At one point in time, many businesses viewed the world of social media as a playing ground for kids. Those days are long gone. In today’s society, social media sites provide a valuable tool for marketing and branding any business. With such a level of importance placed on these sites, it is equally important to make your social media marketing plan an effective one. In this article we will give you a few tips for starting out right.

Keep in mind what a conversation really is. What many companies fail to recognize, is that feedback, even negative, is giving them the opening to have a conversation. Expand upon their comments by talking to your customers. Find out what your customers really like and dislike about your products, and use that information to help move your company forward.

If your goal is to create a large social network by opening different profiles, your first step should include inviting every person you know. Even if they don’t subscribe or follow your page, they’re at least being made aware of your company’s presence.

If you’d like to get more followers on your social media profiles, don’t just use them to sell products. Put up links, stories and content from sources outside your company, but provided the material is related to your business or sector. You can get people engaged by running contests, ask questions or post new pictures. Do whatever you can to engage your followers. Practice product engagement rather than product placement. Don’t get your customers to focus on the prices of your products- get them to think about how it’ll fit into their lifestyle.

If you want to maximize your social media efforts, make sure they all tie together through links. Insert links onto your blog so that readers have the option of following you through Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. On your profile page on Twitter, make sure to include the link to your Facebook page and blog. Linking your social media profiles together will potentially increase your customer base.

Talk to your customers on a regular basis. If you get to know certain customers well, comment on their blogs or Facebook walls. Avoiding getting into personal discussions with your customers, stick to product or industry related issues only.

Offer exclusive deals to customers who sign up for your social media sites in order to attract customers to those sites. By granting them exclusive access to incredible deals, you also encourage them to share these specials with members of their own networks. Talk about free publicity!

Your social media pages should have buttons all over. In addition, an RSS feed that provides all your updates is a good thing to have. Ensure that this is clearly visible on your websites, blogs, emails and in your signatures when you comment. Also, link between profiles for maximum exposure.

Actively communicate with your customers whenever you can. In some circumstances, it may be helpful to comment on their blog posting or current Facebook status. This does not mean jumping in on a personal exchange, but it should be aimed at issues that are relevant to your product or service.

Facebook allows people to share content quite easily. If someone comments on one of your posts, something will appear in this person’s feed for all their friends to see. Let your readers know that you’d like them to engage in communications, so that you get more exposure.

Email Marketing

Include the names of influential users of Twitter by name-dropping with an “@” symbol preceding the name. Twitter will notify them that they were posted about, and then they will want to retweet that, so that all their friends and followers can see it.

Merge the world of email marketing and social media. Include a link to your Facebook page or Twitter account at the end of all of your emails. Draw attention to your email marketing campaign by placing links to your registration page on your social media profiles for instance.

Put your blogs on your personal LinkedIn page with the application for blog feeding. When you post your article, it will be displayed as a LinkedIn update. That saves you time and exposure for your products increased by blogging for site visitors and LinkedIn contacts at once.

It is extremely important to know what sort of person is likely to find your business’s social media profile interesting. Consider why these individuals access social media and what they hope to gain from their participation.

If you are aware of the ads posted from social media pages, the pictures they have are very intriguing images that are photoshopped. The use of this sort of image catches the reader’s attention and makes people curious about your ad. When someone is drawn to one of your ads they tend to check out your business and from there they may be interested with what you have to offer.

Social media marketing is the new and upcoming thing that your business should use. Use it to market your brand or business and you may be seen by millions of people. This article showed you basic tips for creating a quality campaign using social media marketing.

To increase your number of followers on social networks, provide exclusive incentives such as coupons or discounts to those who “like” or follow your page. Your customers will feel like they are part of an exclusive club when they receive discounts from your profiles, and will increase your profits with the additional sales.

Categories: Social Media Marketing

Tags: email marketing, social media marketing, social media profiles, social media sites