Ditch the generic resolutions that fade by February. It’s time to gear up for a year unlike any other and make real changes in how you approach social selling as a business.
Adopt these New Year resolutions, and you’ll see a real, tangible impact on your brand awareness, share of voice, and sales that’ll have a lasting effect on your online presence.
New Years Resolutions for Small Business Owners
Ready to start 2024 with a bang? Make these New Year’s resolutions for small business owners a non-negotiable for your to-do list.
1. Use Generative AI to Your Advantage
Are you on the fence about diving into the world of AI?
Well, your New Year resolution for 2024 is to nip that fear in the bud.
76% of marketers are already using it for basic content creation and copywriting, and the rise of artificial intelligence is here to stay.
To help your small business thrive online, you need to learn how to use it to your competitive advantage.
That starts with adding the right AI tools to your payroll.
When generative AI works for your business, it streamlines workflows, frees up resources, and makes you more money.
How?
Let’s look at a few use cases:
Struggle with writing captions? Use an AI caption generator. It’s your ultimate wingman that will make writer’s block a thing of the past.
Psst…The best ones will allow you to customize it to your tone of voice and serve up a compelling call to action.
Not sure who is your target market? Use AI in your early research and strategy stages to ask questions and turn your target market research into interactive simulations.
You can create prompts in ChatGPT or use Poll The People (powered by Open AI) to get feedback on anything before you spend a cent.
As long as you’re putting in the effort to learn how to use AI tools to your advantage, your tech savvy small business can reap the rewards of faster content creation, cost savings, and a boost in productivity for 2024.
2. Commit to Consistency
Staying consistent with content creation is how you build brand awareness, a loyal following and boost your bottom line.
And that’s a fact.
68% of consumers learn about new brands through social media and follow brands to stay up-to-date with new products and services.
Think of it like this.
You create a content bank with each Instagram post, TikTok, or YouTube video. The more content you send out into the ether, the more opportunities users have to discover your content and tap the “follow” button.
However, you can’t get to this tipping point of brand awareness unless you consistently show up for your audience.
What does committing to consistency look like in practice?
• Creating a content calendar (and sticking to it!)
• Batch creating posts.
• Posting x times per week (choose a number that works for your business).
• Creating weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly KPIs to hold yourself and your team accountable.
Want to outsource your social media content strategy? You got it.
Fast-track your content creation with done-for-you captions, post ideas, and templates with a free content calendar sent straight to your inbox every. single. month.
3. Talk About Your Offers Every Week
How often are you promoting your products or services on social media?
If you’re like most small business owners, you fall into one of two camps:
1. Everything you post is promotional.
2. You avoid asking for the sale like the plague.
Does the latter sound like you?
Then make 2024 the year you become your biggest hype person.
Now, that doesn’t mean turning into a icky, sleazy, slimy salesperson.
It means becoming comfortable with self-promotion and communicating your offers.
After all, social selling is lucrative.
In 2020, there were 80 million social buyers in the U.S., spending approximately $27 billion. Those numbers keep growing, with $51.8 billion spent in 2022 despite a minor recession.
That’s a big piece of pie you’re leaving on the table if you’re not taking full advantage of social selling in your business plan.
And here’s another reason.
Consumers want to hear your sales pitch. 43% of consumers use social media to find new products and services.
Here are small ways you can ask for a sale:
• Connect your Shopify to Instagram and tag your products in your posts.
• Create behind-the-scenes Reels and TikToks to show your creation process.
• Include a call to action at the end of your posts to drive action.
• Tag products in your Instagram Stories with interactive stickers.
• Share a testimonial to tap into powerful social proof to build trust.
• Spotlight a product or service and explain who it helps and why to educate and inspire action.
By including these in your content mix, you’re continuously promoting your business and keeping your company top of mind.
4. Don’t Be Afraid To Entertain Your Audience
On the flip side, don’t solely focus on self-promotion.
It’s where many entrepreneurs go wrong on social media.
According to recent research, after staying in touch with friends and family, the number one reason people use social media is for entertainment.
When you stop creating the content your audience doesn’t want and start giving them exactly what they do want (entertainment), three things happen:
1. Your ROI increases.
2. Your engagement increases.
3. Your share of voice increases.
Take TikTok, for example. The platform’s signature ‘Shoppertainment‘ content style is informative, fun, and highly high-immersive. Not only is TikTok driving a 60% lower cost per install across all brand verticals (when compared to Meta), but the success of branded content on TikTok shows that swapping the ‘hard sell’ for authentic, entertaining storytelling is a tangible way to drive results for your business across both paid and organic social media marketing.
Posting entertaining content doesn’t necessarily mean learning a TikTok dance and lip-syncing for your life (unless that’s on brand for you).
Entertainment boils down to eliciting a feeling from your audience. It can be inspirational, aspirational, educational, or simply fun.
Make 2024 the year your business takes social media less seriously, and have fun with it. Connect with users to build brand awareness, affinity, and long-term relationships.
5. Identify and Choose Your Champion Channels
Are you on every single social media platform and struggling to keep up?
Or are you avoiding all of them?
Both extremes are hurting your small business.
• Stores without any social media presence have 32% fewer sales.
• Stores with a presence on multiple platforms struggle with the time and budget investment to maintain each one.
In 2024, make it your resolution to choose your champion channels for your company and deeply commit to each one.
It starts with answering one question: How will someone find you?
YouTube, a blog, a podcast, and Pinterest are all search engines. You want to create content on at least one of these platforms, answering their biggest questions.
Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn are excellent relationship-building platforms. It allows you to connect with users on a personable level and have one-to-one conversations.
Choosing one platform from each category ensures your business is discoverable, builds trust, and is likable. You need all three to convince someone to part ways with their money and give you the sale.
It also solves the problem of spreading your content creation across too many platforms.
Pick the ones with the highest ROI for your brand, repurpose content to other platforms to save time, and ditch the rest that don’t make sense.
Start The New Year on The Right Foot
Hit the ground running with Plann and get a leg up on other small businesses.
Grab your free content calendar, create a free account, and keep yourself on track and accountable in 2024.
With Plann’s all-in-one social media suites, you’ll gain access to features like our AI caption generator, our visual content planner, a powerful hashtag manager, effortless cross-posting, and so much more.
What are you waiting for? Sign up for a 7-day trial of Plann Pro today.
