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.

Friends, family, existing customers, and anyone else you know should be invited to your social sites when you establish them. The main reason here, especially on Facebook and Twitter, is that the activities they perform are available via their profiles. So while your sister’s neighbor’s boyfriend might not be interested in your business, people in his network might be.

You must respond quickly to you Twitter followers, especially when they mention your business. Be consistent in responding to both compliments and complaints. Twitter should be used to engage your customer base. This is a good way to build loyalty among your followers. You will also establish yourself as a real person and not just a business entity.

Write a guest post on a blog in your niche or allow a guest blogger to post on your blog. Both avenues can bring increased traffic to your website. When guest posting on another blog, make sure the blog owners allows your to add a backlink to your site. Also, let the blogger do the same. This relationship is mutually beneficial, so as long as you’re allowing a link, they should have no trouble also allowing a link.

If you want to start with social media right away, before defining your personal style, as the saying goes, fake it until the point where you make it. If you imitate your competitors’ social media strategies, you will at least get a sense of what will — and what will not — bring in sales. Lurk their social media pages and pay close attention to the type of posts they make, especially promotions.

Interaction with your customers should be one of your primary goals. Comment on blog posts, reply to Facebook statuses and answer questions posted to your wall. Don’t promote yourself on their personal posts, though. You should only mention products and services when they are truly relevant to a topic.

If you’d really like the customers to go crazy about your products as opposed to the competition’s, make sure that you’re offering some great deals and exclusive specials. When they notice deals open only to Facebook followers, they are sure to give you greater attention and share the information with friends.

Combine your social media marketing campaign with an email campaign. Add a link to your Facebook and Twitter profile in the signature of the emails you send and let people know they can use these sites to ask questions. Tell people to forward your emails so that you can get as many people to see your content as possible.

You can set up your Twitter account so that your blog posts are automatically twitted. You can also add valuable content from other quality website as part of your update campaign. They will love being mentioned on a company’s feed, and all of your followers will benefit from the conversation.

You should always post often to Twitter so your followers can always have updated, and not buried, information from you. With Twitter, volume counts. Your content must be high quality; however, you can post it frequently. Divide your message about a specific event into multiple tweets in order to get the most mileage out of it.

Social Media

Your LinkedIn page can take advantage of a blog feed application to display your blog posts. After your article is posted, it shows as updated on LinkedIn. This not only helps you save time, but doubles your exposure–both LinkedIn friends and blog readers will get your update.

Social media is considered a here and now marketing method that businesses should attempt to use. This will help you market your products and expose them to millions around the world. Read on to find some tips which will give you a basic knowledge of what it takes to market your company online through social media.

The frequency with which you update your social media status should change with the situation. Depending on the size of your network, people are going to demand that you update frequently and give important information on anything new from your end. But if you are having a hard time coming up with fresh content, consider posting less often so your content is not stale to followers.

Categories: Social Media Marketing

Tags: social media