Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, YouTube, Online Articles, BeBe, Flikr and so many more that it is impossible to keep it all straight!
Are you confused yet? Are you wondering how to do it all? Wondering how all of this can help you effectively advertise?
Actually, Social Media is an extremely cheap and effective way to advertise, although it can be a bit time consuming. When engaging with Social Media it is an ongoing conversation between you and your customers. You allow the customers to truly get to know you and your business, and you allow them to respond to what they see. The responses you get will be vital to your business success. When customers get to know, trust and like you then they are that much more likely to purchase from you. This is Social Media at it’s finest.
The reason it is so cheap is that it is completely free to establish accounts with all of the above mentioned Social Media outlets. Well, let me amend that, you can get a blog for free, or you can pay something for hosting and domain name.
However, there are road rules with Social Media. Sorry, you simply cannot just set up accounts and start to blast traditional advertising out on the ether. You will be removed as a spammer if you do this.
While it is ok to have occasional advertising on your social media accounts, there has to be more information, tips, ideas, stories or events than advertising.
The more social media accounts you have, the more exposure you will get. On the other hand you have to weigh the Social Media accounts and find the ones that “Your” customers are most likely to frequent. It can be time consuming to have too many Social Media accounts.
A Blog is vital, and the one thing I think everyone should have. This is a blog, although I have designed it to work both as a website and a blog. The blog gives me tools to easily add a lot of content and it gives my readers a lot of chances to communicate with me.
Facebook and Twitter are also important – although it also depends on the customers. If the customers are generally over 60-65 then Twitter is definitely not needed, while Facebook would still be beneficial. With the younger crowd – the twenty – fifty year olds Facebook is vital. Twitter also appeals to this age group, although maybe a slightly younger crowd. Twitter offers more tools to update the account fast.
Linked-in is especially for the Professionals in slightly more expensive fields. I have heard many stories about people who found their next professional job on Linked-in.
YouTube is great if you feel you have something you can talk about, give tips about and show in a video. A good example I have seen of this are massage therapists showing their favorite tricks and stretches to alleviate pain. YouTube is currently the largest search engine on the web – larger than Google.
Online Articles are also great if you have tips, ideas and longer stories that you feel a large segment of the population could benefit from reading. Online articles and YouTube has the potential to spread very fast, as the search engines check them often. Online articles allow you to put your website and contact information at the bottom of the article – and it allows other people to use your article as long as they show a link back to your website. Talk about an amazing way to get backlinks!
BeBe and Flikr are definitely for a younger crowd. Flikr is a picture hosting social media account, and has similar competitors for a more expanded age group. There are also specific networks for various hobbies, interests, travel destinations etc.
While I have touted the opportunity for a two way communication with your customers, there is another gigantic benefit to social media. You can link all your accounts together, thus creating backlinks to yourself all over the place. Back links help you get on the front page of Google, so you really cannot have “enough”.
For instance if you have a website, a blog, a facebook account and a linked-in account you could allow each account to have a link to all other accounts and websites. This creating a web of links to all your accounts, websites, youtube movies, online articles, blogs etc. This is called web 2.0, and is extremely effective in increasing your exposure.
