Social media marketing is now an indispensable PR and marketing tool for your local business and it gives you the perfect opportunity to show your products and services to millions of people around the world who might not normally have had a chance to see what you have to offer.
The real success in social media marketing comes from building strong and long-lasting relationships with customers and professional contacts over many months and years and delivering to them the type of content and expertise that they will want to share with their friends, family and colleagues.
This approach will help to attract and keep loyal customers and connections. Their enthusiasm and endorsement of your business will do the selling for you and not the other way round. It will deliver the best sort of customer for your business.
Social media marketing really has transformed the way that companies do business but this open two way communication is now what billions of consumers around the world expect from the business and brands to whom they invest time and money.
It is showing no signs of slowing down and businesses are investing more time and resources in this form of marketing. Social media marketing is constantly evolving and is an ever-growing, ever-changing marketing medium. However, despite all of the changes there are a number core elements that will help you to have a fundamental strategy for a success social medial campaign.
We have put together 14 easy ways to promote your social profiles and gain thousands of extra loyal followers.
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Add your social media profiles to your email signature
Think about how many emails your business sends per day. Now imagine that each email you send is a chance for someone new to find out about your social media profiles. You are missing out on the perfect opportunity if you don’t tell people about your social media profiles so make sure that you stick your social media links in your email signature* along with a ‘Like Us’ call to action. Don’t forget to give them a reason why people should visit and ‘like’ your page. For example: “Like us on Facebook for exclusive vouchers and discounts and discount codes.”
*An e-mail signature is a block of text that is added to the end of an e-mail message you send. Generally, a signature is used to provide the recipient with your name, e-mail address, business contact information, or Web site URL. Some people, however, will use a signature to sign off their e-mail message with a closing statement, funny quote or other message. A signature file, or sig as it is often called, can easily be created in most e-mail clients. You will have the option to always attach the signature to all outgoing e-mails, or add the signature in specific outgoing e-mails
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Blog about your social profiles and give reasons why people should like or follow them
If you have a company blog, why not create a post specifically to promote your social media presence? Give your readers at least five compelling reasons why they should ‘Like’ your fan pages in a blog post. For example you might provide; exclusive offers not available to anybody else, sneak peak’s at upcoming products and services, exclusive ‘how-to’ tips and news updates. Don’t sound desperate and beg them to like you. Simply provide reasons why they will benefit and in a short period of time you will watch your ‘likes’ and fan base grow.
Promote your social media profiles in your car, office, store, business cards etc.
Anywhere you can display your social media URL’s (address link) is free advertising for you. Just think how many people will see a bumper sticker with your Facebook address on, or a sign in your office or store-front window. Combine offline and online marketing by letting the people you meet in real life know about your social profiles, by getting your social media links printed on your business cards, letterheads, compliment slips, gift bags etc.
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Add your social media URL’s to your Twitter profile
Your Twitter profile background is a prime piece of web real estate just begging for you to take advantage of it. Use it to cross-advertise and use Twitter to promote your social media profiles. You can do this by adding them to the background image and in your Twitter profile bio if you still have room.
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Ask your followers to like your other profiles
If a person follows you on one network, the chances are that they will want to follow you on another one too. For example, give some compelling reasons to your Twitter followers why they should join your Facebook community (see the blog promotion tip listed earlier). A sample tweet might read: “Great discussion about our new lipstick range happening right now – get involved and tell us what you think http://www.Facebook.com/yourfacebookpage”
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Decide which social networks work best for you
If you don’t use an online marketing company to run your social media campaigns for you, the chances are you will want to just focus on a couple of sites instead. In fact, in some cases, depending on the type of business you run, not every social media is going to suit your marketing, your audience or what you are trying to achieve. For example, if your site relies very heavy on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), then Google+ and blogging might be the best way to go. Or if you want to build a large community around your brand, then Facebook, blogging and Twitter will be ideal. For a business that is very visual, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook are perfect.
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Slow and steady wins the race
Don’t expect overnight success with social media marketing. It doesn’t happen like that. Just like in real life, friendships and bonds between your and your clients can take a long time to build. To see good results, you need to be consistent. So many businesses start out being very enthusiastic when they first set out on social media marketing, but they give up after short while because they didn’t see get thousands of fans and sales in their first week. You need to be patient and consistent.
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Don’t over-promote; build relationships
Nothing turns followers and fans off more than being given the hard sell when they go on sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Instead of trying to push your products and services, concentrate instead on building trusting and loyal relationships by being friendly, sharing great content and helping people. This will help give you a brand that people will trust. It will build brand loyalty and a positive image around your brand which you can use to slowly and steadily convert into sales.
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The Rule of thirds
A great tip for balancing out your social media output is to think of the rule of thirds. This is how it works: Share your own content a third of the time, information related to your product or service, but from another source, a third of the time and interact with your customers and followers on a one to one basis, a third of the time. This is the ideal recipe for building a solid, loyal following.
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Make the most of any contact you post
Just because you tweet about a specific topic doesn’t mean that you can’t use in other ways. For example, you can write a blog post, then make a tweet about the post, then create a video to put on YouTube, and then share it on Facebook and even turn it into an infographic for Pinterest. This really is a fantastic way for making the most of your content creation, particularly if you are strapped for time or can’t think of what to post.
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Don’t let social media suck up all of your time
If you are going to be doing social media marketing properly, expect to spend at least 12 – 15 hours per week on it. This is not ideal if you are also trying to run your own business. You have a number of options if you don’t want to do this all yourself. You could consider employing somebody in your business to be a full time Social Media Marketing Manager. Alternatively, you could outsource this work to a local specialist marketing company like ours which means that your marketing campaign can hit the ground running, delivering faster results because of our knowledge and expertise. Whatever you decide, remember that it will be an investment for your business because social media marketing is now an essential marketing and PR tool and needs to be taken seriously.
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Be consistent
You will no doubt spot a theme relating to all sorts of social media marketing, and that is consistency. It is vital for your online marketing success. A company’s social media presence that appears abandoned is the digital equivalent of turning your lights off. Because you are not updating online, people will assume that you are going out of business, even if the opposite is true. No matter how busy you are, make time to update your social media sites consistently. This is even more important if you communicate directly with your customers (to solve customer service issues etc.) via social media. Don’t leave them hanging.
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Social media policy
This one tip can save your business from making very public embarrassing mistakes; write up a social media policy that can be shared with all of your employees throughout the company. The guidelines would inform what employees can and can’t say or do in relation to your social media output. If you have just one person in control of your social media posts, make sure that they have a very good understanding of your brand and the industry that surrounds it before you let them loose.
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Never attack your competitors
Never attack or make malicious comments about your competitors on social media platforms as this will serious damage your brand. Instead use social media to communicate and sell better than they do and let your customers decide which is the more professional company and the one that they would prefer to use.
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Have fun
As has been mentioned a number of times, social media is all about building relationships, so try to make it fun and enjoyable. Be consistent, real and genuine in all of your communication so that you can engage with your followers and fans. This will increase brand loyalty, sales and brand advocates for life.
Time to get started
More and more business just yours are now leveraging the power of social media. It has become a mainstream way of communicating with clients and potential customers around the world. Whether you are a late-comer or your realized the potential of social media a long time ago, it is important to establish your own social media strategy. Our team is dedicated to improving your exposure online so that more people can see what you have to offer.
With all the various things and tasks that you do for your business on a daily basis, we understand that spending and focusing your time on social media can have a dramatic effect on the time you spend on your offline business. But this is also a thing which you can’t ignore if you want your business to succeed. Social media is changing the way on how consumers discover and interacts with different businesses. We can help you meet your business goals confidently and efficiently.
Call us today. You will be so glad that you did.
