Social media marketing has never been more important for businesses today. By using social media marketing your business has an incredible opportunity to connect with your target audience, increase your exposure, generate leads and bring in sales. After all, Facebook has over 1 billion users and Twitter has over 600 million users. Here are some simple ways you can use social media marketing to boost your business.
Getting Started With Social Media Marketing.
The first task for your social media marketing strategy is to create a Facebook page and Twitter account. Both are free to set up. Choose a name that’s easy to remember and preferably short. If you have a brand name, your Facebook and Twitter name should be either the same or similar.
Your can use your existing resources to start to build your social media audience. If you have a website, install the social media follow buttons on your home page. If you have an email database list, add a link to your Facebook and Twitter account in your email signature and ask people to like your page or follow you on Twitter.
What Content Should You Post?
Social media marketing is all about building a relationship with your target audience. The best way to do this is to post content on a regular basis.
You should aim to post at least once per day. If you’re having difficulties trying to find something to say, you can share other people’s content. In fact this is good practice because you become a valued resource for your followers. You are delivering your followers the best of information about your industry, irrespective of whether it’s written by you, or by someone else.
You can share anything and everything that your audience might value. This can be YouTube videos, info-graphics, blog posts, interesting images or articles. Typically 10am to 2pm is a good posting time for professionals. For a causal audience, 4pm is a good posting time. You can use free programs like Buffer to schedule your posts and tweets, so you can set up a week of posts all in one go.
How To Build Your Business.
Use your social media marketing strategy to interact with your audience by providing advice, inspiration and your experiences. Don’t just constantly send out sales messages. If people like your posts or tweets, they will want to learn more about you and your products. As you build trust, your followers will be more likely to buy from you.
As a basic principle, for every 4 posts or tweets you send, only use 1 as a sales message. If you’re consistently delivering high quality content, your audience will have no objection to your sales messages, provided that they are appropriate to your industry or niche.
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