Social Media Marketing 101 from the SBA

Oct. 8, 2019

The U.S. Small Business Administration has a guide for social media novices to dive into digital marketing.

Oct. 8, 2019—Social media is so ingrained into modern culture that it can be tough for a beginner or casual user to know where to start using the tools for marketing.

More than half of all businesses are engaged in some kind of social media marketing, according to data compiled by Hootsuite, a popular management platform. That's some $93 million being spent in 2019 along by 7 million businesses paying for Facebook ads, 2 million of the paying for Instagram ads and many others. 

What's more is that it's a rapidly growing marketing medium. In short, businesses want to advertise where their customers are. Social media are where customers spend much of their downtime.

For an operator who's just jumping into social media, the U.S. Small Business Administration launched a helpful web course. It covers basic topics like what media are out there and how people communicate on them. It also gets into more in-depth topics like the world of online reviews and monitoring analytics.

Find the course here. It takes about a half hour, according to the administration.

Otherwise, check out "Make Sure Your Business is Visible to Drive-By Searchers" from the September issue of NOLN. It's all about making the most of your Google listing now that more users are searching on the fly.