When using Social Media a lot of us feel out of our depth, so we've come up with 5 simple tips to help you when using Social Media and Marketing for your business
Tip 1 - Listening is an essential part of communication
To use Social Media in business effectively your businesses or product needs to become part of the Social Media Community and be willing to communicate and listen to other members of that community. This direct back and forth communication is what makes Social Media so popular and so different from traditional forms of media. Use this to your advantage by finding out first-hand how your customers, clients and readers feel about your businesses or product. Come-up with solutions to their issues and deal with them directly. Engage with customers, clients and readers at a human level and get to know your market.
The strongest tool Social Media has given businesses is being able to listen.
Tip 2 - Keep them coming back for more!
Why are you using Social Media if not to get your businesses or product noticed? A good way to do this is to give people a reason to read your blog, follow you on Twitter, keep you as a friend on Facebook or even recommend your Social Media site to someone else. By making your Social Media useful, interesting or funny you are giving your Social Media Community a reason to come back and communicate with you. Workout what kind of tone best suits your business and this will give you a good idea of what you should be offering though Social Media.
For example if you owned a dog grooming business you may have a site that people can post and comment on funny pet photos. People will love showing off their pets and come back to see other peoples funny photos. They will start to associate your dog grooming business with happy pets.
Tip 3 - It’s all about networking
Just like in the everyday business community networking is important in the Social Media Community, and in the Social Media Community there are lots of ways to network. Blogs have areas for comments or share functions to send the article to a friend. Twitter has a built in function called Retweet that lets you share something someone else has said with your followers. Linkedin and Facebook are all about finding people though other people. So help your clients, followers, friends and readers to find other business that are helpful or interesting to them.
Tip 4 - Tools and Research
When it comes to technology, new ideas and tools are turning up every day, so at Expert we are constantly researching. Research is our fourth tip for using Social Media or any technology. There are hundreds of tools out there to help you manage your Social Media and Marketing and you need to look around to find out what is best for your business. Find out what other businesses are doing with Social Media. Talk to others about the tools and techniques they use, ask why they are using these particular tools and techniques, what pitfalls they're finding, and in addition do some reading up on them.
Social Media is a constantly developing tool for marketing your businesses or product and no one has all the answers.
Tip 5 - Enjoy it
If you’re enjoying yourself using social media it shows in the results you're getting.