Social Media Tips for Your Business

In many ways, a social media campaign is similar to a search engine optimization campaign.  It should be formed as a long term strategy and isn’t going to provide immediate results.  It’s something that needs to be consistently worked at.  Like SEO, people consider social media to be “free”.  While that might technically be true, it takes time (often many hours) and resources to do well and fully take advantage of the tools that the different social media outlets provide.  To use the social media networking mediums successfully, it takes much more than just setting up a page.  

Here are some business tips for some of the most popular social media websites:

Facebook
A Facebook page should be attractive.  Be sure to include all of the most important information about your company.  It should essentially be a “second” website since some users will go to your Facebook page for information before they will go to your actual website.  Include pictures and post content regularly.  Engage with customers and potential customers by asking questions that encourage a response or a click of the “like” button.  Promote any sales that you may be having.  Provide a link to any content that’s located somewhere else on the internet.  By consistently showing up in your audience’s news feeds you will stay top of mind.   

Twitter
When it comes to using Twitter for business, good advice is “follow and be followed”.  Twitter is a great place to make connections not only with customers and potential customers but with other people in the industry.  It’s a great news source.  By following the right people, it’s likely that Twitter will be the first place that you hear about anything new and interesting going on in the industry.  By tweeting interesting content, people will follow you.  However, it’s important to note that there is a fine line between being professional and not.  It’s a less formal way to communicate with your target audience and stakeholders, but it shouldn’t be too informal.  After all, it’s still being used as a business tool.  

LinkedIn
LinkedIn isn’t just for job seekers or HR people that are scouting out people to hire.  It’s a great way to make connections with potential customers, prospects, and business partners.  Unlike Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn was created with business professionals in mind.  Create a business profile that is separate from an individual profile.  A great way to get noticed is to join groups that are relevant to the products or services that you provide, and then submit content to the group pages.  Answer questions that others have asked that relate to your business.  The more that you can get noticed on LinkedIn, the better.  

Using social media for business takes time.  Typically at least an hour or two a day should be dedicated to it if you want to do it right. It’s possible to hire someone to do it, but that person should be very trusted. Social media networking has become a huge part of marketing.  It’s likely that you wouldn’t want an intern without much knowledge writing copy for a print ad that’s going to be distributed in all of the major newspapers, right? The same thought should go for social media. The person handling it really needs to have a firm understanding about the business, the brand, and how the company wants to be represented in the online space.  After all, it’s not like nobody is watching.  People are probably paying more attention to what you do online than you’d imagine.  Don’t mess it up.  

About the Author:

Brick Marketing is a Boston, MA based SEO and SEM company that provides social media marketing services.  For more information please call 781-999-1222.