With the ever-growing shift to digital commerce, many small businesses no longer just face the local competition. Instead, they are confronted with state wide, national, and even global competitors that offer products and services to customers by positioning themselves strategically online. These competitors are skilled in taking advantage of social media, Google, and other platforms such as Amazon to crowd out or even drive businesses to close regardless of the fact that they are not even present in the same state.

Businesses can fight back and even exceed their competitors through great social media strategy, influencer marketing, and organic search ranking.

Below, we highlight top four ways in which businesses can use social media to beat their competition:

1. Improve content: businesses can put their creative skills to the test by employing more creative ways to present their product or a service to their clients on social media. They can utilize Instagram reels or TikTok to make more entertaining videos that their existing audience will want to share. According to Amra & Elma, a social media agency, every time a follower shares your content, it exposes the business to dozens, hundreds and even thousands of potential new customers. By creating content that others want to share, businesses stand to gain a leg-up on their competition and increase their visibility.
2. Work with better influencers: businesses can get really picky by choosing the best influencers that will allow them to reach their target audience. By being choosier with influencer partnerships, and working only with those influencers who best address their target audience, business can beat their competition in regards to popularity and market share. They can utilize internal influencer marketing managers or influencer marketing agencies to leverage great partnerships and drive traffic to their site or even Amazon accounts.
3. Utilize social media to drive traffic to specific landing pages: Businesses can use social media to drive traffic to specific landing pages and increase their page ranking. For example, they can develop landing pages that they connect to their social media accounts either through the link in bio or through swipe up option on Instagram stories or Snap Chat. They can then isolate growth of these specific pages created to rank for some of the most competitive keywords. Google has been known to rank pages faster if they receive confirmation from social channels through sharing and views. This is a great strategy to beat competition especially when it comes to SEO and ranking.
4. Leverage social media to score great PR: Businesses can also beat their competitors in branding, credibility, and popularity by receiving top PR coverage via well-known media. They can do this by leveraging great social media following, existing social media influencers collaborations, or working with PR services agencies. Their PR can also be used on their website to boost conversions when organic traffic arrives for the first time as they are able to receive additional confirmation of brand's reputation through highly reputable media mentions.

Businesses can beat their competition by strategically utilizing optimal influencer partnerships, being creative with their posts and videos, utilizing great PR coverage to boost trust, and optimizing social media traffic to increase ranking.