Social Media Marketing: Platforms and Tips

Social Media Marketing: Platforms and Tips
Platforms:
1. Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business.
Facebook now has over 300 million users, and while that seems like an outrageous
number for small businesses to be targeting, Facebook offers a very powerful
platform on which to build a presence. If you’re not already active on Facebook; you
should get started right away.
You should search for your competitor’s page and evaluate their Facebook presence.
What types of Pages have they built? How many fans or “friends” do they
have? You can then register a Business Account – which is designed for a very
simple presence on Facebook. There are many limitations on such accounts (read
the FAQ here), however, so you’ll most likely prefer to have a Business Fan Page.
2.Twitter has grown tremendously over the past year. For some small businesses, it
offers an incredible marketing platform. If you haven’t signed up on Twitter yet, you
should sign up today and reserve an account in the name of your business. While
you might ultimately tweet in your own name, you’ll want to have the option to
tweet from a business account. More importantly, you don’t want your competitors
to register your business name. To truly leverage Twitter, you’ll want to learn and
use a few more advanced tools. This includes desktop and mobile Twitter clients
like TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Tweetie. Desktop clients give you more flexibility and
more control over your Twitter strategy than you’ll have on the Twitter website.
Among other things, you’ll be able to pre-define searches (so that you can monitor
certain keywords, including your business name) and group people you follow so
that you can minimize the noise and focus on the real content. You might also
consider using a web tool like Twitterfall, which will allow you to define (and color-
code) various custom searches that you can review from time to time, and also to
follow trending topics.
3. LinkedIn is a business oriented social network for professionals, and it’s huge,
with nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries. Once again, you’ll want to at
least reserve your business name (or your personal name) so that others can’t use
it. Similar to the way you might start exploring Facebook and Twitter, you should
look around on LinkedIn to see how your competitors are using the service. You
might also look up your customers and connect with them.
Tips:
Social media is characterized by a set of common actions such as creating a profile,

growing a network of "friends", submitting, voting and commenting on content.
Companies get involved in the social media space for many reasons,
ranging from the perception that they’re on the cutting edge of marketing
to increase sales to a sincere interest in creating more powerful
relationships with customers. Thus, the following tips give a brief idea of
how to effectively create a successful social media marketing plan.
 Be flexible. You never know what’s going to happen so you have to constantly
adjust your thinking and learn and furthermore create suitable strategies that
encompass all the variants of people in your TG.
 Update Status Messages: One of the best features about Facebook is the
ability to easily share short updates with your friends. Not only does this
micro-blogging feature give us a chance to get to know each other better, a
little bit at a time, but it also provides an opportunity to direct friends to a
website, news item, video or announcement in an unobtrusive way
 Learn the Game: Observe how others, including your competition, are
participating on the social media platform you chose above. Write down what
seems to work and what does not, and what you like and what you do not.
Take special note of how people interact. Is it a one-way conversation or are
both parties participating? What’s the tone of the conversations?
 Develop a Plan: It is one thing to participate in social media but to do so
without a plan can be frustrating and even damaging to your business. Think
through your goals – what are you hoping to gain from your social media
interactions? Then work backwards to create a process that will accomplish
what you are aiming to do.
 Stay Human: Even though you are representing a business, don’t ignore the
importance of the “social” element. Allow your interactions to retain the
human side that will facilitate genuine connections. Giving a personal feel to
your presence will make you more approachable and relatable.
 Be Responsive: There is nothing worse than attempting to be active across
social media, but ignoring the masses. Once you commit to a social media
marketing campaign, you should also commit to responding to questions,
complaints and other input from your customers.
5 Easy Steps for Creating a Facebook Fan Page
Step 1: Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Step 2: Select a category and enter the name for your page (you can set your fan
page to be private until you’re ready to go live).
Step 3: Add a picture and become a fan.
Step 4: Edit your page settings. This is where you customize your page, including
country and age restrictions, wall settings, tabs, fan permissions, and applications.
Step 5: Publish and promote your page. You can promote with a fan box, a
Facebook ad, by suggesting to friends, on your personal profile and in your other
networks.
Bonus: Once you hit 25 fans, go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ to create

a vanity URL for your page.

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Social Media Marketing: Platforms and Tips

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Social Media Marketing: Platforms and Tips

Social media is characterized by a set of common actions such as creating a profile,

Step 1: Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Bonus: Once you hit 25 fans, go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ to create

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