Social Media Marketing: Getting Your Feet (not your toes!) Wet
Posted by Joe DeRosa on Fri, Feb 08, 2013
Social media has become a catch all term for the seemingly endless variety of electronic ways a business?or anyone, for that matter?can engage with the public. The point is to engage directly with your public, your customer, your prospects, even those who just might spread your name by word-of-mouth. But the variety of social media outlets and actions that must be done on a daily basis so that you use them effectively admittedly can appear daunting.
?To start, I suggest you become acquainted with the top social media outlets, spend a little time studying them and then developing a strategy that you really can accomplish for using them, even if that means only starting with one or two.
I focused on LinkedIn in my Jan. 22 blog, ?Using LinkedIn to Enhance Your Business Reputation." Again, LinkedIn is the world?s largest professional network, boasting nearly 50 million members from more than 200 countries. In the U.S., there are 74 million members alone.
To start, reserve your business name so it is locked up as yours. Search around the LinkedIn website to become familiar with it. Look up your competitor to learn how they are using it. Find your customers and connect with them. Then connect with their connections. Upgrade to more premium accounts and gain the capability to send ?InMails? (notes) to key prospects. Post updates weekly.
Facebook now has over one billion active users, many of which use it on a mobile device. Originally known as a purely social site, it has dramatically evolved and can give your business a very dominant, existing social networking venue from which to launch your presence. These days, being an active member of Facebook is a ?must do? when it comes to social media marketing.
Once you've signed up, first secure your company's username. Then, as with LinkedIn, look for your competitors and study their Facebook pages. What do they show? How many fans or ?friends? do they have? How often do they update. Importantly, what do they say? Not only will this give you important market intelligence, it will also guide you in setting up your own Facebook page.
Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters each, known as "tweets." The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet.
At the very least, sign up and reserve an account in your business? name. You may eventually want to tweet in your own name but you?ll surely want the ability to tweet from a business account. Plus?and very importantly--you do not want your competitors to register your business name. Twitter offers an easy-to-use guide to assist you in understanding how it can help your business.
Again, familiarize yourself with Twitter?s homepage and what kind of content is available with basic searches, e.g., if you run a framing shop, search for different terms and phrases like ?frames,? framing,? ?framing business? and the like. Look to see if your competitors are on Twitter and what they are tweeting about. Most importantly of all, do a search for your own business name?the Twitter universe may already be talking about you. Once you have become comfortable, see the BusinessWeek article link at the end of this blog for a wealth of information on how Twitter can help your business.
Company blogging, a method of creating and publishing conversational content, is another form of social media and offers a valuable way to connect with your audiences. Many hosting providers offer an easy set-up process that will automatically install WordPress on your company website. Blogs can help you achieve industry awareness and credibility, attract new business, employees, media coverage and numerous other benefits by addressing specific prospect and customer interests.
Finally, multimedia offers zestful social media marketing opportunities. For instance, YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, view and share user-generated video content, short original videos and educational videos. YouTube has evolved to the point where it has been an integral part of social marketing for businesses. If you're already posting videos on your website, you can upload them to YouTube to reach a broader audience and embed the video content in your blog posts.
Where to start? Stay tuned for next Tuesday?s blog, where we are honored to have guest blogger, Josh Turner, B2B and Social Media/LinkedIn Marketing Expert, shed more light on these truly vital business marketing tools.
In the meantime, for more information on social media marketing, visit the links below:
5 Daily Habits for Effective Social Media Marketing
Social Media Helps Small Business Boost Sales, Keep Customers
10 Ways to Avoid Becoming a Social Media Robot
20 Ways Businesses Use Twitter
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