Small businesses or newer businesses often have much tighter marketing budgets than those that are larger or well-established. As a result, you have to think smart to spend what little money you have effectively. Social media marketing is an effective and inexpensive way to advertise your business. You can use social media outlets to target your marketing campaigns to a specific group of new customers, and help retain past customers. Keep reading for advice on how to use social media to promote your business.
Businesses that rely on Twitter to promote upcoming sales should make an effort to interact with customers. At the very least make sure you always thank those that mention your business, and never ignore any questions that your followers send your way. This strengthens the bond between your brand and your followers. Your Twitter feed will also be more popular when followers can tell that their communications receive your personal attention.
Understand the importance of conversation and dialogue. Receiving feedback from your customer is great, but it’s up to you to respond back to them to open the door to discussion. Engage your customer base by talking with customers who give both positive and negative feedback. Find out what your customers really like and dislike about your products, and use that information to help move your company forward.
Gaining a large following on social networks necessitates more than just pushing your products. It can be helpful to post links and stories from other providers who work in your industry, to help entice people to follow you. Running contests, asking interesting questions and displaying intriguing pictures are other ideas for possible posts. Get your followers involved. Try to get them to talk about your product instead of just putting it out there. Unless your business competes solely on price, be certain you also focus on other attributes of your product or service that illustrate the value of your product or service in a consumer’s life.
To draw certain demographics of individuals towards your business website, consider including YouTube in your social media campaign. This helps because visitors will already know what it is you’re marketing, because they have already seen your videos. This tool can help you to increase hits to your site and sales of your product, too.
Interaction with your customers should be one of your primary goals. Comment on their blogs and social media statuses, if you think that to be appropriate. However, don’t join a private conversation. Your responses should be limited solely to discussions centering on your business, product, or service.
Take a look at the games offered on Facebook. Try to come up with an idea for creating a game that is associated with your business, product, or service. Some popular brands have been extremely successful with Facebook’s games, which turned into viral phenomenons. If you have the funds to have a professional game designer work on a game for your business, then you can reap the rewards by sharing it on Facebook.
Engage online users by including buttons that link to your Facebook, Twitter and other profiles. You can also provide the option to subscribe to your RSS feed. At a minimum, these buttons should appear on your company site, your blog, and email and forum signatures. Also, don’t forget to link all of your social media profiles together so that people can follow you on multiple sites.
Make sure you track your progress. You will want to keep track of how much traffic you are getting to your website and how many unique visitors each day and month. Link these stats and discover your best decisions so that you can come up with even better strategies for your business. If you fail to take note of results, you may never know whether or not social media can work for you.
Think about Facebook games. You could easily create your own game related to your products or industry. Some games have gone viral and turned into very successful ventures for many companies and brands. If you are able to pay for it, hire a game designer to create some kind of game for you to put on Facebook.
Providing exclusive offers, such as coupons or discounts, can really boost your presence on social media sites. Give those who like or follow you a small but significant benefit. By doing this, your followers can feel like they’re part of some exclusive club if they receive special offers, and this can also increase your profits.
Update your Twitter status often to keep your message from getting lost. You will have to combine quality with quantity when posting on Twitter. Post good content and post it often. Divide your message about a specific event into multiple tweets in order to get the most mileage out of it.
Social Media
When you make a post on Twitter, adding a tag is recommended. Tags show up after the “#” symbol. This will allow any updates you have to show up in feeds of people that have subscribed to particular groups. Consider carefully which tags to use and which groups your target audience will most likely subscribe to.
Ask your customers to fill in a survey about social networks. If they’re spending more than 1 hour per day on social media then it is time for you to get in on that action! If it so happens that your target audience is not affiliated with any social media sites, than it may be best to focus your efforts in another area that your audience better relates to.
Select strategic titles for any video you post to YouTube or your social networking pages. The titles need to have keywords that relate to the products you sell and the industry you are in. The more descriptive your titles are, the easier a viewer will be able to locate them using their search terms.
With SMM, you should not spend any time worrying about if you will be broke. Instead of investing big bucks, you will instead invest time to produce and release quality content through many different mediums. With all the sites available online, it shouldn’t take long to create a core consumer base and begin the growth of a powerful establishment.
If you want to use social media in your marketing plans, you need to cope with negativity about it. Your customers might love your products, but that love has its limits; some people might not be so happy. Don’t ignore an issue; work with a disgruntled customer to achieve common ground.
Categories: Social Media Marketing