If you have been looking for a way to connect with your customers and clients on a simpler and personal level, then social media marketing is probably what you need. It is the wave of the future when it comes to advertising. Here is a rundown of a few suggestions to get yourself set up and running-
1. Take some time out to respond to the feedback from your customers. If you are interested in building a successful business, your customers have valuable information to share. The problem most companies have is that they are all ears and no response. When customers know you are responding to their needs via their feedback, they surely will want to continue doing business.
2. Learn to utilize YouTube. You can post videos related to your business on this site. This allows you to create a greater personalization with your customers as they hear your voice and see your face. If you have a Twitter account, you can send links to your new content increasing your YouTube traffic.
3. Before developing a specific social media marketing strategy, figure out which social networking site you want to use. Each social networking site works differently so it is imperative that your strategy works with the site you pick. For instance, on Facebook you can create a poll unlike most other sites.
4. To create social media content that really markets you covertly, come up with lists. Compose a list of the top fifty weird but true facts about your product, widget or niche. Top number lists seem a little boring to some but they do tend to get quietly passed around the internet providing a wonderful opportunity for your brand to get exposure.
5. You can have your Twitter posts appear on your Facebook wall as well. But perhaps writing different posts on Facebook might be best since your audience on Twitter might slightly differ from your Facebook friends and Twitter is about writing extremely short posts. This however allows you to update both the websites very easily.
6. Create useful content by interviewing an expert about something related to your products. Post your interview on YouTube and share it on social media. This is the kind of content your followers will love to share with their friends. Make sure you choose an interesting interviewee and ask relevant questions.
7. Get the competitive edge in social media marketing by using it to listen to your customers. Most businesses are bad at this so if you truly listen to your customers and work to make changes accordingly, you will be highly respected by those that matter to you the most. Allow your customers to make suggestions and work to understand their concerns to increase your business.
8. Invest in ad space on Facebook or other websites. These ads are targeted towards users who have used certain keywords related to your business in their status updates. You should get a lot of targeted visitors who will learn about your products even if they do not decide to ‘like’ your page.
9. Learn the posting patterns on social sites. The peak traffic times for many of these sites are at 7 A.M., 5 P.M. and 10 P.M. and those are the times that you should be sure to post something new. If you post more than those three times, be sure that you are posting something unique and interesting but limit the total number of times you post each day.
If you take the advice listed here to get up and running on Facebook, Twitter or any of the other social media sites, you will start to see results quite quickly. There is nothing as satisfying as watching your fans and followers growing every time you log in.
