It has been seen that 80-90% companies online are using social media; the percentage is continuously increasing. So, I think this article certainly needs your attention.
I think there is a lot more written about Social Media Marketing already, but the way it is growing guarantees that it needs still more attention; and people are always looking for help on this topic, so here we go with some tips and tricks on why and how to use it for your business.
So lets take a look how you can get benefit from it!
Social Media: New way to promote Products and Services
Social Media is a new way to promote your products and services, instead of using that old mailing system (sometimes people find it annoying) social media is good tool. It is because you’re not disturbing any one or forcing to visit your site. Only people who are interested in your products and offers can follow you and can look onto your new tweets and updates related to offers.
Give Or Take
There are a lot of professionals and marketers on Facebook or Twitter who use social media marketing intensively. You can find them and add them (people of your interest). Because Facebook is a family of over 500 Millon people you can learn and even earn a lot of knowledge from it.
Jane’s note:
I highly recommend giving a lot rather than taking or expecting when it comes to social media marketing. Please go ahead and connect with people in your niche. Let the connections be genuine and not on business purpose. Just promote others stuff while you promote yourself.
Appreciate other people. Make it a point that you share 60% of others work/products and 40% of yours. This way you will be a successful social media marketer. You will easily grab the attention of the biggies. Trust me this isn’t just a theory; it works!
Get customer feedback
If you’re going to launch some new product on service, it’s a good way to take advices of those potential people; it is good to know what they think about your new plan and service. If you take such advices it will be a lot more easier for you to make improvements. Instead of getting criticism after you launch a failure product, you can follow this idea and save a lot of your time and others.
Help others
If you’ve good knowledge in a certain field, and you think that you’re able to provide help then its your duty to help people out there. Because if you help others other will help you, as I just discussed above that you can get help from professionals. Social media are an excellent outlet to help others and get help.
Get More Fans
This is one of the other reason why business owners use social media, because they can build a large community of followers and can thus simply explore their products to all of them with just a click away.
So instead of creating large mailing list, creating fan page with a lot of members can help more. The followers and fans in turn promote the product and the exposure gained is quite lot.
Offers and Discounts
This is one other way to increase activity of your fan on page, because if you will offer some discounts and offers to your followers they will always be looking to your tweets, and status.
This can also increase the number of your fans and followers.
Connect to other Business Owners via Social Media
I already advised you to connect to other professionals. Buts its good to connect with other business owners with same field, in this way you can share new ideas and for sure a better relations.
Takeaway
So all I can say is Social Media is now a need of any business, if you’re still not availing this free opportunity to promote your products and services then you are really missing some special thing. So if you’ve not started yet, you still have time to.
Jane’s note:
Apart from the above mentioned reasons, it is good to engage with people on social media. You make great friends, your content promotion explodes exponentially and you get something important for SEO.
I have personally seen a big boost in my search engine rankings and the number of backlinks. The content you submit to social media are also indexed and ranked by search engines. So you should really use social media.
I have made a review about one of the social media sites very useful for bloggers:
Blog Interact | don’t miss this one, seriously!
I will introduce you to more social media sites like this apart from Twitter, Facebook and the others in the near future.
PS: If you already didn’t know, press releases are a great way to get lot of exposure. Try it out.
Usman from FirstHosting, which provides Managed Offshore VPS and Managed HardCore Offshore VPS at cheap rates.
Hey Jane,
Thanks for the fantastic post! I think anyone who has a business needs to get their hands dirty with social media. Social media can help you in many ways nothing else can. There is no eaiser way to build relationships, then through social media. I have made countless relationships that have helped me in a mulitude of ways that i wouldn’t give up for anything. I have also built up more fans through social media. People have seen my avatar around the web and were curious to what I do. If you are not taking advantage of social media then your crazy.
God bless,
William Veasley
Hi, William!
For sure social media is very important as its also elimination email marketing, so we really need to have some good skills in it.
thanks for the complements.
Social Media is a must nowadays. I’ve recently banged up with the social media count from one of the prominent websites in the web today, by just looking at it, we already know what would be our next move towards utilizing social media. I mean there’s money in it really. The mounting social media accounts and progress is very remarkable that would really encourage anyone of us to engaged right away.
And thanks to you for sharing these tips, very helpful!
Social media can surely boost your business like no other, if you work enough
Work enough with plans as well.
Hi Jane, I loved your article! I’m always in favor of giving! Helping people always has it’s paybacks as well. Carma work in wonders I swear and the more you help and give the more you will receive.
I love social networking as you already know so when I was the title I had to come over had have a read.
Hi, bbrian017!
Offcourse if we help others, there is a payback. And blogging simply means to help others.
Jane, aloha. Great reasons and advice in this post. To me, engagement is key whether you are on one of the social platforms or commenting/responding on blogs. You build relationships, meet new friends and, I believe, become a better blogger and communicator.
You are so right on Blog Interact. Though I only recently joined it after receiving the recommendations from several blogger friends, I can appreciate the difference it makes. Also, it is truly a pleasure getting to know and working with Bryan. He is a consummate professional.
Best wishes for a terrific week. Aloha. Janet
Hi, Janet!
yes that’s what I’m talking about, making new friends in blogging, and at same time learning with this process, because we can also get knowledge and new things from fellow bloggers.
Hi Jane, the stats you shared were very interesting. 60% sharing other people products and services. I can see that makes sense but it didn’t dawn on me until I read this. That’s why I started a Friday series called Friday Favs where I share posts which I have found useful and appropriate for beginner bloggers.
I am slowly starting to use Facebook. I want to be comfortable with blogging before tackling another thing
Regarding your advice about getting more fans, I am wondering is it quantity over quality? What I mean is it better to have fewer but more targeted fans or quantity is better. I would appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks!
Hi, Diana!
I would like to say fans but with interest on what you’re sharing and talking about, because you might be aware of services providing you fans, and all is just scrap.
I think if you’ve 50 fans but they are really taking interest in what you say and share, then it really worth.
Hi Jane,
I use social media for the primary purpose of making and keeping in touch with friends. I understand that some of these friends might one day become business partners or customers, but most will not. But if I focus on just maintaining friendships, I really can’t go wrong.
Social media is a great way to get to know people, and to let them know you as well. Thanks for a great post.
Gregory
Hi, Gregory!
Using FB for friends is other part of it, for business or blogging is other part, you’ve to interact and find those people who are doing things related to you and make them friends, this can help.
for my normal friends, they are just friends.
I have just started using social media to a greater extent in the last few months. The benefits I have seen from using social media is nothing short of amazing.
The biggest benefit, besides traffic, that I have received from using social networks is the new sites that I have been introduced to. There is a lot of good blogs out there that I didn’t realized existed until I got serious with social media.
Paul so what you concluded? you found new things and networks, so you’ve used social media for good reason and that helped you.
So, I guess it can be useful for all of us, just we need to sort how for us?
Hi Jane,
As usual another lovely post from you. It’s undoubtedly important to have a feedback system to improve the business strategies of any product. Social media nowadays plays a great role to this. You can actually find that how many people are liking your products or services. It’s really a great way to keep your customers updated without spending a single penny.
Hi, Samantha!
Yes, and these feedbacks are very important for us, it can keep us inspired and let us improve our self
Hi Jane,
I only know two ways to generate traffic to your websites and blogs. One is SEO traffic and the other is social media. You should use both if you can, but for a beginner, social media is the only other option than paid for traffic. And I don’t think paid traffic really works to well. Thanks for your in formation.
Lou Barba
Lou paid traffic is never recommended for blogs, social media and organic traffic for blogs is economically beneficial atm.
Great overview Jane. I think anytime you operate under the influence of helping others, you’re going to do well on just about any avenue. Especially social media.
Hi Usman,
I think anyone not using social media to market themselves or their products has to be crazy. Look at FB almost 600 million users and growing everyday. Where else can you get those kind of numbers, no where!
Social media has changed the way we all live our lives, even my mother, who is in her late 50′s uses FB everyday.
The reach of social media is enormous and now with PPC advertising on FB you can target specific groups of people to put your ads in front of.
Social media is the future of marketing!
Thanks for sharing Usman and Jane and have a great day!
Hi, Ian!
I’m 100% agreed, 600 million people, with having interest in almost all the fields, so why not find ones with interest in the things you are producing or selling?
Hi Usman,
Helping others is key. If we enter into this online realm trying to take and push sales, it just won’t work. Always be looking to help others, that truly works.
Getting more fans? This is fantastic for social proof on those Facebook Pages. People see a brand with a large following and it makes them want to take a peek. Not only that, it’s a great way to create community and listen closely to what your audience truly wants.
Great article, Usman, thanks!
Jon
Hi, Jon!
Glad to see you here.
I always say that blogging means helping others, its meaning of what we are doing. So, its better to help others, and success will run after you then.
Regards
Because the social media help us gain a lot of benefits from internet and growth the online business fast.
Hi Usman & Jane,
Nice Post. social media sites is one of the best way to connect with other bloggers & marketers and build relationship with them. I think social media sites are perfect medium to connect with your blog audience and build trust with them.
Thanks for sharing this nice guest post Jane & usman. Keep up the great work.
~Dev
This is the time of social media…If you want to get success on internet then you need to be successful first in social media
One of the simplest yet powerful insight article that i ever found that discuss the power of social media.
Yes.Social media became mandatory for every business.
To provide real time support
Increased customer engagement ( where people really wants to talk/share)
Increased customer trustworthiness
…
You’re so right - the social media train is a great one to be on, no matter what your business is! These websites are useful for promoting all kinds of things to all kinds of target audiences - how can you lose?!
~Laurie
Social media opens up a new communication line between you and your customers. That is a huge opportunity that can translate to new revenue streams for your business. Moreover, Google’s Panda algorithm has now integrated social signals into search results, thus there’s no better day to put the power of social media to good use than today.