Social Media Marketing Strategies for Women-Owned Businesses

You should be incredibly proud if you’ve joined the just over 1 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., because women entrepreneurs face many challenges when establishing their businesses. 

You’ve done all this work to get here, and now, you need to take your business seriously and build its foundation and reputation so that it has a better chance of surviving. Launching a social media marketing strategy, in particular, can be fundamental in building a strong brand that catapults you into a top spot in your industry.

Let’s dig deeper into why and how you can use social media to boost your marketing and brand.

The Importance of Social Media Marketing for Women-Owned Businesses

According to recent data from Statista, 78% of adult women in the U.S. use at least one social media site. This is good news for women-owned businesses whose ideal customers are also women.

By using social media, you have an opportunity to connect with a broad range of women in your target audience, helping you build a strong community of loyal customers to support your business. Aside from connecting with your target audience, social media helps women-owned businesses network professionally.

For example, the funding challenges women-owned businesses face are prominent. Many venture capitalists, angel investors, and people interested in backing women-owned businesses financially frequent social media. You have the chance to network with these individuals or organizations and find funding opportunities that you otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

Ultimately, social media is influential because you can connect with your audience, improve your brand’s reputation, and network with professionals who can take your women-owned business to the next level.

Tips for Using Social Media to Boost Your Marketing and Brand

With the benefits of social media in mind, the next step is making it work for your business. There’s so much more to thriving on social media than posting. Use the following tips to ensure your social media marketing strategy is strong.

Create a strong personal brand

So much of your success on social media is dependent on how you make yourself stand out. Keep in mind that you are competing with millions of other businesses for your customers’ attention.

A strong personal brand is essential to standing out on social media. You need to establish a recognizable visual identity and brand personality that reflects your personal values. As a result, you’ll build trust with your target audience and that, in turn, leads to their loyalty to and engagement with your business.

Define your brand’s colors, typography, and logo to form your visual identity. Figure out what brand personality reflects your business the best. For example, do you want to be quirky and creative or straightforward and professional? Determine the tone of voice and messaging you want to use as well.

Be sure to have a consistent visual identity, personality, and tone across all of your social media profiles. That way, people will become more aware of your brand and be able to recognize it when they come across it.

Understand who you’re targeting on social media

Your business will get a lot of attention on social media if your presence is strong enough. However, the question is: are the right people seeing your business on social media?

The goal is to connect with your ideal customers on social media, as opposed to trying to connect with everyone on these platforms. Creating content for everyone almost guarantees it resonates with no one, because people want personalized experiences from those they do business with.

People connect with content that seems like it’s made for them. Additionally, when they connect with that content, they’re more likely to continue their relationship with the business or person that created it.

Your target audience on social media should be people most likely to become customers or supporters of your business. Check out any data you already have on who’s bought products or invested in services from your business.

Start with your website analytics to pull information about the people who’ve made recent purchases with you online. Refer to market research and any information you’ve compiled from social media and in-person conversations with clients.

Where are these people on social media? What kind of content are they engaging with? How do they navigate social media generally?

You can design a social media presence that drives engagement when you know who you’re trying to reach and how to best reach them. 

Create quality content for your unique audience

Recent research revealed that 2.4 million snaps were shared on Snapchat, 1.7 million pieces of content were uploaded on Facebook, and 347,000 tweets were shared on Twitter per minute in 2022.

Your content on social media has to be high-quality, engaging, and tailored to your unique audience if you want to get their attention away from the hundreds of thousands of posts they’re bombarded with every day.

Determine what topics they’d find interesting and valuable. Go for what would make them save and share your posts. It’s also essential to experiment with media types. This means making videos, infographics, polls, surveys, image carousels, sharing content on your story, and going live.

A week or so after you publish posts, look at their analytics. Who’s looking at the post? How many views is the post getting? What about comments, likes, and shares? What’s the average viewing time? Data like this will give you insight into whether your post is reaching your target audience and if it’s resonating with the people who encounter it.

Identify patterns in the posts that are working to be used in future posts. You can also redo the posts that didn’t work with your new insight.

Examples of Women-Owned Businesses With a Stellar Social Media Presence

Successful women-owned businesses are everywhere in the U.S., but some states are more supportive of women-owned companies than others. Colorado, Washington, and California are the top three states for women-led startups.

Access to funding and the high survival rate of women-owned businesses in these states have a lot to do with why they’re good fits for women-owned businesses.

Some of the most successful women entrepreneurs come from the states above because they’ve taken advantage of these resources. But they’ve also taken pride in building strong brands through avenues like social media. 

For example, Cleo Parker Robinson has been running a top dance school, ensemble, and theatre for 52 years in Colorado. Her Facebook page has grown to 12k because she’s posting engaging content about her organization’s community involvement consistently.

Another example is Tangerine Travel, a women-owned travel management company in Washington state that’s been around for 25 years. Their Instagram has over 3k followers because of a consistent visual aesthetic that resonates with their target audience.

Finding the right place for your women-owned business is vital, but you must still take pride in building your brand across a variety of marketing channels — especially social media.

Conclusion

Establishing a strong presence on social media is crucial for women-owned businesses. You can build brand awareness, connect with customers, and engage in professional networking on these platforms. Take your women-led company to the next level by leveraging social media with the tips above.