Many people, myself included, spend a lot of time on Social Media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn trying to build a following to spread their Brand message, but if you don't pay attention to Social Media Strategies you may not get any business benefit back for your time. Over the last few years, social media has become big news and although for most people it's still a way to stay in touch with friends and colleagues, Osteo biflex it has also become very important in business too.
Household name companies are reaching out to customers in ways that they never could before and as a result they are reaping the benefits. The same is true for small and local businesses too, however as many small businesses are "One Man Bands" or too small to have a dedicated team to sit and update Twitter all day, it's really important for those businesses to understand how to get the best return possible from time spent on Social Media.
This is why it's really important to set yourself some Social Media Strategies outlining what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. For most small businesses a "high Level" strategy will be all that's required, just enough to highlight your overall objectives and plans and to ensure that you can focus on what you need to achieve without getting sidetracked.
What Not to Do...
A really common thing that is done by people trying to get their brand name out into the world is to blindly follow as many people as possible on as many Social media sites as possible. Although building up your Followers, Fans, Friends, or whatever they're called on whichever of the Social Media sites you are using isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's not necessarily a good thing either. If you are trying to build up a large following, you have to question if your followers are actually going to be interested in your brand, if it's relevant to them or if you are just adding to their Spam folder.
A crucial part of all Social Media Strategies should be to build up your following with valuable, influential people who will genuinely be interested in what you and your brand has to say. If your friends and followers are interested, they are more likely to respond to your comments, updates and Tweets, and they are more likely to forward your messages on to their followers, and the word will start to spread more effectively.
So how do you decide who to follow, and how do you find influential people? First of all, find out about the key people in your industry. Maybe comment on some of their articles and link back to your own sites, which can help with rel=nofollow promoting your blog as well.
Follow people whose work you are interested in and forward their articles on to your fans as well. Once people see that you are adding value to their timeline and not just sending updates for the sake of it then they will want to follow you.
Remember, that influential people don't necessarily need to have the biggest number of followers, it's more important that the followers they do have are engaged with what they're saying.
Once you're up and running...
You've started building a name for yourself, now it's time to set some goals as to what you want to achieve from your new following. For my business, I like to use social media to draw people to my blog. I can use an analytics package to see which sites drive the most traffic to my Blog and from there I can tailor my updates to make sure that what I'm sending out is getting the right level of engagement from my readers.
If you have a shop, you might want to reach out to people in the local area, building a following from the other side of the world isn't going to help your shop! If that's the case, you can search for people who have tagged themselves locally. You could use social media to promote offers to people who come in on that day, or offer discounts to those who recommend your service to the most people.
Whatever your business does, there will be a way for you to measure the influence of social media. Many social media sites may be free to use, but your time isn't free. You need to make sure that if you are using Social Media then you aren't using it just because everyone else does. Your Social Media Strategies should improve your reputation, raise engagement levels, or bring you those extra customers. James Debono harnessed his 10 year experience in sales and marketing to start and run an online business. With the sole purpose of empowering other professionally minded individuals and small businesses, to leverage the ever growing potential of the internet to drive business growth and positive change.
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