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How to Use Social Media to Market Your Business

Let’s look back to the year 2003. Back then, social networking typically meant attending a chamber mixer, where your primary goal was to hand out your business cards to as many people as possible. Fast forward a few years, and the term social networking has taken on a whole new meaning. You now have businesses scrambling to understand the modern rules of networking digitally. Social media has exploded in growth, and has become a part of your customer’s everyday lives. Whether you use it or not, people are most likely already talking about your business using social media. You can take an active role in the conversation by embracing social networking in order to stay competitive and to nurture relationships with your customers.

Social Networking Defined

Social networking is a way for people who share similar interests to interact online. Social media can be found in the form of a networking site, a blog, video sharing site, photo sharing site, or even a community forum. The Internet has provided people with web-based platforms that make it easy to create a user profile, share information, and to stay in touch with people they know. Essentially, you are able to log into one of these social media sites to connect with old friends, acquaintances and business associates on a more consistent basis. Social networking sites are generally no or low cost for you to use. Utilizing social media allows your business to grow your contact lists, manage your relationships and increase brand awareness.

An interview with Josh Bernoff, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. Mr. Bernoff explains why every company needs to adopt social networking.

Using Social Media to Market Your Business

Marketing defined: create customer interest in a service or a good to increase sales.

The problem with traditional marketing is that it doesn’t work on social networking sites. People don’t want to be bombarded by sales promotions. They visit these sites to communicate, not to be lectured into purchasing your latest and greatest. The key to your success in social network marketing is to engage your contacts. Post relevant content related to your brand and provide the opportunity for an open discussion.

Ways to Market Your Business with Social Media

Listen to your customers. You may find that people are already talking about your business online. Here is the opportunity for you to patiently listen to compliments, complaints or questions so that you can improve your business.
Interact with your contacts by posting comments to their profiles or content.
Post links to relevant, interesting, inspiring or funny content (such as pictures, articles, videos, etc).
Invite contacts to interact with you by posting questions on your main profile page.
Share links to events or news relevant to your brand.
Provide special discounts available only to your contacts.
Offer sneak previews of new product offerings from your company.

Getting Started

Take an internal assessment of what you want to gain from social networking, and determine how you can integrate this new medium into your overall marketing strategy.
Find out which social media sites your customers frequent the most, and set up accounts for those specific sites.
Create helpful and relevant content. You can send out an occasional sales-related message, but don’t spam your clients and prospects with constant advertisements for your company. Provide valuable information that best serves your contacts and customers.
Start small on social media sites and see what messages work best with your customers.
Make it easy for people to share the messages you create.
Encourage participation among your customers. You can create contests, request comments or initiate conversations.
Bring your customers back to your site. Find ways to drive traffic to your site with your social media accounts. Include a link to your site in your profile description.
Evaluate your efforts to determine how effective your social media strategy has been working, and adjust as needed.

Major Social Networking Sites

Many industries have highly specialized forum boards where like minded people congregate online. You may want to to consider joining and engaging in one of these niche forums in addition to participating in more traditional social networking sites.

Time Investment

Many business owners want to know how much time they need to allocate towards social media activities. The answer depends entirely on your specific needs. What do you hope to accomplish with your social networking efforts? How many social media sites do you plan to manage? How often do you anticipate posting messages? What type of messages do you intend to share? You may find that you simply need to spend 15 minutes a day updating the content on the few social networking accounts you own. Alternatively, you may conclude that you want to respond to each email, question or message that is directed at your company, which may require you to hire a full-time employee to manage your social media efforts.

Next Steps

Once you’ve integrated social media into your marketing strategy, you will be tasked with the responsibility of managing your accounts properly. Start off by simply listening to what your target people are saying and engage when appropriate. After you invest a few weeks into understanding the dynamics of each particular social network, you can then ease into posting your own content. One quick Google search will show you that there are many tools available for you to automate the process of manually updating your social media accounts.

Does this mean traditional networking is finished? No, social media doesn’t replace your face-to-face interactions, rather it enhances them. Simply add your social media links on your business card to further engage the new people you meet. Ultimately, social networking online can be an incredibly powerful tool for your business if used effectively.