Many small businesses are beginning to understand the power of social media tools and tactics. Studies by eMarketer reports that 260,000 small businesses across the US and Canada are employing social media tactics. Furthermore 51% of small businesses are using social media for professional social networking. They are using tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and 28% are involved in microblogging using tools like Twitter.
There are things to think about before starting. The most important is your time. Viral marketing through social media really requires a lot of original content and a great amount of time each day and you have to understand the value of your time. This is where Authority SEO helps their clients. Many of the available tools are free to use some are not. That does not mean they don’t come at a high cost, because they most certainly do. They can cost valubale human resource time and customers if not done correctly. It takes time to set up accounts, create content for blogs, to tweet on a regular basis, to tie all of your marketing together and to focus your social media on your main gool.
Before you start with social marketing, make sure your strategy or goal is clear. There is a lot of social media hype and peer pressure to use these technologies. Just make sure you clearly understand your key goals and objectives. For example, are you trying to build direct sales with customers, improve positioning of your product or service, or build your authority in a specific area? Answering these critical questions will help you move forward with your strategy.
Your first step should be to verify whether the audience you are trying to reach is already using social media. If your target market aren’t using Twitter or Facebook, then why spend you resourse there? You also need to do your homework on where the audience you are trying to reach already exists. Are they on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter? Are they joining groups or creating new ones? These are all key questions to understanding your audience and how to best engage them.
What are some of the immediate benefits that small businesses are finding with social media?
Well, most small businesses will tell you that social networking can help foster stronger relationships with customers, enable a faster vehicle to answer customer questions, incorporate customer feedback, and build awareness for their expertise. One thing that is gaining prowless in social media is reviews. Customer reviews are becoming more and more important online and this is a good to convert lookers into buyers.
Many small businesses are still trying to understand how social media can ring the cash register, and Authority SEO has that answer. A Phoenix based website called Natures Organic Market uses Twitter to successfully drawl in followers and send them coupons to use on their website. The company has created followers by posting interesting tweets and sends out the occassional coupon code to use. That means every time the company has something to say and people will receive the message and could retweet it to their friends and so on, potentially reaching way more than Natures Organic’s followers. Before Twitter, this was lost profit. If you are ready to take a dip into social media give us a call.
As a small business or large one, the way you spend your time is critical. So if you do decide to pursue social media, make sure that you have the proper tools to help you succeed. You have to be social at all times or lose that business to your competitors.
