How to use Social Media effectively to promote your Small Business
If you already use social media in your everyday life you will have a fair understanding of how these platforms work. Transferring this on to your business can be an effective tool to get your brand out there and noticed and create effective business partnerships.
Get Yourself Set Up and Ready
Facebook has over 300 million users so set up a business page to make the most of this vast market . You can create a user name using your company name as this makes it easier for people to find your business.
If you already have a personal Twitter account you can use this although it would probably be better to use a business account that can be a dedicated platform for your business.
LinkedIn is the business social network equivalent of Facebook, with over 50 million users in over 200 countries. Set up your LinkedIn profile selling yourself and your business in a professional manner to get.
Why Use Social Media Marketing
Most start ups and small businesses have limited resources and marketing can be very expensive. Social Media marketing is low cost compared to other forms of marketing. Although it saves you money, you have to invest in a little time to get the results.
Do your Homework
You need to understand your customers needs to be able to connect with them. Define your audience, the age group, gender, interests or profession, what problems you could solve for your audience and how you could be a valuable resource for them.
Establish what it is you want to communicate to them, do some research.to find out what there preferred social media platform is.
Make your Website Social Media Friendly
The idea of any marketing is that you want people to buy your product or services. In order to do this you need to co-ordinate your social media marketing to link to your website. You will need your networks together to achieve this.
Make sure your website is social media friendly. Display your social media icons that connect to your profiles where they can be easily seen by your visitors so that they can follow you.
Blogging is a great way to share information and tips. It is a useful tool to engage with your audience and lead them to buy your products or services. Always include a call to action at the end of each blog either to follow you on social media platforms or to an offer or sale on your website. You want people to share your information so include sharing buttons on your site making it really easy for visitors to share your content.
Plan your Social Media Campaign
Social Media marketing is easy to do but it takes time and energy to start with. Try focusing on two platforms to begin with and expand this later when you are in the swing of things. You need to set aside some allocated time to concentrate solely on your social media marketing, be that half an hour a day or half a day each week, just be disciplined about putting this time aside for this purpose. Try using different times of the day to increase your audience potential.
Use original material and material curated content to share with your audience, choose topics that target that particular target market. You want your readers to learn something from you that will lead them to want to trust you and use your services so make sure you know your stuff. Don't just randomly share content with your audience that has no relevance what so ever and that you haven't read and researched yourself. You need to be the expert they want to engage with.
When sharing other posts and tweets always give your opinion on the topic or ask a question or other peoples opinion, this will encourage others to engage in conversation with you.
Plan ahead
With most social media sites you now can schedule your posts for a later time. Collect all your content in one go then you can schedule specific times for each one to go out throughout the week.
You can set up platforms like Hootsuite which can have all your social media platforms in one place and makes scheduling and posting to different platforms at the same time incredibly easy.
Set aside time to interact on other peoples tweets and posts and respond to any comments that have been left on yours.
Paid Social Medial Advertising
When your business has grown a little and you have some revenue for low cost marketing you could try social media advertising. Paid advertising on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are relatively inexpensive and could boost your presence and increase your visibility to a larger audience. Both LinkedIn and Facebook offer options that can reach specific audiences either by buying advertising or using the sponsored up date options These are easy to set up and you can choose your own budget.
Pay someone else to do it for you.
If you still feel like social media marketing is still something you cant or simply don't have the time to do, don't dismiss it altogether as you could be missing out on some vital leads. Pay some one else to set up and maintain your social media accounts for you.
Take a look at my Social Media Package.
Set up and maintenance of your social media platforms at an affordable price.
