With so many people active on multiple social media outlets, it’s hard to deny the importance of your business’ presence on these channels. Maintaining a consistent branding strategy, and customer relations systems can prove highly beneficial to your success.
I’d like to touch on the most popular social media outlets and my marketing approach to them.
Facebook is the most popular social media outlet at the moment, it only makes sense to have a business profile here.
Facebook has a presence in almost every developed country. Being popular amongst people of all ages, particularly the more mature crowd. These are the folks that usually have a respectable source of income. There a a couple of avenues you can take to market on Facebook. I prefer the least expensive, least being free. If you join your local groups, most of them allow you to post ads on certain days. For instance, I post on Yucaipa Bulletin, What’s Happening in Beaumont, and Palm Springs Craigslist. One important consideration is not to just market exclusively. Be sure to engage members on their posts and take a genuine interest in the group or your ads will fall on deaf ears. Another Facebook marketing tactic is paid ads. With paid ads, you can decide the demographics, geographic coverage, and exposure time. With the right strategy, Facebook paid ads can generate significant revenue.
Instagram is a great platform to display your work to potential customers and like minded individuals whom share your passion
Instagram is one of my favorite social media platforms. With Instagram being more photos and less text, you tend to come across less opinionated feedback and more friendly engagements. There is paid advertising, although the only input I have is I myself have made purchases from paid ads. These ads were with companies that I had previous business with, but the ads served as reminders that they I needed there services. It is important to be on the forefront of your customers mind. Instagram is a great way to stay in front of prospects and existing clients.
Google Plus is geared more towards B2B marketing, and not quite as popular. There is an SEO benefit to being active on this search engines social network.
Google Plus never has had the following Facebook does, but does have it’s benefits. With groups on the platform dedicated to Google Analytics and Google SEO, you can learn how to get the most from the number one search engine. I personally prefer Google Plus to Facebook for its lack of drama and politics. I found early that my posts with carefully placed keywords and tags were indexed rather quickly. Often my posts would dominate page one for keywords such as window cleaning and solar panel cleaning for my local area of Palm Desert, Palm Springs, and Redlands, California. It definitely has given me an advantage over my competitors whom are larger and well established but aren’t utilizing this powerful tool.
Twitter is a good medium to keep your customers and followers up to date on the latest news about your business
Twitter is used by many businesses to promote news, articles, and updates. I have used Twitter to link to my blog when I want to share helpful window cleaning tips. Like most of the other social media outlets, paid advertising is available. In my business, Twitter isn’t necessarily an ideal investment for local traffic but linking it to your other online accounts through posts and blogs can create activity that search engines take notice of. Twitter is a valuable resource for branding your business. A lot of people like to use Twitter to link to YouTube. This is important, as YouTube and videos in general are well liked by not only Google, but Bing as well.
LinkedIn is widely used as a recruitment platform for businesses looking to hire qualified candidates. This can work out great for locating potential customers that understand your need to market, being on your level as well.
LinkedIn is great for making connections with business professionals. You will find a different sort of customer base on LinkedIn, one of established and successful corporate and service providers. I find LinkedIn in almost a hybrid cross of Google Plus and Facebook. I am not on there as frequently as I should but do try to keep my personal and business profile updated and visit to interact and learn from like minded, successful peers.
There are a few other social media outlets such as Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, and Tumblr. My experience with these sites are limited but I do welcome your opinion and input on these and the outlets I discussed. How do you keep your customers informed? How do you use social media to find new prospects?
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