Many small business can be put off getting involved with Social Media because they simply don’t know where to start. If this is the case with your business, then you really are missing out on some fantastic opportunities for no real reason at all. Getting started is really easy, and you don’t have to get involved with doing anything expensive. All it requires is a little bit of time and a dose of imagination. If you have someone in the company who is willing to spend a bit of time getting involved then you should be able to start reaping the rewards in no time!
Social Media For Small Business
The first step is to decide what social media site is going to work best for your business. Most people choose Twitter and Facebook, but don’t forget about the huge possibilities of YouTube and other sites such as LinkedIn. You need to think about your target audience, where they hang out online and what the best way to communicate with them might be. If you’re new to all of this, it might be an idea to set a few profiles up and start experimenting with some ideas.
So, once set up, what could you be doing?
Communication
Remember that marketing your business via social media is all about communication; not just shoving your stuff in front of people. Try to think about ways in which you can engage people. Ask questions, comment on peoples status updates and just start being social. Much like the real world, no one likes someone who only talks about themselves. Interact with people and remember it’s a two way thing.
Competitions
Running a competition can be a great way to attract new people to your social media profiles. If you’ve got some products you could use in a giveaway then you’re already a step ahead. If not, you could consider donating a prize for a giveaway. You’ve probably seen lots of companies giving away Ipads and other gadgets; it really does work and people do it for a reason! With competitions you have two choices; give a prize for someone else’s competition or run one yourself. Piggybacking onto someone else’s campaign in this way can be great for attracting new people.
Run a Poll
This idea is so simple. If you’ve started to attract a following on your social media profiles, start engaging with them more by asking for their opinions on certain topics. All this requires is coming up with a great idea and then posting it as a poll for people to vote on. The great thing about doing this is that you have a couple of stages. First of all you can get people involved with the poll itself. Secondly, if the topic is interesting enough then people should be interested in the results. That can then form a really good discussion point once you’ve released the results.
Customer Service
One great way to use social media for a small business is to open it up as a customer service channel. The fear for many businesses is ‘what happens if someone writes something negative’. Unfortunately if they want write negative comments, they will do anyway. Having a presence on social media means that you are there to respond when needed. The openness of social media really lends itself to customer feedback, and remember that your positive responses are all in the public domain.
About the Author: Maddy Smith currently works for Technicalschool.org, a large directory of colleges and trade schools in the US.
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Thanks for this useful and inspiring article, I had been thinking about to get into the social media with my online business for a couple of months when I came to your blog. I just haven’t known how to get started with it. Thanks to your nice advices, something is getting clear for me:)
Catwoman@fogpótlás recently posted..fogpótlás
I just normally use twitter and facebook but not familiar to work on to gain traffic trough them yours post gives an idea to try out thanks for it
Thanks for finally talking about >Simple Social Media Ideas for Small Businesses <Loved it!
I use Facebook and LinkedIn more. As they help me seek clients for SEO, it quite helps me sometimes.
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Great post, Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business.
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One of the best ways for small businesses to leverage social media marketing is to use various social networks in combination with each other.
Great points mentioned in this post. that was really amazing to read this post because it has many thing which can help us to improve our business and have some good clients.
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