Social media… when you think of it, do you associate your business with it? Many companies are using the power of social media to catapult them further into the worldwide market… a way to gain customers who live half a world away.
Social media allows people to establish new customers and reinforce the existing bond with previous relationships that can lead to three things:
- Loyalty
- Word of mouth marketing
- Brand awareness
It may seem a little overwhelming to use social media for your business. However, it doesn’t have to be if you have some idea of what you’re doing.
4 Tips To Help You Get Your Business Started On Social Media
1. Check Out The Different Social Media Platforms
It’s true that using social media for your business marketing can be rather intimidating, but again, it doesn’t have to be. The first thing you need to do is look at the various social media platforms available:
If you don’t know how to use these already, consider opening a personal account before you begin a business one. This way you’ll learn how they function before you try your hand at business marketing on them. Trying out various platforms is ideal to many small businesses because these types of businesses do not have the resources – employees or budget – to devote themselves to the activities.
2.What Are Your Resources Like?
What resources do you have at your disposal? For example, your employees could be your number one asset for social media marketing. If they know how to use social media, they can create the account and keep it up. If they’re unsure of how to use social media, does your budget allow you to hire someone to create the account and keep it up? These are things you really need to consider when determining what resources you have on hand.
No, you don’t have to use every single social media site to get your business noticed. One or two will do just fine; anything more than that will be difficult to keep up with.
Successful marketing on a social media site means relying on the content you post and the conversations being generated. Therefore, if you just open one or two social media accounts – whatever they may be – you’ll have a better chance reaching a worthwhile audience.
3. Who Is Your Audience?
When you’re looking to social media as a marketing strategy, you need to consider who your audience is going to be. Believe it or not, just having a page on social media is not going to make people come to it.
You’ll need to use keywords that your target audience is likely to use in regards to your business’s – products and services. Use Google to help you narrow down the perfect keywords. Check out social destinations and join conversations that are happening between the audience members. Bear in mind your reputation needs to be built up and you need to establish some relationships before you can let them know about what you do or what you sell.
4.Produce Worthwhile Content
Whatever your social media efforts are, it’s not going to do you a lick of good if you don’t have worthwhile, engaging, interesting and reliable content for your audience to engage with. You don’t want to just fill it with self-promotional messages because nobody is going to share the content, listen to you or follow you if all you do is talk about yourself.