If your business doesn’t participate in social media marketing, it’s missing out on numerous opportunities traditional marketing cannot produce. Thinking about starting online marketing might be daunting, but when done correctly and with a plan, social media marketing is a cost-effective, simple way to grow your business. It will increase your sales leads, grow your brand recognition and provide excellent opportunities for clear customer-based communication. Social media marketing should be started today, if it isn’t already happening.
Use these tips to start your social media marketing:
Define your Goals: Your online marketing should help grow your business and increase brand awareness. It should:
· Build authority
· Provide direct connection between customer and your company
· Educate and inform customers
· Gain inbound links
· Generate leads & drive sales
· Improve customer service
· Learn more about your target audience
· Monitor brand reputation
· Reach new channels of customers
Develop a Plan: Use a social media marketing plan to provide more sales leads, grow your business and maintain what you’ve already got. Your plan should include a:
· Schedule
· Ways to build Relationships
· Plans to stay the Course
· Ways to measure the Results
· Enough flexibility to make the Right Tweaks
Determine the Methods: With so many different methods for social media marketing, determine your target audience, figure out where they will most likely see you, and focus on a few online mediums rather than all of them at once. A few popular places to grow your business online include:
· Your quality Web site
· Your company Blog
· Twitter
· Facebook
· LinkedIn
· Pinterest
· Google +
Create and Maintain a Schedule: Create a schedule of what you’ll post, when you’ll post and when you’ll respond to others comments and posts.
Ways you can Measure Social Media Marketing Success:
· Facebook Fans
· Google Analytics
· Impressions
· Increased call volume/sales
· Reader comments
· RSS Subscribers
· Search Results
· Twitter Followers