This guide will give you a plan of attack or a “roadmap” you can follow to successfully harness on social media sites.
Why Social Media?
Almost everyone uses some type of social media. It can really pay off for your business if you use it correctly. Through social media, your business can not only make money, but it can increase the satisfaction of its customers, create fans, and improve the reputation of your company. It can work well for you if you select the medium that works best and is the most suited for your company.
Don’t get the wrong impression. A lot of companies believe that when they start using social media, they’ll immediately begin to see a huge return on their efforts and their investment. It doesn’t exactly work that way. You need to remember that it takes time for you to build your following, and you may not always see the results you like, and they won’t be immediately. You can sometimes, however, find benefits you didn’t even realize you would get from your social media marketing.
Benefits of Social Media
You may be a bit hesitant of getting into social media for your business. That’s understandable. Anything new and different can be a bit frightening. It is a technological world, however, and if you want to keep up with the times, you need to begin using social media networking for your business. If you are deciding whether or not to do it, you should look at a few of the benefits you would get from using social media marketing that you may not have considered. Here are a few of the benefits:
- Brand-Building Tool—This is a powerful way to use social media. Brand recognition allows you to use social media to determine how you want your company to be positioned, and what you tell people about what your business does. You can build a good brand reputation if you use a little effort and have great content which shows your company’s benefits, advantages, and values.
- Cultivating a Community—Social media is all about relationships, and it is a great way for your business to cultivate a community. You obtain instant access to your followers who become members of your community. Through social media, you can find out what they like about what your company has to offer, and what they don’t like. You can also find out what it is that your customers need. This communication with your customers can be more valuable than market research you would spend a lot of money for.
- Exposure—It has been said that before a customer decides to buy from you, they need to be exposed to you six to eight times. Through social media, you can get a lot of repeat exposure. You can shorten your sales cycle by being able to let the customer know over and over what your company has to offer them. Each time you do, you’ll be increasing your exposure. Not only that, but they may decide to share the information with their friends. If they do, then the exposure could increase by double, triple, or even more
- Establishing Authority—If you want to establish that you are an authority in any given area or on any subject, social media can be a great way to help you do it. It works well if you are a coach, consultant, author, speaker, and other service-based business. Through social media networking, you can let your audience know that you are the “go-to” resource for whatever it is you’re offering. You can build a strong fan base. People will know to come to you if you have good content, answer questions, and give your audience what they need.
- Growth of Influence—Your influence will grow as the number of your followers you get on your social media sites grows. You can attract new customers, have media interview you, and create Joint Venture partnerships, etc. if you have a substantial social media audience. Think about how people are when they see an accident on the side of the road. It’s the same way when you see a fire. The crowd seems to be drawn to it and gathers around it. It’s the same affect you can have on your social media sites. When you begin to build a big audience, people will want to see what’s going on. They’ll be drawn to your pages, and get to know you and your business. If they like what they see, they’ll return again and again. When they’re looking for what you offer, chances are, they’ll get it from you.
- Traffic Generator—Social media can increase your traffic to your website. Social media consists of sharing information. You give visitors a reason to want to visit your site when you share things such as: blogs posts, videos, or other content. When you get them to your site, you have a chance to make them want to take action such as join your mailing list, buying something you have to offer, retain you for their services, etc. It won’t happen overnight, but you will be able to see that social media generates traffic if you commit yourself to your efforts. Once the traffic gets to your site, you can convert that traffic into business if you give them a clear call to action.
- Competitive Advantage—Not every business takes the advantages of social media seriously. A lot of companies think social media is a fad, and it will go away. Because they feel this way, their pages aren’t updated regularly and they don’t acknowledge comments or answer messages. If you do take it seriously and put forth the effort if your competitors aren’t doing a good job, this gives you an advantage and a chance to stand out. If, on the other hand, you don’t participate in social media, you’re giving that advantage to your competitor who does.
As you can see, social media can make things happen for you and your business. If you’re hesitant at all, remember it is well worth the time, effort, and cost your business puts forth on the social media sites.
Without further ado, here are the steps you need to take in order to successfully use social media in your marketing with Facebook.
Don’t have a Facebook page? You’re not totally alone, but if for some reason you don’t yet have a Facebook page, you’re not taking advantage of a very important marketing opportunity. Some people think of social sites for young people to chat, but it’s much, much more. Facebook can be a strong marketing tool and it reaches a world-wide audience. It’s also really easy even for beginners who may be “technologically challenged” to use.
Your Facebook Page
Your Facebook page is where you can grow your business. It can help you build your brand and establish relationships with potential customers. It is free to set up, and can be done quickly. The basic steps of setting up a page are:
- Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/ to create your page.
- Select a category and Page name for your business
- Select a logo or image can be associated with your business and use it as your profile picture.
- Let people know about your business and what you do by writing a sentence about it.
- Create a web address for your page that is memorable and can be used on your marketing material. This will help you promote your Facebook presence.
- The first thing people will see when they go to your Facebook page is your cover photo. Select one or create one that best represents your business.
Once you’ve developed your page, you can reach out to not only your current customers but also to other users on Facebook. You want to keep your posts as high quality and post regularly.
Posting
Posting quality, relevant content regularly, keeps viewers interested in your business and what’s going on. If they are interested, you’ll know, because they’ll “like” your site.
Quality information will keep them returning to your site and sharing it with others. Writing quality posts really isn’t difficult. Here are a few tips to help you:
- Keep them relevant to your business and your audience. They come to you for a reason. If you start posting things that aren’t relevant, you may lose them.
- Be concise, sociable and write in a conversational manner. This will help you build a relationship with your customers.
- People like to see photos and videos. If you share these with your viewers, they seem to be more appealing. It gives your customers a face-to-face meeting with you and lets them see who you are. It makes them feel closer to you.
- Ask questions from your viewers and request that they give you input. If they think you value their input, they will give it to you. Be prepared…not all of it will be good. If it isn’t, you can use the negative comments to learn what is wrong and correct it.
- If you want your viewers to feel special, it pays to let them know information those who don’t view your page won’t know. You can also offer them special deals and/or discounts. They will want to share the offer with their friends.
- Post your events in the appropriate time period. Be current and up-to-date with your postings.
You can organize your posts to help your viewers identify the ones that are most important. Here are three ways to do that:
- Pin—You can use this to take your most important posts and cause them to remain at the top of your page for a week. This will be sure all your viewers get to see it and don’t miss it.
- Star—By using this, you can highlight stories you post. It will make them larger, so they will be more easily seen by your viewers. Sometimes, regular posts may be missed for some reason. This will increase your chances of being seen.
- Hide—Once your posts aren’t relevant any longer, or if they aren’t engaging your audience, you can hide them so they don’t show on your site. It doesn’t do anyone any good to have posts up that no one is reading. By hiding them, you keep the posts that your viewers like in the limelight.
To keep your posts current and make your viewers want to return to your page, it is generally a good practice to post at least one to two times per week. It is also a good practice to do it on the same days each week so your viewers will know when the best time to look for your post will be. Things like, “See you next Friday with more on…” let them know when they’ll get your next post.
It is easy to promote your posts, and promoting them is important. When you do promote them, it will bump your post higher in your viewer’s news feed than it normally would appear. This can be very beneficial, because you can increase the chance that more people will see your posts, and learn about your business. It will also cause them to want to take action on your page by responding to any offers you have on your page or leave comments for you. These things all help you in the rankings of the major search engines.
Page insights will help you see an overview of who is linked to your business through social media. They also let you know which of your posts are effective. By knowing which ones are effective, you can give them more posts like that. This will keep the current viewers happy, and help draw in more traffic. All you have to have is 30 people to click “like” on your page and the insights will be available for you. Through Page Insights you can check:
- Likes—This will tell you who likes your Facebook page and how those people found your page. When you know where they found it, you’ll know where to focus your areas.
- Reach—This is the demographic information regarding your page. It tells you location, age, gender, and more.
- Talking about this—This lets you know who has created a story about your page. It includes posts, likes, comments and/or shares of the posts on your page. It gives you a good idea of who likes/dislikes your posts and what is being said about it.
- Performance metrics—This is the size of your Facebook audience, and the engagement of the audience. Remember, your audience will engage with you the more you engage with them or ask them to engage. By asking them questions or making them feel free to comment, you can build your metrics.
Responding to your audience keeps them your audience. You always want to respond to your comments/messages sent to your page. This helps you build that relationship that is so important….. more and more…
