Today, I will be showing you how to boost your business using social media. So the first question on our mind is:
Why Social Media?
These days the traditional way of marketing to people such as posters, handbills, newspaper ads etc. are becoming less and less operative, businesses are now turning to the internet and social media for active marketing. Recently, Facebook recorded more than 2Billion active user, so also is Twitter, Instagram and the likes. The key to internet and social media success is to how you can use the internet more efficiently to:
• Upturn the visibility of your individual brand and business
• Cultivate relationships with customers/followers (potential customers).
• Engage in interaction with people, as well as answering question about your product
• Communicate with your community of followers, promoters and sponsors
• Publish and issue original content that shows your area of expertise to establish your credibility
• Share accurate links to relevant information that improves value to your customers
• Generate new leads and boost sales for your business.
To enjoy the benefit of taking your marketing to the internet/social media, you need to know how the internet and social media works and this takes us to the next question
How do we use the Social Media to boost our business?
The answer to this question is divided into two parts:
The first part is ’active participation’; this part is where you actively participate in online activities by doing the following:
• Answering people’s questions if you are in a position to help whether they are related to your business or not
• Joining the conversation on a particular topic, this could be a group on Twitter talking about a certain issue that is trending through the media, or joining a group related or not related to your brand on Facebook or joining a group of other professionals in your field on LinkedIn
• Sharing other people’s content on Facebook or LinkedIn, or retweeting them if you’re on Twitter
• Leaving sincerely fascinating and appropriate comments on selective blogs or post you read on social media.
The second part is the creation and publishing of original content that informs, educates about your business and brand. Content that will attract the right people and potential customers to your brand.
For your content published on the internet and social media to be efficient, you have to put your followers/customers in mind i.e. you have to study your followers’ activities online.
How to create content with your followers/customers in mind.
When creating your content, your content should provide effectiveness. I mean, it needs to be applicable, useful and add value to your followers/customers lives. It could simply be information that answers people’s questions or satisfies a need that has relevance to your business, or it may be demonstrating your knowledge in your area of expertise. For example if you are a chef, you can make a video baking a cake.
Now that you have your content, the next thing to do is publishing your content on different platform online and on social media, after posting your content share your content with your followers/customers online.
Sharing your content with your online/social media followers is important because it does not only gives your brand a wide range of publicity, it also make search engines like Google to rank your content on their search result pages due to the number of social media shares.