It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re running or even the industry that you’re operating in – today’s customer journey is digital-first. This means that if an average person is going to discover your SMB for the first time, the chances are high that they’ll do it online.
But more than that, they’re not just looking for any old business. They have specific problems and they want precise solutions. They have important questions and they want direct answers. They value local organizations above all else, which is why local visibility is of paramount importance.
According to one recent study, about 42% of millennials who perform a local search on an engine like Google will visit a business most of the time. They’re also 50% more likely than other generations to conduct local searches while on-the-go using their smartphone.
Local content is a big part of how you localize this part of your online presence. If something happens in your city, write a blog about it. If an event happens that you participate in, post a video about it. Creating this type of content takes a tremendous amount of time, but thankfully it isn’t the only way to get the job done.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and others can also play a huge role in localizing your online presence. You just have to make sure that you’re approaching things in the right way to reap the full rewards.
How Does Using Social Media Help to Localize Your Online Presence?
As revealed in another recent study, about 28% of people who search for local businesses end up making a purchase within just a day. Not only does local visibility help improve your online presence, but it also helps enable rapid purchasing decisions as well.
But overall, it’s important to think of it this way. “Big Businesses” tend to come off as cold and impersonal in the eyes of your average consumer. They don’t really know you. Localizing your online presence through social media helps to build trust and connections within your local community. It also creates more touch points and opportunities for customers to find and engage with you while on today’s digital-first journey, which is important for long-term growth.
Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business
To make sure you’re focusing your efforts in the right places, be sure to identify which platforms are the most relevant to not only your business and industry, but your customers as well. Facebook tends to skew a bit on the older side, where TikTok has an incredibly young user base. Instagram and Pinterest are very visual, but in different ways. Focus on the areas where your ideal customers are already hanging out.
While you do, be sure to maintain a consistent brand presence across all social media platforms. Every post needs to feel like it represents the same identity you’ve worked so hard to create. Don’t have one personality on Facebook and a totally different one on Twitter/X.
How to Set Up Your Social Media Profiles for Greater Local Search Visibility
Always begin by creating a compelling and locally-focused bio for your social media profiles. Be sure to include as many local keywords and hashtags as you can. As you do, utilize location-based features that are available to you, like adding your business’ physical address.
All of these are important signals to help prove that you’re from where you say you are.
How to Infuse Your Content Strategy with Location Signals
Speaking of local signals, always work to create content that resonates with your local community. Try to showcase your company’s community involvement and support wherever possible. Even if you just sponsor a local baseball team, post a picture and the score from every one of those games.
You should also use social media to highlight local testimonials and success stories to again cement the idea of social proof.
Use Social Media as a Way to Engage Your Local Community
But social media isn’t just about people finding you. It’s also about you finding them.
Actively participate in as many local groups and community forums as you can find. When people leave local reviews and feedback, respond to them.
Run specialized local promotions on social media as a way to give back to the people that are following you. You should also engage with other local businesses in the community. You never know – you might be able to grab a little piece of their audience for yourself.
Enhance Your Local Visibility with Social Media Advertising
Remember that Facebook and Instagram advertising give you a huge amount of power when it comes to targeting local audiences. It would be an absolute shame not to tap directly into them. Always make use of those included geotargeting features for specific local promotions. Get that messaging in front of the eyes of the people who are most likely to benefit from it.
Collaborate with Your Customers on Local, Authentic Content (User-Generated Content)
To make sure that you always have enough valuable content as possible to fill your social media profiles, be sure to encourage your customers to share their experiences. Even something as simple as leaving a review or posting a quick video will go a long way towards localizing your online presence.
You should always run local contests and campaigns on a regular basis that directly involve your customers. This is a great way to boost engagement and increase the chances that they’ll share your content with others.
As you find user-generated content across the various social media platforms, always repost it and re-share it whenever you can. At the very least, you’ll get some additional mileage out of that which people worked so hard to create.
Analyze Engagement and Reach to Determine the Best Course of Action
Finally, be sure to set up analytics tools to track local engagement and visibility. As you continue to create more and more content, the results you’re seeing should be improving. If they aren’t, you need to know why so that you can do something about it.
On an ongoing basis, you should proactively analyze metrics to understand the effectiveness of your current localization strategies. Always make data-driven adjustments to optimize your results. Know which step you would take to improve your reach versus which you would use to increase engagement versus which would generate more leads, etc. It’s not just about measuring success based on revenue, although that is important.
Surefire Local: The Local Social Media Partner You Can Depend On
Overall, leveraging social media platforms to help localize your online presence could not be more important. Remember that localizing yourself online isn’t something you “do once and forget about.” It requires ongoing work to not only get someone’s attention, but keep it.
Social media platforms provide an easy way to maintain that online presence without much in the way of additional effort – at least, not beyond what you were already planning on as you likely had an active social media presence to begin with. Social media is also only going to become more important in the future. That’s why, if you haven’t already embraced it as a core part of today’s digital-first customer journey, now would be an excellent time to start.
Localizing your online presence also gives you the chance to increase visibility in specific zip codes. This leads to far superior levels of customer engagement, and eventual business growth as well. All this through optimizing your social media profiles with local and relevant information, exactly the way it should be.
At Surefire Local, our primary goal is simple: we want to help small businesses like yours establish their online presence by creating essential local signals across platforms and profiles that make it effortless for new customers to find them.
You know that there are a lot of people out there you can help with your products and services. They just need to know it, too – and we built our powerful all-in-one marketing platform to help make that happen.
In addition to website and local SEO optimizations like creating geotagged content that gets published on your website, blog, and social media profiles, you also get access to features like:
- Online review management. Social proof is essential in the modern era and this helps you send review requests, write responses to reviews, and analyze your brand sentiment to learn what real people really think of you.
- Content marketing. Content is king, and now you have the tools required to create locally targeted and hyper-relevant content that lives on your blog, Google Business Profile, business directories, and social media profiles.
- Social media management. Forget about logging into 10 different accounts to manage 10 different profiles. We give you the tools needed for scheduling posts, tracking engagement metrics, and responding to comments.
- Analytics and reporting. Get full transparency into the performance of your campaign and track the impact of every dollar you’re spending. AI-generated recommendations will even clue you in on specific actions you can take to help things go even better in the future.
- Educational resources. Our steady stream of webinars, blogs, and other helpful resources are designed to help you become the local online marketing master you were meant to be.
So if you’re looking to leverage social media to make an impact on your business’ local visibility, terrific – we are, too. Contact us today for more information or click here to attend a Surefire Local demo to see exactly what our platform can do for you.