Mar
20
Use Social Media Effectively
Filed Under Home Business | 1 Comment
A business owner can Google ‘How to Use Social Media’ and may be amazed at the number of results that are returned. It will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 278 million web pages that talk about Social Media. How are you not to get confused?
The information you read will inspire you – because Social Media is an exciting new way to market a business. It will enlighten you – because there is a great deal of good information. And it is sure to confuse you – big time. That is because there is so much material and it is not very organized for productivity; in other words it is mostly scattered information that is hard to put into a workable plan for the inexperienced social media marketer.
Social Media is not about posting information – whether it be in the form of written content, audio, or video – and then sitting back and waiting for something to happen. Even if you put a lot of time, effort, and expense in developing the content – it won’t be enough to post it and forget it. Social Media Marketing is an important component. It is the promoting of this great content you are sharing.
Being interactive, encouraging engagement, and helping in the form of giving solutions, solving problems, or answering questions, is what creates the buzz around your company, your product, and your service. This is what social media marketing is all about, and it can be very powerful.
Asking your prospects and customers to participate in the conversation that takes place in your brand’s social media space, and inviting them to contribute to the content you provide, will build interest and have people talking about you. Being active yourself in responding to what is being said, and also seeking out ways you can help, will make a difference.
Part of social media marketing is searching for conversations and then participating in a helpful way, not a ’selling’ way. This builds a reputation of integrity and value. The key to social media is the spread of your information, by the people who like it enough to want to share it with someone. This is how word is spread online in social networking sites. It is important because, now more than ever before, people like to buy from people they know, like, and trust.
Social media has opened up a whole new world to the consumer. They can talk directly with the brand now. They feel more important to the brand and they want more information than ever before, including personal referrals for the brand. So they want to hear what others have to say, and the way a brand makes a positive impact on the people that will refer them is to engage with them online. The opportunity to develop content, for little or no cost, that is delivered very publicly on the internet is quite beneficial to the company if done with the primary benefit of the consumer in mind.
Investment in social media is more in terms of time than money. There is money to be spent in online advertising for sure, but right now many social sites have little or no cost. The investment is more in terms of time for the business owner who is tackling the project alone, and money if you have to outsource the work that is time consuming. Some brands choose to invest in a social media plan and have a current employee do the work. Others with a larger budget may hire a social media consultant or outsource the work to a reputable service.
The takeaway is that Social Media is not only about Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or any of the social websites, even though they are part of the story. It is about providing content that will attract and benefit people, and then the engaging you do with people to build loyalty and trust. A business should realize that authenticity is important because what you say as you represent your brand is turning out to be much more important than how polished and attractive your content looks. Providing value is what will benefit your business because this creates the buzz around your company that people want to pass along.
Mar
2
HOW to do Social Media
Filed Under Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Website Marketing | 1 Comment
This is the last part of a 4 part series on Social Media (links provided in case you have missed the first three): WHAT, WHY, PAYOFF.
We have talked about the fact that social media is conversation online. It is happening all over the internet and is discussions about content that is posted online or something that is happening offline as well. Content that is produced by businesses to engage conversation can take the form of video, audio, or written including inside blogs, forums, all types of social sites and membership sites.
We’ve also discussed why it’s important to be ‘in the conversation’. Businesses are increasing brand awareness, building significant followings, and producing more sales by integrating their company with social media marketing.
The ultimate goal of using social media for business is to get traffic to the website so that you can share more about your company’s product or service. There are many social media tools available to do this. The engagement you create with people in the social sites is what will help spread your message. When people you are connected to approve what you are saying, they will spread the word just like offline word-of -mouth advertising.
HOW do you join the conversation?
Social media facilitates the communication between people online. You will join the most popular social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and create a space there where you have the opportunity to build a large following. Posting valuable content in these spaces is what will attract others to you, in addition to brand awareness if you are an established business.
Posting content regularly is necessary because people are not going to come back to the same stale content on a page. Each time you post something, you will want to kick in your social media marketing plan for the content. The more you attract people to the content, the more targeted people you will build for ongoing communication opportunities.
Triggering conversation about your business is accomplished by searching for what is being said and responding to it. Answer questions, ask questions, give helpful information, provide valuable content. These are all ways to join the conversation.
What you want to target is an opportunity to provide a link back to your website each time you post something in a social site. That way, people can find out more about your business when they read something interesting that you wrote. This is another ongoing task: to search places online to engage with people and establish relationships.
People are always looking for new content, information about a product or service including features and reviews, help with something, answers to their questions, and discussion about experiences with products and services. They want direct access to the business, possibly even the CEO. The more you engage in the talk that is already happening online (about the market or industry itself and specific companies), the more you will integrate your business into social media and work toward conversion of engagement into sales.
When you give people the chance to associate themselves with you online, you are laying the groundwork for leveraging this communication for your benefit – at the same time, you are providing benefits to your following. Social Media is about sharing and relationship more than it is about selling. It is the model for the old saying that the more you give to others, the more that comes back to you.
The biggest takeaway today is threefold:
1) You must be active every day. Once you begin to participate in social media there will be conversation daily. You need to be responding to this communication and adding to it.
2) It is important to establish relationships, share valuable information, and not look for an immediate sale. People want to know that you care and are genuine about the business you represent.
3) Patience is required. Social media marketing is a process and most of the time it takes time and effort building a presence online before sales are realized.
To continue the conversation since the HOW is an ongoing adventure, we will be developing videos and written material for you to view and consider for your social media needs.
Come back often and discover new materials. Better yet, sign up for our RSS feed and you will be notified when we have something new for you.
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