What if you could spend as little as 7 hours a week online and increase your brands awareness, traffic and of course sales!
Many businesses now are claiming that social media marketing has really changed their business and the way they look at advertising. And its safe to say that social media marketing SHOULD be a large part of your marketing strategy when building your initial business plan.
O.K so its pretty easy to say that social media is an important and valuable tool to use within your business marketing, but you are not alone if you are the type of business owner that has no idea where to start or how to apply these skills to your business.
Before explaining the do's and dont's of social media marketing, lets establish the advantages of using this magnificent tool within your business structure.
1. Increased brand awareness
Yes, with the millions of people scrolling through their news feeds on a daily basis, commenting, liking and sharing posts they find engaging. Its no wonder that increased brand awareness is on this list. This is something that all business owners strive for. Because without anyone knowing you exist, how will they shop?
So creating engaging, interactive content and representing your brand to the best of your ability is key!
2. TRAFFIC
With millions of people logging onto their social media accounts on a daily basis, the target market in which is sitting at your doorstep is something that would once seem unattainable.
It is very likely and most certainly possible to target 1, 2, even 3 million people a day using social media marketing. Which should always direct to your place of business, be it a website, store, etc.
3. Improved Search Engine rankings
Now while social media is our key focus here today, lets not forget that you will need to put in effort outside of these platforms to keep your search engine rankings up. Implementing a strong SEO campaign, landing pages, and key words can all fuel your ranking. But yes, social media does help too. The more people sharing your content, liking your content and even speaking about your brand is being picked up by search engines all the time. Therefore can slowly, but surely increase your rankings.
4. Conversion rates
With increased visibility, your business is now gaining opportunities on a daily basis to grab a conversion. Every post, image or link can drive traffic towards your business website and increase traffic with possible conversions.
As mentioned above, if your content is worthy of a comment, like, share or even a tag, you are putting yourself on a digital map which can lead to many conversions.
5. Customer rapport
With features like "recommendations, tagging, hashtags and even comments" you're potential customers can see what others have said about your business. Rated you and even sometimes the bad points towards your business. So its important even when receiving negative feedback, to address this accordingly and always maintain a professional attitude.
Although the internet is an extremely large place, many ears and eyes are watching your business at all times.
6. Online Insights
The online insight feature allows you to have a feel of the data based around views, clicks and conversions to your social media sites and website. By analyzing specific age groups, countries, interests to provide you with a detailed information sheet at the end of each week or month. This tool can also be used to gain feedback on which posts are working, which products are showing the most interest, and the amount of website clicks you are receiving from specific sites.
7. Cost effective
Of course, every business owner wants to save costs wherever possible. Well social media is FREE! Yes, there are upgrades, automation businesses, and of course paid ads which i believe add a tonne to your business, however if you are a start up or trying to cut costs, you can most certainly still get a huge benefit from social media at no cost at all.
Now lets get started!!!
There are many different types of social media that can be beneficial for your business, of course we have the well known popular ones. But below are a list of social media outlets in which we find useful for marketing your business.
- Snapchat
- Tumblr
- Vero
- YouTube
- QZone
- Google+
- Skype
- Viber
- Line
- Telegram
- FoursSquare
- Badoo
- Myspace
- Stumble Upon
- The-Dots
- Snap Fish
Now you may be thinking "I don't have the time to create and manage accounts for all of those" Well here is the good news, you don't have to create accounts on each and every one of those social platforms, have a breeze through and get a feel for which would be suitable for your business.
Now if you choose to sign up to all of these, you can of course try automation of some of your social media sites, which can significantly cut your time down.
Another key factor in social media marketing is E-Mail marketing, another huge benefit of social media marketing being a networking tool, is that you're able to gather information such as email address', and customer requirements. Thus being able to send out email mail outs with information to suit the customers needs.
Again like the social media sites, there are hundreds of companies you can use for this type of software. Our favorites though are: Ninja Outreach, Mail chimp and Benchmark.
Still confused about using social media for your business? Regardless of the type of business you are currently running, I am sure we can agree with one key point. And that is that the most important thing in running a business is making sales!
These techniques are not going to make your sales change dramatically overnight.
There are several key points that go into actually making these conversions. They are:
- Engaging content is key! If you saw this content elsewhere, would you share it? like it? or tag your friends? If not.. Then look for content that IS engaging.
- Connect with followers: If you put a post up that has an image of a book with a caption that reads " Buy this book now for $29.99" you are more than likely not going to gain the conversions you had hoped for. However if you're post is engaging, and customers can connect or relate with the content. You are one step closer to the conversion.
- If you can get a customer to click on your website, they SHOULD leave with a purchase. If not? Time to evaluate the reasons.
- SEO: Search engine optimization should become your best friend, there are a lot of techniques that go into a fantastic search engine ranking, and these are all things you should be constantly on the look out for when running a business. Are you using backlinks? Are you listed on directories? Do people know your brand exists? If not, then fix it.
All in all, there are plenty of ways to gain traffic to your website. That is why you are here right? We are all looking for the perfect answer to the question " How can i get more people to my website" And the answer is pretty simple....
Work for it.
If it is the clicks your website is lacking, then start looking into more ways to advertise online, watch videos, read articles and gain as much knowledge as you possibly can from others in your field.
If it is conversions you are struggling with, then you need to find the reason why. Are your products priced according to market values? Maybe people are not happy about your postage costs, or just don't like the products you are selling.
Now this does not for a second mean you have to change any of these things. If the product you are selling is something you are passionate about, or just cannot possibly lower your costs. Then its time to start researching OTHER ways to entice customers to purchase, and get over that line.
We have mentioned this many times before, but for those who haven't stumbled across us before we will say it again "Knowledge is key"
And social media marketing is the first step to connecting and networking with customers, business owners and like minded people that could all point your business in the right direction of traffic, and most importantly Conversions.
Is there a specific thing you are struggling with in your business? We would love to hear from you.
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