Social media is the new and fastest vehicle for busines development.
If you are like an entrepreneur who is determined to grow his business and become relevant in the market place.
You may have engaged in any of the following strategies, engaging in the services of a marketing company, recruiting marketers and using the news media to help you attain your goal.
While I’m not disputing the effectiveness of any of these avenues for busines growth,, it’s very important for entrepreneurs to also become aware of a more effective way of building their bu.
A new approach to growing business is the social media.
SOCIAL MEDIA: is a new term but it seems most people may associate it with being Internet applications that allow people to connect with each other.
Examples include Facebook and Twitter. This is a simple description, but according to Wikipedia (Internet dictionary), Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.
Furthermore, social media depends on mobile and Web based technologies to create highly interactive platform through which individuals and communities share, co-creat discuss and modify user-generated contents.
A key advantage of the social media is that it creates a platform which allows anyone to be visible all over the world.
Through social media platforms like Facebook, someone based in Abuja can keep in touch with relations and friend
s in China or Canada.
BUT HOW DOES IT WORK TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS?
The important question is: is your company ready to grow?. This is because the social media can enable your company build a strong brand. This can be achieved in four keys areas including product ratings and reviews, customer support, lead generation and brand awareness.
If implemented correctly, the entrepreneur will be able to use platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to boost website footfall and drive sales.
There are so many ways in which the building entrepreneur can use the social media to build their business but here will focus on:
EIGHT WAYS OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS.
SHOW THEM THE “REAL YOU”
Use Facebook to show prospects, clients and customers the “real you” Sure, provide the occasional business tips.
Became a brand yourself. Link to your new blog post. But that’s what everyone else is doing. So why not show your a real person by posting updates about things you’re passionate about?
PICK ONE THING AND DO IT REALLY WELL.
Small business are face with having to patronise their resources toward the activities that deliver the most impact. With social media channel, it’s easy to feel like you need to have a presence on every social channel.
It is also easy to get lost in managing too many networks Being on 5 social media networks and giving all of them half effort will not generate results.
First find which network has the has the highest concentration of their audience using tools like Follower Wonk, Facebook’s free advertising platform and LinkedIn’s search features.
Once you have found which sociol media network actually has a concentration of your target audience, develop a strategy to engage them.
Rather than spreading your energy across multiple channels, put 100% of your “social focus” on the best channel for your audience and do it exceptionally well.
If you’re successful, you will have a much easier time justifying the additional investment to replicate your success on another social media network.
TURN YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE INTO A MARKETING VEHICLE
One necessary component of a thriving business is a strong list of qualified leads.
Collecting names and emails is essential to any small business because you can communicate with your ideal audience on a regular basis.
Some business experts say that without a list, you don’t really have a business! There are many ways to grow your list and one of the smartest marketing moves is to create an opt-in strategy on your Facebook page.
INVEST IN A TWITTER DESIGN
If your business or brand is geared toward a particular niche market, make sure that you go all out when designing your Twitter Profile.
Make sure that it shows how serious you are about your niche and that by looking at your profile, people will see valuable content that they could get if they were following you on Twitter.
Next, go find other Twitter IDs that market to your exact niche market. Go through and follow that account’s followers.
Most will get an email notification from Twitter, because they have never turned off email notifications, telling them that you just followed them.
Many will click through to your Twitter profile, check it out and if they are interested, they will follow you back.
CREATE A MOVIE ABOUT YOUR COMPANY
Without question, the hotest and most effective use of social media is VIDEO.
With all the recent changes in how Google and other search engines index Web pages, adding short videos is the #1 way to get into the top of search results.
Creating a custom channel on YouTube is very easy. Creating a series of short instructional videos around your product or service and using testimonials from happy clients/customers are great ways to add credibility to your company and dramatically increase the chances of a viewer going to your website.
Use humor and graphics to get your key messages across. Remember, shorter is better no more than 3 minutes.
MAKE THE VIDEO OF YOUR COMPANY
Another way for entrepreneurs to take their business to the next level is to learn how video content- when tagged, titled and published correctly can increase your exposure in search results.
Video thumbnails in search results attract the eye more than text and can get your content seen over traditional text delivery. Plus, video can really highlight your company’s personality
MONITOR YOUR CLIENTS AND PROSPECTS
Create alerts for all of your importants clients, add their blogs to your RSS reader, create a Twitter List and add it to a tool like TweetDeck.
Monitor what your clients and prospects are doing and saying in social networks to anticipate and serve their needs and build relationships much faster.
Next you can do the same with key journalists and strategic partners. This step alone will make your social media efforts pay off immediately.
GIVE AWAY THE SECRET.
Start developing content about those industry secret or how to tips that no other competitor of yours would dare touch.
This can be your competitive advantage. By creating the kind of content that really solves your customers problems, you will be linked to and shared on Twitter and Facebook.
How do you get started?
Write down all of the most interesting and hard to answer customer questions and create online content from each question.
If you’re not fully leveraging the power of social media for your business, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most businesses still haven’t figured it out, but that doesn’t you from starting today
