By Tenisha Mercer
Facebook. LinkedIn. Twitter.
If you’re like most small businesses, no doubt you’ve heard about these three popular social media applications. Yet, you still may be wondering how to use them and what is the best way to market your Atlanta business using social media.
The good news is that there is no one best way to market your business on social media. Some social media applications work better than others, but they’re all designed to increase your online reputation, boost your credibility and extend your brand awareness among your customers.
The bad news? They take time.
The Small Businesses Guide to Social Media
Social media is a small businesses’ dream come true, for several reasons. Marketing your business used to be tedious – there were hefty marketing budgets to consider, media time to buy, ads to create. Then, you’d have to wait for weeks, sometimes months, to see any results.
Thankfully, social media marketing has revolutionized marketing. It’s put the control back into the hands of small businesses. Instead of spending thousands of dollars a month – and then handing your advertising off to an ad agency — the only serious investment you really have to make is learning about social media tools, implementing them and measuring their results.
Social media marketing puts you in control. Now the power to control your advertising and marketing efforts is squarely in your hands.
But, because it is so new, it can also be very confusing. Which strategy do you use? How do you measure results? There are no easy answers to these questions, but social media is like anything else: You get out of it what you put in it.
Let’s take a look at three major social marketing initiatives – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – and how you can use them to market your business.
Facebook – What started out as the domain of college students at campuses across the country has gone mainstream. Users 35 and up are driving the growth of Facebook. Indeed, Facebook has become so popular that many businesses now routinely market using their Facebook pages.
Should you get a Facebook business page? Absolutely. Facebook is one segment of your marketing; it’s not the end-all and be-all. By “friending” – or asking others permission to access their Facebook page – your business can reach a level of customers it might have not found before. Don’t just get a page, but actively friend others and communicate.
Twitter – Twitter is a popular microsharing blog that has taken the world by storm in just a few short years. What separates Twitter from Facebook is one question that it asks users: What are you doing? Now, this question doesn’t have to mean literally what you are doing, but it is designed to elicit conversation. You build a Twitter following by selecting followers – and having others follow you.
Many well-known companies, from Dell, Popeye’s Chicken and Starbucks, have used Twitter to share information with their customers such as coupons and special sales. Twitter is one tool to use in your social media arsenal. The key is to share helpful information about your industry with your followers. They’ll thank you for it.
LinkedIn – The sometimes forgotten stepsister, LinkedIn is routinely thought of as a career executive’s network site or a site to put a resume. But I think it has many more practical applications for businesses. You can use LinkedIn to market you business, much in the same way as Facebook and LinkedIn, by asking others to follow you on LinkedIn. It’s a goldmine of potential corporate networking contacts.
The best thing about all three of these strategies is that they have measurable results. You can have measure the increase in web traffic, the number of followers or business leads. Social media is another tool to help you market your business and communicate with your customers.
Tenisha Mercer is a social media expert who consults clients on their social media marketing strategy in Atlanta. She has worked with clients such as Sears, 1-800-Flowers, George Foreman products, and small businesses nationwide.
