If you are reading this, you are already wondering if having a social media presence for your business is worth it? When I started learning about social media on a professional level, I was flabbergasted by how many professionals said “you must do this” and “you must do that” and “you can never, ever do this”. Some professionals were consistent, some left me scratching my head thinking “huh?”
Let’s break this social media stuff down to basics!
- You may have a website or are considering having one designed.
- Your website is an extension of your business, regardless if you work from home or have a team of employees working in an office.
- You have goods or services to offer your clients.
- You would like to take advantage of being able to market your products and services on social media since it’s all free
With me so far?
Personally, the idea of marketing Legacy Designs on social media is a no-brainer. How can we even offer this service unless it’s something we haven’t tried ourselves. I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that marketing your business on social media is a process of many experiments, analyzing the results, repeat what works, trash what doesn’t, rinse and repeat. I won’t lie to you. It requires a lot of time learning how each platform works and knowing who you are serving and finding out what type of online marketing works.
Here are some of the reasons you may want to have a social media presence for your business:
- You can send your message with text, a graphic/photo, link share or video and it’s free. It would cost a pretty penny for a magazine ad in full colour to advertise your business.
- For something more formal, you can create formal ad campaigns for as little as a couple of dollars.
- It’s a great way to learn about who your audience is.
- You can target your message to the right people, not just by gender or age, but by interests, relationship status, where they work and their language.
- It’s easy to share content with your audience.
- There are millions of people using social media every day.
- You can learn what your audience wants by reading comments they post on social media.
- Increase your Brand Recognition
I could keep listing all the benefits, but the one that I feel is the biggest benefit: Building a relationship with your audience. If you have a good relationship with them, they will trust you. If they trust you, they will buy from you.
Marketing on Social media is something that every business should be doing, but not necessarily on all platforms. One business may use Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, where another business may use Facebook and Instragram. You will know after a few months what platform works for you, by the engagement from your audience.
How do you get started? Here are some very basic tips to start.
If you don’t have a website, do the first three. If you have the extra time, setup the rest
- Setup a Facebook page (you can’t use a personal Facebook account for business)
- Setup a Twitter account
- Setup Google+ for Business page
- Setup a Linkedin Profile
- Setup a Pinterest profile
- Setup an Instagram profile
Pay attention to the sizes of the graphics needed for their headers/cover pages and configure your profiles to not only look good on a computer,but on various sizes of mobile devices. Remember, the platforms are an extension of your business, so your brand must be consistent. When you start sharing content, you need to be clear and concise with every single post.
- Who is your audience?
- What topics and themes can you post and share content about?
- Look at your competitors and see what they are doing.
I’m going to re-state what I said earlier…it will take a lot of time and effort before you find out what works and what doesn’t. The time factor is especially an issue for entrepreneurs or micro-businesses when there are only 1-2 people running the business.
Don’t be Discouraged, Get Someone Else to Look After it.
If you are already scrambling for free time, let someone else look after social media for you. There are amazing social media marketing companies out there looking after Fortune 500 companies and they charge rates starting in the tens of thousands. The goal of Legacy Designs is to help you grow your business by teaching you what you need to know to manage it yourself or we can look after your social media and branding concepts using methods that we use for clients and for ourselves. The more popular platforms are always changing to make themselves better, so we are always keeping on top of these changes and always learning.
Contact us today for a free no-obligation consultation. Only then will you be able to figure out if you want to spend the time doing it yourself or getting someone to look after it for you. Who knows, you may just need some basic training and you’re on your way.
Using social media as an outpost to understand one’s audience and what works for them is an excellent way to do market research and get our message out to the right audience, Joe.
I regularly check the analytics on all the social media sites where I maintain a presence and rework my message to appeal to those who would find my products and services valuable.
I think too many people put to much stock in trying to be on all platforms. There will be one or two that work best and those will be a true extension of your business. Analytics and Insights is where all the answers are.
Social media really is a great way to build relationships with your audience, just as you indicated, Gisele. It’s an opportunity to do some research – find out what resonates with your audience and what leaves them cold. Lots of reasons to jump in, just need to monitor and make sure it doesn’t overwhelm=>
I think experimenting is the most fun part about it. I communicate this with clients to tell them to think of it like an experiment. When we find out what their ideal customer wants to see, we do that. Without the tools available though, we’d definitely be overwhelmed 🙂
As an e-commerce provider, we could not imagine marketing any other way. It has been a few years and I am amazed at how much has been learned and how much more there is to learn. And the changes. I belong to a few groups & I want to grab some people & say, improve your photos, size correctly for the platform, dont just sell, sell, sell & much more. we have taken ongoing learning to new level and been with a wonderful teacher/coch/webmaster/Seo gal across the pond who I met in a group. Good post.
Totally agree with you Roz.. those days of pushing sales are gone. People want to engage, talk, share stories and experiences. When someone tries to sell me something before I’ve even had the chance to learn more about them, I go someplace else.
I agree that social media is an important part of a marketing strategy in this day and age. Find where your ideal audience is and connect with them so you build a relationship. But, I believe your own website will be your most important asset and this is where you should concentrate most of your effort. Build a good website, set up a email funnel. Use your social media efforts to guide your ideal customers into your email campigns and take your customer relationship building to the next level.
Ian, I couldn’t agree with you more. I believe people put too much stock in Social Media… they forget that they don’t own social media. But they do own their website and control what happens with it. Social media is just an extension of your business.. everything should start on your website first, then send your message to your list, build your funnel and share those things to social media to help along. Facebook launched a lead generation feature.. apparently it’s more expensive to do that then to use the “send to website” feature. I simply boost posts… works so much better then ads.
What tech are you using for your email funnel?
Fantastic post! Using Social Media is crucial to your success online….period!
Thanks Joan,
Love it or hate it, social media is important to grow your presence and create new relationships with people you might never have the chance to in the offline world only. I am always amazed at the variety of people I have connected with on Twitter and often say that group is very different to those I connect with anywhere else. Now building relationships with such a wide range of people is more challenging then say on Facebook, however, I do love the quick conversations that happen there. Thanks for the great post, Joe! It is interesting to even try to imagine our lives before social media. To think a few years ago putting in my name in Google brought no results, as if I didn’t exist. And now, thanks to my articles and consistent interaction, I am known and able to be found. 😉
I have to agree with our own audience for Legacy Designs and for Art Place.. the type of people and content is totally different across the platforms. Thank goodness for Analytics! and for our lives before Social Media.. we had to pickup the phone to talk to someone, drive to the store to buy something, we could visit family and buy recipe books or get them from the library to read and the best one…not banging into someone on the sideway because their heads are buried into their phone 🙂