Get Social! Build Your Name and Reputation Online

Do you need a social media strategy for your business? The answer is emphatically YES! If you’re not active on social sites you’re missing out on untold numbers of potential customers that will only find you if you are online. Gone are the days of Madison Avenue, ad agencies, print ads and radio spots to establish new brands. The focus of today’s marketing is Facebook, Twitter and Instagram along with SEO and other online marketing strategies. Facebook Facebook is not just a social network for crazy memes and games. It’s also a useful tool for marketing your business. Check out your favorite brands on Facebook. You can learn a lot by studying them. Smart and savvy marketers are using Facebook to drive customers to their websites by offering online coupons and specials that are only available there. The catch is, the user is required to go to the company website to obtain the offer, discount or coupon code. Once there, the user finds other specials and offers to click on , and buys more of the product. Facebook at it’s best is all about engaging the customer and making a connection. Encouraging customers to post comments and photos related to the brand or links to reviews and testimonials is a great way to foster engagement. Expand your view of Facebook as a marketing tool for your business. Take it seriously to market more successfully. Twitter Twitter still is not widely understood as a social marketing tool. The truth is, Twitter can be leveraged in several ways to grow your brand and reputation online. Follow companies that have similar cultures as yours, follow your customers and vendors, and follow your competition. Tweet and retweet items of interest to your following. Engage with your followers. Post related articles and industry news to help others connect with what you do. Shameless self-promotion is generally frowned upon, but tweeting your website link in conjunction with interesting posts will drive more traffic to your site. Avoid the trap of purchasing followers to pad your numbers. Authentic engagement is the name of the game on Twitter. It may take a while to build a following, but when you do, they will be actual customers or supporters of your brand. Instagram A picture is worth a thousand words, so get yours out on Instagram. Crosspost on Twitter and Facebook for the trifecta of social media marketing . Keep it clean, keep it interesting and keep it relatable. Industry photos are interesting , but only to those in your industry. Imagine that you’re playing to a diverse crowd, and post images that are attractive, provocative and beautiful to increase engagement and promote your brand. Your ad campaigns play well here. Mix it up and keep it fun and you will gain followers for your brand. Your Blog We’re not all writers, nor do we all have the time to write a blog. Still, this is one of the most important pieces of the online marketing puzzle. Find the time, or hire someone to write your blog for you. A blog indexes you on search engines so that people will find your website. It can also be used as an event calendar, share articles of interest or tell stories about your company. Stories sell. Don’t ever underestimate the power of storytelling in building a following for your product or service. Your blog doesn’t have to be a novel, simply a well-worded paragraph or two is plenty. Make sure you use your spelling and grammar check. Nothing turns readers off faster than typos and misspellings. They make you appear unprofessional and lose the respect of your followers. You don’t have to post daily, but a bi-weekly or even bi-monthly blog is a great way to keep your customers coming back to the website to read, and then to buy.