If you own a small business, you know, or should know, the importance of social media to market your business – effective management of social media marketing is an inexpensive way to promote your product and gain new customers. For small business can take time and effort, but at little or no cost to the small business and there are several ways to succeed with your effective management of your social marketing.
You already know your product, now you need to understand your customer – what is he/she looking for, where are they looking online already, research your competitors, make your customers find you – that’s effective management of social marketing.
You may want to create a ‘fan’ page on Facebook (or now a ‘like’ page) where you can build potential new customers based on the content you post – if people like your updates, they will ‘like’ your page, great social marketing, and free! You can create a Twitter account, link it to Facebook, and post about your business, product, and create a following that will see your tweets. You can link your Facebook and Twitter so your management of social marketing for small business is effectively linked and shortens your time spent on both. Create a blog, which can also link to Facebook, Twitter and many other sites, talk about your product, but don’t do a hard sell, make it informative, just like you would with Facebook and Twitter, and share responses to your product, customer reviews, and always have a LinkedIn account where you can obtain reviews and feedback.
Don’t do the hard sell when managing social media marketing, always make it personable, offer advice, insight, information, coupons (very popular) and links to related sites that will have a back link to you without it being noticeable, it’s all about content, not the sale. And always encourage everyone else you engage with with social media marketing to offer their feedback too. It creates that ‘relationship’ which is what the SOCIAL in social media marketing is all about!