16 Ways to Promote Your Business Through Social Media
In today’s connected world of smartphones and huge social media participation, there are several avenues to promote your business by exploiting the advantages offered by social media.
Get traction through social media
Astute entrepreneurs get a lot of traction using social media marketing. So why don’t you get cracking!
- Start building your social media channels well before you launch your business. Share information related to your industry. Be a resource channel for information and updates about your industry and connect with others in your industry.
- Start building relationships with experts in your field of business and those who may influence your business.
- Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn are popular platforms for promoting your business. Create a business page in Facebook or a page in your personal account.
- Take part in Twitter chats and Google hangouts related to your business. Use popular hashtags on any platform and join ongoing conversations to set the stage.
- A smart way to gain more traction and connect with a large network of audience is to not just restrict yourself to receptive social platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook but adapt your content to other platforms.
- Generously share other people’s content that’s related to your business and keep your own promotions to a minimum.
- Social media marketing takes a lot of time and you need to be regular on the platforms. Get help if you are busy. If you have multiple media accounts, you can sign up for a social media manager such as Pingfm and Hootsuite.
- Click often through statistics to view real-time views and try to scale up your promotions if views are fewer.
- To get friends and followers, you need to have content beforehand on your social media pages. Post or share interesting content related to your business. Post valuable information about your business, or pictures and people involved in your business. Post interesting or entertaining video content on YouTube. If you ‘favorite’ other YouTube users’ videos, you will soon find them on your page too!
- Build up your audience by finding friends and followers. You can use keywords to find followers. It is easier to find followers and friends on Twitter and Google+. If you can manage to get friends with a large following, when they share your posts, you can reach thousands.
- Build relationships gradually with people and influencers related to your business by following their stories and videos, share their links on your wall, comment on their links, retweet, wish them on their birthdays, offer them discounts on their important days.
- Do not make the mistake of pitching your service or product to strangers. Do not ask for help or favors from people you have just started engaging with. On the other hand, offer help or favors without expecting anything in return. Networking is a long-term process.
- Set up alerts on your phone when people engage with you through your social networking sites so that you may respond immediately.
- Use the GPS tracking feature of your smartphone to bring nearby customers within the folds of your business.
- Once you have launched your business, build a mailing list of your customers and send out regular emails and newsletters, interesting information and news to them. Send coupons or special discounts.
- Set up a blog online and give out the address to your blog’s RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication) on your website. By subscribing to your RSS Feed, your customers would be automatically notified whenever you post something new on your site. That way you will never miss out on any customer when you launch your promotions.
