Social Media for Your Business
Everyone is asking; “How do I use social media to promote my business?” From the freelancer to the entrepreneur, to the fortune 500. Although, hopefully, most fortune 500 companies are defining the way to use social media rather than playing catch-up, like many small businesses. The dilemma is that not all social media platforms are created equal and not all social media plans will make sense for all companies and organizations. For this reason, companies must research the different social platforms, explore posting options, engagement, and more to determine if each platform is relevant to their client base or reasonable for the content the company would like to distribute.
Too often many small companies feel as if they desperately need a social media presence, but don’t know where to start or what to do. When people understand what one does as a social media specialist, the requests start to roll in… Can you look at my accounts to see if I’m “doing it right”? Would you be interested in running the Facebook page for my company?
The other often asked question to a social media team is about every possible social media platform. “Have you thought about using Tumblr?” “Have you heard of or even experimented with Periscope? No. What?! Why not, it’s over a year old?” “How about Meetup? Have you considered how having a presence could be potentially beneficial for you R&D department as well as connecting with your consumers?” These types of inquiries can be overwhelming and make small businesses feel as if they are behind the times. It is important to not get caught up in the social media hype, but rather look at all the different platforms against the needs of your company.
The response to all of these questions is simply, “What is your intention as a company with any social media presence, and what are you trying to accomplish?” With social media nearing a decade of business related activity; it is more than a buzz word or fad. It has proven its relevance for businesses and organizations. However, as the article Social Media is Not For Every Business points out, the Social Media world is not a “one-size-fits-all”. The standard four; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram may be more than enough to connect with your consumers. This is the best place to start, and even then, not ALL four of these basic social media platforms will be worth the resources needed to invest for the potential outcome.
Let’s look at these standard four, what are the reasons your company would need to have a presence on each:
- Fantastic for business-to-business communication, professional networking, and promoting business services.
- Connecting your employees to your business. Every company needs a company landing page. This allows employees to connect their current job with the company logo and page.
- Putting your employees to work. Assist your employees in developing an all-star level profile. As well, set into practice an active presence on LinkedIn; adding clients and individuals met at conventions to their network of connections, and participating in groups and discussion boards.
- Keeping your followers updated on products and services as well as engaged with your brand. Facebook is the easiest and generally most used interface to promote reaction, discussion and sharing.
- Consider unique ways to use Facebook yard sale pages, interest groups, and events to find new clients and engage with existing customers.
- Valuable for its potential for business-to-business communication, professional networking and engaging with consumer followers.
- This is the place to over-post. Best practice is to post more than three times a day. It’s recommended to re-post your companies original content up to 3 times a day.
- If your company has content that can be shared in succinct tidbits that are engaging conversation starters.
- Twitter allows for quick, in-the-moment, unintentional and deliberate collaboration and customer service.
- Excellent for visual businesses.
- Experience the power of the hashtag; discovering trending and relevant hashtags as well as developing new unique hashtags is integral to gaining momentum.
- Great for understanding your business’ brand and style. Being visual forces your company to portray all that it is, through imagery only.
- Fabulous playground for connecting with new collaborators and clients.
Do you need guidance for your business or organization with your social media accounts? Call Patti Thompson at American Name Services today 800-434-1851.
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by Emily White