5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Your Business
September 13, 2011 by Lisa Santos · 1 Comment
Even though social media sites are a tremendous way for small business owners to promote themselves on a shoestring budget, most small business owners don’t utilize these powerful platforms effectively. They vacillate between feeling completely overwhelmed and feeling that the sites are a huge waste of time.
Social Media is one of my favorite ways of generating interest around my own small business. But, there are some basic principles to keep in mind in order to make your marketing more effective and efficient.
Here are five important tips that will enhance your overall social media marketing experiences:
1) Create a landing page.
A landing page is a one-page website that offers your visitors a quick peek at you and your small business before they are “overwhelmed” by your business website. In addition, successful landing pages offer visitors a valuable free offer in exchange for their name and email address. Landing pages are crucial to business success because they allow prospects to connect with you on a more personal level, quickly highlight the benefits of doing business with you and give your prospects a small taste of what your small business is all about.
2) Set up complete profiles on your social networks.
If you want your marketing efforts to work, make sure that your social media profiles are complete. If prospects land on your profile page and it doesn’t have a picture and contains sparse information, they aren’t likely to feel any connection with you. You should provide as much information about yourself as possible. Remember, people want to get to know you, so give them what they’re looking for.
3) Participate; don’t push.
When marketing on social media platforms, always keep in mind the 80/20 rule. You should spend 80% of your time sharing, answering questions and interacting with others and only 20% of your time promoting your small business. If you stick to this rule, you’ll be viewed as a true participant as opposed to a pushy sales-person.
4) Be consistent.
Social media marketing is all about consistency. It’s extremely important that prospective clients see you on a regular basis. Exposure is the key to gaining your client’s trust and eventual business. So, get on those sites and interact on a daily basis.
5) Create a daily schedule.
If you don’t have a schedule, it won’t take long before you’re sucked into the “social media black hole.” Determine how much time you have to devote to your social media marketing and stick to it. If you only have 30-minutes each day, then only utilize three social networking sites and generate a strong presence on them. I like to use a timer (honestly!) to keep myself on track; when it beeps, I’m off to the next site.
Social Media marketing is extremely effective as long as you understand how to tap into its power. If you implement these five tips into your marketing efforts, you should quickly generate impressive results for your small business.
About the Author: Jessica Swanson has helped thousands of small business owners, all over the world, implement low-cost, high-impact DIY marketing campaigns. Armed with years of teaching and a M.S. in Written Communications, Jessica takes complicated marketing concepts, turns them upside-down, and makes them incredibly simple and outrageously straightforward.
Known for her energy, passion and “get-it-done” attitude, Jessica shares her savvy marketing tips through her weekly ezine, blog, podcasts and videos. To download your FREE Shoestring Marketing Kit, visit: www.ShoestringMarketingKit.com.
Jessica recently joined the Manta team of industry experts.
Precisely, How Are You Using Social Media for Your Personal Business?
May 9, 2011 by Lisa Santos · Leave a Comment
Owners of businesses large and small know the worth of social media marketing plus the recent explosion of Facebook fan pages attests to its proven success.
Making a fan page certainly is the first step in making the best of social media, but maximizing this online networking tool puts social media marketing to work in powerful ways.
Once the demands of managing a business need the most of your time, attention and finances, social media networking may fall into the bottom of the “to-do” list. Perhaps you have realized the need for a Facebook fan page in addition to your business website, but neglect its maintenance and simply check in occasionally to read fan posts and monitor page activity. If that seems like your thought of social media, you are not alone, but it is the perfect time to realize the marketing powerhouse Facebook has become and claim your bit of social media success.
Putting social marketing to function for you is among the best investments of the time. Dollar for dollar and hour for hour, time and money invested into your Facebook fan page will make so much more than simply establish your business – online presence; social media marketing can increase sales and introduce your product or service towards the many individuals throughout the world who connect to the internet daily to social media sites.
Increasing your commitment to social media marketing can yield measurable results:
- Watch your group of followers grow as friends tell friends about your company as well as the great things happening to your fan page.
- Increase profits by implementing shopping features on Facebook that enable customers to conduct transactions right on your page.
- Enjoy all the advantages of an established website directly on Facebook by turning your fan page to a shopping gallery where customers can view and read all about your entire services or products.
Make social media marketing work for you with simple, low-cost tips:
- Starting a particular fan page is one thing; maintaining it is yet another! Commit time each week to social media marketing networking by replying to fan page posts and engaging with your fans. Doing so lets them recognize how much you value their loyalty and referrals to friends.
- Link your website towards your fan page, and vice versa. Make simple to use for individuals to navigate between the two.
- Create a customized landing page for new visitors to your Facebook fan page. Requiring all of them to click the “Like” button before these people can access your whole page is actually a powerful marketing strategy that doesn’t cost you a dime!
- Keep your fan page fresh with quick posts and status updates from time to time that make your page seem timely and current. Your posts will appear in your fans- newsfeeds, that will get your business name out there and generate brand name recognition.
Starting a social marketing campaign is merely half the battle. Keeping that campaign alive and exciting for one’s online fans is what will help make or break your ultimate goal of putting social media to get results for you. Thankfully, once your initial social media campaign is launched and established, it is virtually cost-free to enhance and pump life into it. A little time committed to maintaining social media will pay off in big ways!
Considering the newest innovations in online marketing, business owners trust the social media professionals for creative and affordable social marketing solutions that will get results. Contact us at (757)204-5782 or fill out our contact form to learn the way to put Facebook marketing to work for you today.
Social Marketing Quick Tip #7 – Create Contests
October 19, 2010 by Lisa Santos · Leave a Comment
Contests on FaceBook are a fantastic way to get a lot of people to join your fan page! People really enjoy entering contests, especially if they are easy to enter and have great prizes. You can even specifically state that the prize will be awarded when you hit a certain number of followers. This way you can get people to post the contest to their wall in order to get more entries, which will help the contest go viral.
That way you don’t have to award the prize unless you reach your target number of followers. Just be sure to keep the target number realistic, otherwise people won’t enter because they will feel the contest is a scam.
Another great way to use contests for marketing is to actually give away one of the products that you are selling. If you have your own product, this is even more effective. Your entire contest can revolve around giving away a copy of your product, which will bring a lot of publicity and recognition to your product.
Social Marketing Quick Tip #2 – Socialize and Earn Trust
October 5, 2010 by Lisa Santos · 1 Comment
When it comes to social media marketing the most important thing you should do is to spend time socializing.
This should be obvious, but too many marketers skip this vital component when using social media to advertise their products and services.
While it may take a bit of time to socialize, it is an important step of the process, because people aren’t willing to pay attention to you and your marketing messages if they don’t know who you are.
You must make sure that you socialize with your friends’ fans and followers, especially if you want them to respond to your marketing message.
Think about it this way for a minute: Who would you trust more? The opinion of your friend, family, coworker or the opinion of salesperson you just met.
The simple fact is that people will be much more likely to buy what you recommend if they trust you and you can earn their trust by socializing with them, letting them get to know you, only recommending quality products and posting useful information on a regular basis.
Social Marketing Quick Tip #1 – Shifting Your Focus on Social Networks
October 4, 2010 by Lisa Santos · 2 Comments
Have you ever been approached by someone on a social network that you’ve never met and the first thing out there mouth is: “Hi, I’m with XYZ company. Please look at our opportunity and I can show you how to make money with us starting today!”. Lame, huh?
When it comes to successful social marketing one of the biggest mistakes that many marketers make is that they are too focused on making money and not enough on socializing. As a result they unknowingly spam their followers which can get their posts ignored, blocked or even banned.
When it comes to social marketing it’s very important that you use social networks as they were intended (to socialize), especially if you want to see any real results from your efforts.
Always remember to socialize first, build trust and then promote! You should be adding more value in your posts then promoting. When you do this you will have no problem attracting hundreds, maybe even thousands of happy followers and friends that will be interested in what you have to offer!
Sign Up For Blog Updates
Subscribe Below and Receive Our Free Report and 10 Day Email Series on "Local Business Domination: 10 Easy Ways to Attract Local Customers"
We respect your privacy. Your information is safe with us.-
Gallery
