From Facebook to Twitter, social media appears to be a time-wasting endeavor, especially if you are an online business struggling in a sea of large eCommerce sites. However, these social websites may be the key to your business salvation. From customer familiarity to free advertising, it only benefits your business to start out on at least one social media website.
Brand Yourself
Take your time and start out with one website. Start a profile that brands your business, such as adding your logo and catchphrase to your landing page. Search for colleagues within the site, including customers, vendors and current employees. You want to stretch your networking with the profile page, gaining as many followers or friends as possible. Even introduce yourself to your vendors’ friends online. Most industries are relatively small, making it possible that you’ve met or talked to this new friend before.
Free Advertising Is Possible
Post comments, pictures, graphs and even clever jokes to your page. Regardless of your business model, you can’t post strictly business items all day long. Customers and vendors need a break from the work monotony. Try posting items that relate to your business, but add depth to the topic. For example, you sell fixtures to retail stores. Don’t just post that you have a new line of fixtures in stock. Instead, post a diagram of an effective product configuration on a fixture. Your social media friends may find this information useful, encouraging them to share it across other website outlets. With your brand as part of the post, you receive free advertising as people comment about the diagram. You cannot pay for good word-of-mouth advertising.
Keep Up The Conversation
Posting once a month, or even once a week, is not the best way to make social media work for you. Keep the conversation going with tweets about your day and pictures of unusual product uses in your industry. Your content must be consistently updated to reach your followers, along with encouraging strategic page landings on search engine browsers. With daily blogs, for example, your SEO, or search engine optimization, grows. As a result, your business lands on page three during a search, rather than page 20.
Learn more about social media and its impact on your business by trying different websites. Each site has a different culture, allowing you to reach out to various industries. You want as much exposure as possible to find the right fit for your brand.
