Social media is a powerful and cost-effective marketing tool for your business. It will not only put you directly in touch with existing and new clients, it will make you more personable, trustworthy and approachable. It will also improve links to your website, boost your SEO, help you to raise your own profile and establish new networks while attracting more business overall.
Of course, for most of you these tips will be completely obvious, however - I have had many people request some social media marketing advice, so to get you started, here are my top tips:
Twitter
Twitter is a hugely effective free marketing tool for your business. It’s a micro-blogging site and somewhere that allows you to talk directly to your customers quickly and easily. You basically follow people and people follow you.
You can tweet about yourself while keeping updated on the rest of the world. Sign up and create an account, reserving your business name and start ‘tweeting’. You can tweet about your company news, point people back to your website and any useful blogs you might have, or even respond to tweets about your sector.
If you’ve got an iPhone, you can use an application called TwitPic to instantly share your photos on Twitter. It’s a great way to add more personality to your business.
A useful ‘search’ function on Twitter will help you to find relevant people to follow or even target. For instance, as a PR person, I follow PR Week but also lots of design and marketing agencies around Staffordshire and Cheshire. I’ve found lots of new business by tweeting about my services and sharing my expertise. I’ve also searched for things like ‘PR services’ and ‘web developer required’ to target others and introduce myself.
To make the most out of your Twitter account you can use more advanced tools like Hootsuite or TweetDeck. These will make using Twitter a whole lot easier and come with lots of useful features. Take for instance, Hootsuite – you can schedule Tweets to be posted onto your profile while you’re away from your desk. Twitter has also recently introduced ‘Lists’ whereby you can organise all the people you are following, placing them into categories.
Bear in mind that you can't just self-broadcast. Social media is about sharing and talking to people. Get involved with things like #FF - or 'Follow Friday' where you recommend people to follow every Friday. Or 'RT', meaning 'Retweet', things that people are tweeting about to show your support.
And don't expect to win lots of business overnight with Twitter. Think of it more like a way of building relationships that might turn into customers. But never expect it, otherwise people will see through your insincerity.
Facebook
If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest. As a business, you can start a Page where people can 'like' you, similar to Twitter, and become fans of your business. Like Twitter, this is a fantastic free marketing tool to help build your online presence and get more people talking about you and your products or services.
Again, you can point people back to your website, your blog posts or even seek customer feedback. For example, on Creative Boom’s Fanpage, I often talk directly to my fans, asking their opinion on how I can continue to improve the website. As a result, I recently launched this new Tips section – to other help and advice to freelancers, start-ups and small businesses.
Please note that Facebook is only really suitable for consumer type businesses. There's no point in starting a Page if you sell tiles, for example. Facebook is only suited to those companies who naturally have a community... Take for example, high street retailer ZARA. Their Facebook page has literally millions of 'Likes' and all because their product is so suitable for this social media environment.Therefore, if your firm is more business-to-business, consider just focusing on Twitter instead.
Linked In
Linked In is a business version of Facebook that is hugely popular and has over 60 million users worldwide. It has some very useful functions like ‘Recommendations’ where you can encourage clients or colleagues to add a testimonial to your Linked In profile.
It’s also another social media network that has Groups. On my own profile, I've followed relevant groups such as Staffordshire Business and regularly talk online through the forums. It’s also a great way of keeping informed of any relevant business networking events going on in your local area.
But I'll be honest, I don't really like LinkedIn. It's my least favourite of all the social media. But it's there and many people use it, so it's always best to be a part of it, rather than not at all.
Blogging
Writing a blog gives you credibility, helps you to showcase your expertise and target potential new customers online. What’s more, by integrating a blog into your current website, you’ll be providing fresh and relevant copy.
And search engines like Google love regularly updated copy, which will really help boost your SEO. If you’re stuck for things to write then consider the following: you could comment on something in the news; provide tips and advice; share your expertise; review a product or service relevant to your industry or even just talk about your recent client wins. Or read my Things to Blog about when you run out of Ideas article.
Don’t forget to give your blog posts titles with SEO in mind. Think of what people would search for in the search engines. For instance, this feature would be ‘Top tips for social media marketing’. It’s another great way of being found through the search engine results pages.
Forums, chat rooms and chatting online
Contribute to online conversation and check out other people’s blogs that are within your sector, adding intelligent comments/debate to their posts. It will give you further credibility and put you in touch with hundreds of potential new customers.
More importantly, it will sometimes build links back to your own website. Why is link building so important? It’s relevant for SEO and helps to drive more traffic to your website. The more traffic you have, the more potential customers you’re reaching. The more strong and relevant links you have, the more your rankings will improve. Remember, social media goes hand-in-hand with SEO.
Multimedia
Have you considered using multimedia to boost your online presence? Websites like Flickr, Vimeo and YouTube[http://www.youtube.com] are a great way to add more personality to your business.
If you’re a designer and you want to showcase your work, you can easily produce a video gallery of your work and post it onto YouTube. If you’re a photographer you can upload your work onto Flickr, a photo sharing site that also has groups, forums and online communities.
Or how about adding videos to your own website? You could demonstrate a new product? Or just talk to your customers direct by introducing ‘vlogs’ or video blogs.
Join everything up!
Finally, once you’ve got your own Twitter and Facebook accounts up and running and you’ve started a blog or introduced YouTube videos, why not connect them all up? You can use things like Twitterfeed to tap into your blog’s RSS feed and automatically post things onto Twitter and Facebook.
Just think of Twitter and Facebook as powerful tools that will drive traffic to your website. Don’t forget to add some social media icons to your website so that people can easily follow you on Twitter or become your fan on Facebook.And before you know it, you'll have built up your own online community and be in touch with a whole new range of interesting people.
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