Social media is a rapidly growing marketing tool. More and more businesses use social media to generate buzz for their business. Its a great way to connect with your customers, expand your fan base and reach new prospective customers.
Using social media as a marketing tool is a great way many businesses are using to convert sales and build their brand, however there is a right way and a wrong way to use social media for your business. Here are some keys to remember when using social media.
Do’s
- Create business social media pages. You first must have personal accounts setup to build business pages for Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter. Tips here
- Do treat your profile as your professional brochure using a professional image of yourself. Profiles without images tend to be overlooked.
- Stay active on your pages. Whether posting articles or add new images will keep your page fresh and relevant.
- For Linkedin users welcome your new connections and try to uncover new opportunities of working with them in a project. Instead of ignoring your new connections, send them a private message instead and probe for opportunities to collaborate with them on a project?
- Utilize the various social media platforms to their strengths. Facebook is best suited for posting video ads or photos from your portfolio, employee group photos or customer testimonials. Twitter is best suited for posting articles related to your industry or local market to build a following. Linkedin is best suited for building a professional B2B or B2C network which can generate leads for your business.
- Place your social media links in a prominent spot on your website whether in the header or footer so its easy to spot. If you are a blogger be sure to have social media share links so your articles can post on your readers social media page.
Don’ts
- Don’t use your social media pages strictly to sell your product or service. To attract followers you have to interact with them by demonstrating how you can help them succeed. One effective way is by posting relevant articles that will provide useful tips and information on your social media pages and website.
- Don’t be self-indulgent. If you start a discussion or post a link, give value. Obvious self-promotion impresses no one.
- Don’t hog the conversations in groups or make it your personal soapbox. You should always consider others and bring value with every post.
- Forget to Network: Just as you would in real-life, always work to make connections and grow your brand by networking and building quality relationships on social media. If your impression is good enough you might be able to work in a few word-of-mouth shoutouts.
- Not responding at all: It is vital to engage with your customers, with no engagement they may feel as if you don’t care about their question, comment or concern. It all comes back to customer service. Don’t ignore relevant comments. Use them as an opportunity to interact with your followers and show them how you address positive and negative situations.
In general, you want to find a happy medium between what your target audience wants to hear and things that promote your business. For many businesses, the answer is to focus on how your products and services benefit your customers. Give people useful information and answer their questions, and they will consider you a valuable member of their community. That’s an important first step to winning a new customer.
If you need help building a social media platform for your business contact us today.
Sources
inc.com, socialmediaexaminer.com, inboundmarketingagents.com
