durban, SA, and optimize the potential of social media specific to their business.

Consider choosing FABTARY, a trusted SMO company in Durban with social media expertise in helping small businesses grow their presence and engagement on various platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and more. The company covers everything small businesses require to optimize returns from their social media investments. It includes strategy, content, campaigning, and measuring results.

Write to info@fabtary.com to explore more about FABTARY’s social media proposition.