3 Effective Small Business Social Media Marketing Strategies

Social media is easily becoming one of the best communication channels available to reach your consumer base. Businesses all over the world are peering into social media and how it can help them increase their online (and offline) presence and revenue. Luckily, building your brand through social media is a very simple process if a business takes the time to maintain their accounts and assets while following a proper strategy.

This article will outline 3 of the most powerful tools in social media to help your business grow – Facebook, Twitter, and a dedicated blog for your business.

Facebook

Facebook has grown to be a behemoth in social media. Even though it’s inteded purpose was social networking for the younger generation, businesses are now using Facebook to reach out to their consumers.

Facebook Strategy:

1. The first and most important step is securing your company’s account name. Facebook has reserved special accounts for businesses where other users can become “fans” of your dedicated page. The advantage here is that users will receive your updates in their feed.
2. Analyze how your competitors in the same industry are utilizing Facebook to create buzz for their business.
3. Facebook offers seemingly the most targeted ad space on the web. Businesses are allowed to place advertisements on the social networking hub by filtering demographics – in other words, you can direct your ads based on age, gender, marital status, etc. Example: a dating website could have their advertisements only appear on the accounts of those users that are listed as “Single”.

Twitter

Twtter is a micro-blogging tool that very recently has shot up in popularity. Businesses can use an array of strategies to reach their consumers.

Twitter Strategy:

1. As mentioned with Facebook, your first task is to secure an account that matches the name of your business.
2. Build a large, targeted following on Twitter.
3. There are many different ways for a business to utilize Twitter to help them meet their goals. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking:

• Public Relations Channel: Twitter is an easy way to communicate updates and promotions to your customers by sending a simple Tweet. You can post links that lead to news articles and new offerings from your business.
• Customer Service: allow your customers to ask questions via Twitter and provide quick and easy answers that will help them make use of your products or services.
• Just for Fun: Southwest Airlines uses their Twitter account to simply have entertaining discussions with their consumers. They also Tweet when there is bad weather to help your travel plans.

Company Blog

A company blog is one of the easiest and most effective ways to attract new customers to your business.

Blog Strategy:

1. There are 2 options for hosting your blog. You can reserve a new domain or install it on your existing domain (the latter is recommended.)
2. The next step is to write enjoyable articles that relate your industry by including keywords that will attract your customers. For example, if you sell coffee you could write an article titled “4 Benefits of Drinking Coffee.” Anyone who is to Google a related phrase may find your article, and in turn your site will be hit with targeted traffic.
3. If you have a bunch of articles on your site and nobody is going to find them, what’s the point? A very important component of your blog strategy is you need to promote these articles. The best way to do so is through social media channels. Not only should you link to your articles from Facebook and Twitter, but you should also use article submissions sites like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, and Yahoo Buzz. Our marketing firm specializes in this type of promotion so feel free to give us a shout if you need help with this phase.
4. Install plugins that will help users spread your article on the web. For example, there are plugins that will place “Share” buttons on your articles where users will be allowed to submit your articles to the sites mentioned in #3.

Conclusion

Social media is the rising star in communication channels for businesses to connect with their customers. It works because you know that you are marketing your products or services to real people who are looking for fun and interesting content on the web. People are spending more time on the internet than ever and social media is where you can reach them.

If your business is looking to employ a solid social media strategy but does not have the time or resources to do so, we can help. Our marketing firm will help you compose and roll out a strategy that will effectively leverage social media to bring your business traffic, exposure and a great ROI

summary: this post is in relation to branding strategies. it talks about how companies are using social networking sites to develop strong brands. this articles talks 3 ways of using social media for marketing. the first being facebook, second twitter and lastly designing a company blog. to some extent i would agree with this as we do notice the advertisements on facebook and twitter but as far as a company blog is concerned, i dont think anyone would actually be interested in reading a company blog. personally, i dont think i would be interested in reading a company blog.

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