With an arsenal such as Facebook and Twitter on your side, your online marketing can become a boon for your business – but only if you follow the right strategies. A simple presence on social media sites and regular updates does not a marketing campaign make. What you need is sound strategies that promote your small business to targeted and interested customers.
Here are a few advanced strategies you can employ on the top two social media sites:
A Facebook page is essential for your small business to succeed in the social media circle. With over 500 million worldwide Facebook users, you cannot afford to miss this social media train. However, once you’ve created a business account, you need the right strategies to make it succeed.
- Analyze the Competition – What are your competitors doing on Facebook? Take a look at their pages and find out how they design them. Do they use logos? Images and photos? How often do they post updates? Who are their fans? This kind of analysis can give you direct insight to how you can utilize Facebook more effectively than your competition.
- Facebook Ads – You can pay to advertise on Facebook. Create short text ads with hyperlinks, and even add images. These targeted ads can help generate more Facebook fans and send traffic to your website.
Twitter helps you stay connected to customers using updates of 140 characters or less. It is a platform where you can quickly share information and gather feedback. A simple company account won’t do you any good without using strategies such as these:
- Research Hashmarks – A hashmark is a “#” symbol followed by a particular keyword. You can find out what the chatter is about specific keywords that pertain to your business, and even hashmarks that include your business name.
- Respond to @messages – When a Twitter follower directs a message about your company, they use the “@” symbol. You can see who has mentioned you by clicking your own “@(your business name)”. Be sure you respond to those who mention you, especially positive messages.
- Twitter Clients – Use a desktop or mobile client like TweetDeck or Hootsuite to help you more carefully analyze keywords, fans and followers, and manage your tweets. These are great tools for on-the-go business owners as well for use on iPhone or Blackberry.
Using these tools can help you take full advantage of the power of Twitter and Facebook, and your business will thank you for it.
