Use Social Media For Business
Website designer in Houston
Why use social media?
As traditional methods of marketing to customers like advertising or direct mail become less and less effective, businesses are turning to social mediums to connect in positive ways with consumers and the people who influence them. We need to be acutely aware just how social media has fundamentally changed the way we are connecting, communicating and collaborating as individuals, and therefore society as a whole.
The key to social media success is not to get hung up on the tools and technology, but to focus on how you can use them more effectively to:
- increase the visibility of your personal brand and that of your business
- build and cultivate your personal and professional networks
- develop and grow relationships with customers and influencers
- engage in real-time two-way interaction with people, including answering queries
- publish and distribute original content that demonstrates your expertise
- share curated links to relevant information that adds value to the lives of your customers
- communicate with your community of followers, advocates and supporters
- ultimately generate new leads and boost sales for your business.
Understanding the social media equation
Think of social media in two parts.
Firstly, there is social media participation – this is where you're present on social channels and are constantly delivering value to the online community in the form of:
- sharing other people’s content (User Generated Content or USG) on Facebook or LinkedIn, retweeting them if you’re on Twitter or regramming on Instagram.
- answering people’s questions if you’re in a position to help – whether they’re directly related to your business or not
- joining the conversation on a particular topic – this could be a group on Twitter talking about a certain issue that’s sprung up through the media, or joining a LinkedIn Group
- leaving genuinely interesting and relevant comments on selective blogs you read and podcasts you listen to
- promoting other people’s businesses and causes, for example, your municipal council may be running a street festival that could be good for you to be promote via your networks.
Before jumping into conversations on social networks, it’s critical that you:
- listen first
- sit back and take note of the ‘lay of the land’
- try and get acquainted with the nuances of the particular network on which you intend to become active.
Secondly, there is the creation and distribution of original content that informs, empowers, educates and/or entertains – content that will attract the right people to your brand, potential customers as well as the people who influence them.
To be effective however, content published and promoted via social media needs to be created with the audience in mind, which is why it’s important you first understand who you’re trying to communicate with and where they hang out online.
Source: Business
About LaraNet: We are a web design firm focused to help you to grow your business and communicate with your customers and prospects using two simple but powerful tools: 1) Interactive Website and 2) Internet Marketing Strategy on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc… Whether you want to work with just a web page, or launch or improve your presence on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or communicate with your customers through newsletters, or improve the location of your business in the search engines through Search Engine Optimization, or start marketing your products or services online, in LaraNet we can help you.
