• The indicators selected demonstrate the businesses ’ adaptation to the evolved consumer usage patterns of Facebook , and indicate whether businesses have optimised their Facebook Business Page for business promotion and customer servicing .
• 63 % of businesses have not completed their Facebook About information , missing fundamental opportunities to communicate important information to potential customers .
• Only 31 % have set up their Business Page ’ s Messenger service by establishing an Instant Reply ( Messenger AutoReply ), which is valuable to communicate expectations to customers about when the small business may respond , thereby establishing trust at the start of the relationship .
• The Community indicator shows that 95 % of small businesses may not have a Facebook strategy in place , meaning that the effort they are putting into maintaining their Facebook presence and creating regular posts is most likely not yielding a satisfactory return on investment . A common challenge that SMEs report to Navii and Tourism Tribe coaches is that they lack strategic direction for their social media efforts , supporting the results unveiled through the research . How the Community indicator demonstrates lack of strategy is that it measures whether businesses are making the most of their customers ’ content within Facebook .
• Despite 57 % of businesses being assessed as creating Facebook posts with varied and inspirational content ( Varied Content ), which is best practice , we can derive that a lack of strategy means that they are not yielding return on investment .
• Return on investment on social media is measured through engagement ( including reactions , comments , and shares etc ) on posts . To achieve engagement both the visual content and the captions need to work together and have strategic intent to encourage the user to take action . It can be seen in Figure 3 above that disappointingly for the businesses , only 12 % of businesses were assessed as writing posts that demonstrate they have thought about fostering engagement .
Social Media Marketing - Instagram Instagram has become an important channel for the majority of Australian businesses as the consumer market has grown to 55.5 % of the Australian population now using Instagram ( Source : Meltwater . com )
Anecdotally , Navii and Tourism Tribe can report that many small businesses are challenged to understand the nuanced usage of Instagram as compared to Facebook , and they are not addressing fundamental requirements of promoting their businesses on Instagram . This is reinforced through the data insights below .
• 94 % of businesses have not optimised their Instagram Bio on their Business Profile , missing the opportunity to communicate their unique selling proposition in a compelling manner .
• 85 % of businesses have not set up Instant Replies to Instagram messages . An automated message can be a simple acknowledgement of a message and communication of an expected response time , going a long way to managing customer expectations .
Instagram has become an important channel for the majority of Australian businesses as the consumer market has grown to 55.5 % of the Australian population now using Instagram ( Source : Meltwater . com )
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL VOL 16 NO 1 2023 19