Although fairly recent, the use of social media technologies as an avenue for marketing a business is proving itself to be a highly effective method for expanding a customer base and developing lucrative relationships. Social media is pretty new, so it’s to your advantage to jump at the chance to achieve prominence in the social media universe. Read on to learn some techniques for using social media sites to market your business that your competitors might not have thought of.
Be careful when hiring a company to handle marketing via social media. There are a large number of firms that simply seek to defraud and prey on business owners who do not have experience with internet marketing. They will create fake social media accounts using automated bots, proxy servers and even websites like Mechanical Turk. Because these services use abusive tactics, your message is generally not seen by too many real people, as the view counts are fake and the fraudulent accounts are generally terminated fairly quickly.
Let your customers know that you have turned to social media for marketing. Encourage them to join your page, as the social media venues will likely let all of their friends and associates in their network know that they have joined your pages. This form of advertising is free and accessible to a broad range of people. Make good use of it!
Send invitations to every person you can think of when you launch your social media campaign. While not everyone may be directly interested in what your company has to offer, it helps to get your name out there. This also allows them to refer others to your company.
Plan your high-level social media strategy wisely and carefully. Do not abandon your current strategy in favor of every new thing that comes along. If the trend fails to catch on, you will have wasted your valuable resources. Look for a good balance between tried and true methods and the latest trends, then adjust and enact your strategy accordingly.
Avoid making every one of your posts a product push if you want to attract new followers. It can be helpful to post links and stories from other providers who work in your industry, to help entice people to follow you. Put up photographs, ask people questions and run an occasional drawing. Do whatever you can to engage your followers. Product engagement is preferable to simple product placement. If you can help your customers to associate the brand with their own personal identity, you’re set.
Email Marketing
Talk about your social media progress in your content. Tweet or blog about the different milestones that you accomplish to show progression. Thank the folks who are following you, and give them a summary of your experience. This information is sure to be quickly shared.
Try combining social media marketing with email marketing. At the end of your emails, include a Twitter or Facebook link and advise recipients that their questions will receive personal answers when posed on these websites. Draw attention to your email marketing campaign by placing links to your registration page on your social media profiles for instance.
You can use many traditional marketing tools to market your business on social media sites. However, many business owners don’t know how to harness the power of social media, and thus, don’t use it appropriately. Do not lag behind your competition, use these suggestions and you will do very well to improve your business profits.