Starting a Business? Use Social Media to Make a Mark
Posted 30th August 2013 at 01:17 PM by duffie55
Tags internet marketing, online marketing, social media, social media marketing, starting a business
by Gary Messinger
Social media can be a huge help to all types of businesses, even new ones that are still struggling to make their presence on the web more visible. How important is this? In today’s digital age, business owners cannot afford not to get onto the bandwagon of online marketing. Skipping it would mean losing a good number of customers every day.
So how can a start-up business use social media for marketing? Here are some quick ideas to get you started.
Learn to do it yourself
At this point, it’s not yet a good idea to hire a social media specialist to do the job for you. You must learn to do it yourself. The DIY method saves you money and unless you have a bottomless business budget, you can surely do away with the extra unnecessary expenses. Look around, do your research, test the waters and ask experts—you’d find out that social media marketing isn’t that complicated at all.
Start small
So you don’t have to spend every waking hour on social media, you’d be better off keeping it small. Instead of trying to be on everything—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and a dozen other social media sites, it would be for your best interest to choose one or two that will be most suitable for you and your business needs and objectives.
Set up a vanity URL
What does this mean? This lets you optimize your social site for organic search. It’s a smart move to put your business name in the URL. But if yours is quite common or have already been taken, you might want to add a location or use a target keyword. For example, “www.facebook.com/michaelselectronicsdenver”. If you have several media sites, make all the URLs as similar as you can, not only to make it easier for customers to find you but also to establish consistency.
Never leave the about page empty
The about section in your social media sites is the go-to page for customers who want to learn more about your business. If you don’t fill this out, they might lose interest and go somewhere else. It also decreases your business’ credibility if there’s no info on this section. Fill this out with relevant and accurate information, using targeted keywords to optimize your social media site. Use Google’s keyword research tool to find the right keywords that have good search volume but low competition. If possible, include a link back to your main website. Creating inbound links can help up the rankings in organic search.
Post shareable content
Make sure that everything you post on your social media sites is interesting and informative enough for people to want to share it with their contacts. Remember that the quality of your social messages affect your ranking in the search engine results. Don’t rely on a single medium. Go for variety—images, infographics, videos, questions, events, offers and so on. See to it that you post fresh daily content so people won’t get tired of visiting your social media sites.
For everyone starting a business, keep this in mind: it pays to be on social media!
[<! == Moderator Note == !> stop adding your cloaked Empower Network links - last time of asking. ]
Social media can be a huge help to all types of businesses, even new ones that are still struggling to make their presence on the web more visible. How important is this? In today’s digital age, business owners cannot afford not to get onto the bandwagon of online marketing. Skipping it would mean losing a good number of customers every day.
So how can a start-up business use social media for marketing? Here are some quick ideas to get you started.
Learn to do it yourself
At this point, it’s not yet a good idea to hire a social media specialist to do the job for you. You must learn to do it yourself. The DIY method saves you money and unless you have a bottomless business budget, you can surely do away with the extra unnecessary expenses. Look around, do your research, test the waters and ask experts—you’d find out that social media marketing isn’t that complicated at all.
Start small
So you don’t have to spend every waking hour on social media, you’d be better off keeping it small. Instead of trying to be on everything—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and a dozen other social media sites, it would be for your best interest to choose one or two that will be most suitable for you and your business needs and objectives.
Set up a vanity URL
What does this mean? This lets you optimize your social site for organic search. It’s a smart move to put your business name in the URL. But if yours is quite common or have already been taken, you might want to add a location or use a target keyword. For example, “www.facebook.com/michaelselectronicsdenver”. If you have several media sites, make all the URLs as similar as you can, not only to make it easier for customers to find you but also to establish consistency.
Never leave the about page empty
The about section in your social media sites is the go-to page for customers who want to learn more about your business. If you don’t fill this out, they might lose interest and go somewhere else. It also decreases your business’ credibility if there’s no info on this section. Fill this out with relevant and accurate information, using targeted keywords to optimize your social media site. Use Google’s keyword research tool to find the right keywords that have good search volume but low competition. If possible, include a link back to your main website. Creating inbound links can help up the rankings in organic search.
Post shareable content
Make sure that everything you post on your social media sites is interesting and informative enough for people to want to share it with their contacts. Remember that the quality of your social messages affect your ranking in the search engine results. Don’t rely on a single medium. Go for variety—images, infographics, videos, questions, events, offers and so on. See to it that you post fresh daily content so people won’t get tired of visiting your social media sites.
For everyone starting a business, keep this in mind: it pays to be on social media!
[<! == Moderator Note == !> stop adding your cloaked Empower Network links - last time of asking. ]
Quote:
Remember that the quality of your social messages affect your ranking in the search engine results.
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