If your website is fully optimized and contains quality content, then you should also be fully engaging your audiences with social media. If not, how can you use social media to your advantage, and are there offline means to promote your business as well?
In It To Win It
If your business is not building comprehensive and dedicated strategies for your social media outlets, then you are overlooking one of your biggest assets for finding and maintaining new customers. In the United States, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram host massive user bases, while smaller, more niche networks such as Pinterest and Google+ present more interesting and targeted marketing opportunities. By fully engaging and interacting with social media users on a consistent basis, you can immediately begin to increase your website’s visitors, yet keep in mind that it doesn’t pay to halfheartedly engage in social media marketing. You must be in it to win it.
Social Marketing And Branding
When signing up for a social media service, keep in mind that in each service you choose to work with you must present the same information about you and your website. The content itself doesn’t have to be exactly the same, but you should be using the same marketing and branding techniques throughout your social services. This branding not only includes the written summary of your business, but also your username, your unique URL, and your social media avatar and cover images. However, successfully engaging an audience through social media requires a lot more than just establishing yourself on the network – it requires an ongoing, dedicated effort to reach out and continuously engage users.
Social Media Engagement Tips
Unlike the ongoing responsibility of producing original website content, engaging social media users can require less time and may even be more fun for many small businesses. Beyond simply promoting your website, some of the more successful ways of engaging a social media audience can include friendly, casual interactions with users who mention your brand and conversations centered on a core idea. You can also promote contests and giveaways, exclusive social media deals and coupons, and share authoritative and informative third-party content. Customer service issues can also be resolved and even averted through social media interactions. For the most part, social media is free, though there are always opportunities for paid advertisements and sponsored content.
Attracting Online Visitors Offline
Promoting your business through online social media is just one of the various things you can do to build audiences. It is important not to neglect the original social media platform: face to face conversations that can happen at your local coffee shop or at an organized networking group. If you are not going out into the real world and promoting yourself and your business, you are missing out on some really key potential customers. If you are already well-liked in your community, then be sure to let that community know exactly what you do and how you can uniquely help each and every one of them.
User Content
Finally, once you have built up your audience, be sure to offer ways in which they can produce content for you. This will allow for your audiences to really fully engage with your company and will also help build the supportive community you have always wanted. Ask your audience to produce their own social media content for you, or set up an easy way for them to share their testimonials and comments. Another, more risky strategy is to allow for comments on your blog posts, but be aware that if you are not using a filtration system, expect to receive more spam than useful content. Whatever you choose to do, as long as your audience responds enthusiastically, you should be on the right track.