No matter what type of business you have, social media can help you expand your presence, reach new customers, and keep old ones coming back for more. But, using it effectively is about a lot more than simply posting links and blasting followers and friends with calls to purchase your products and services. Here are some tips to use social media basics to grow your business.
Provide Value
The businesses that do best with social media make sure they hit on one very important point when engaging with the online world—they are providing value. Think about the types of information your target audience needs, and would find useful, and provide it. Think about the problems and challenges they may face and provide the information that holds the solutions. Provide updates relevant to your niche and the products and services you are selling. If you sell herbal remedies, links to information on natural health solutions or the results of a recent study finding benefits for a natural treatment are good examples; if you sell cooking equipment, post some recipes. If you run an MLM or some other type of online opportunity that involves recruiting, providing useful tips on how to run a home-based business or how to run a blog is great.
Promote Others to Promote Yourself
Naturally, you are using social media to build your own brand, to sell your own products and services—nothing wrong with that, that is what everyone is doing. You may think that you do not have the time to focus on other people—why should you spend time promoting others? But, you will get a lot more out of social media if you are being more social in the form of sharing the content of others and promoting their interests. Because guess what? They will share your updates and put your products and services in front of more people. Building relationships with other social media users is crucial—it is powerful leverage that can get you more exposure with less effort.
Be Consistent
Rome was not built in a day, nor will a successful social media campaign be; one of the biggest reasons people fail with online marketing is a lack of patience and persistence. They are not making thousands of dollars in sales in a week and they conclude it is a waste of time and they give up. Think of all the people who claim they were ‘’scammed’’ by some online business opportunity—oftentimes, it is perfectly legit, they just did not realize they would have to run it like an actual business. It takes time to get any marketing campaign off the ground and social media is no exception. A tweet here and there or an update to your business Facebook page every three weeks is not going to cut it. You should be making an effort to do at least one thing every day, whether it shares a post, connect with more people on Facebook or Twitter or craft your next blog post.
