A Rookie’s Guide To So­cial Me­dia Promotion

If you’re in charge of a small busi­ness, you’ve heard about the im­por­tance of so­cial me­dia pro­mo­tion mil­lions of times.

You’ve heard phrases like “Face­book page”, “Twit­ter ac­count”, and “search en­gine op­ti­miza­tion” thrown around from all directions.

It can be daunt­ing, es­pe­cially if you’re new to the pro­mo­tional world and are un­sure just how to uti­lize all of these so­cial me­dia sites most ef­fec­tively.

There is an end­less sea of so­cial me­dia out­lets that can re­ally help your mar­ket your busi­ness or a spe­cific prod­uct, but it’s true that nav­i­gat­ing the wa­ters can be tricky. That’s why we’ve com­piled a to-do list of the most fun­da­men­tal so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing strate­gies for small busi­ness promotion.

Feel free to add your own ideas in the com­ments section!

1. Cre­ate a Face­book busi­ness page

You may think of Face­book as a so­cial tool more than a busi­ness tool, but that iden­tity is rapidly changing.

When you cre­ate a busi­ness page, you can get cus­tomers and po­ten­tial cus­tomers to “like” your page. When­ever you post an up­date to your ac­count, or share some­thing cool, they’ll re­ceive an up­date on their feed.

Try to make sure these up­dates are in­ter­est­ing! Don’t use the plat­form as a bill­board, peo­ple come to Face­book for en­ter­tain­ment and if you bore them they will quickly “un­like” you.

We’ll dis­cuss good ideas for so­cial me­dia en­gage­ment in a second.

 2. Cre­ate a LinkedIn pro­file for your business

LinkedIn, as a pri­mar­ily pro­fes­sional plat­form, has a va­ri­ety of ex­tremely use­ful tools to help you grow your business.

One of the most im­por­tant ser­vices LinkedIn pro­vides is di­rect con­tact with your clients.

You can con­duct sur­veys and do mar­ket re­search di­rectly with the clien­tele us­ing the Q&A fea­ture. You can also find and link your­self to po­ten­tial busi­ness part­ners and clients with the click of a but­ton. Very ef­fi­cient trans­ac­tions and easy net­work­ing make LinkedIn a must for you emerg­ing business.

3. Cre­ate a Twit­ter ac­count for your business

Twit­ter can be an arena for bru­tally hon­est di­a­logue be­tween busi­nesses and their clients, some­thing that will likely ben­e­fit you in the long run if you are will­ing to re­spond to cri­tiques in a way that im­proves your im­age and your product.

Twit­ter is also a great way to draw peo­ple into your other so­cial me­dia plat­forms or to link back to your web­site. Short, con­cise, and fre­quent tweets shouldn’t (and can’t, due to char­ac­ter lim­its) be used for longer for­mat mar­ket­ing strategies.

Think of your twit­ter ac­count as a broad­cast­ing tool—it pe­ruses the web and di­rects peo­ple back to­ward where the main sources of in­for­ma­tion are. 

 4. Google +

Google+ has not im­pressed many in the realm of so­cial me­dia, given the an­tic­i­pa­tion of its ar­rival as a sup­posed “com­peti­tor” to Facebook.

But when pro­mot­ing a busi­ness, it is a valu­able tool for the sim­ple rea­son that whether or not peo­ple browse Google+ to find your busi­ness, you can bet they are brows­ing the Google search engine.

A well-main­­tained Google+ page will in­crease your page rank and au­thor­ity, giv­ing you ac­cess to all type of search en­gine op­ti­miza­tion ben­e­fits. Your preva­lence in a Google search is per­haps the sin­gle most im­por­tant as­pect of on­line busi­ness pro­mo­tion, so it’s worth it to in­vest time into your Google+ account.

 5. ENGAGE!

Once you have all of your pro­mo­tional tools set up, the real work be­gins. In or­der to max­i­mize the ef­fec­tive­ness of your so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing, you will have to have a con­stant and cre­ative pres­ence online.

Re­mem­ber, you are try­ing to get peo­ple to come to you, so you have to be com­pelling and interesting.

• One com­mon form of on­line pro­mo­tion is through clas­sic give­aways. Cre­ate some type of raf­fle where peo­ple who “like” your page will be au­to­mat­i­cally en­tered, with the chance of win­ning tick­ets to something.
• Vi­su­als are also ex­tremely im­por­tant. And not just im­ages. Videos and, in par­tic­u­lar, we­b­cast­ing are great ways to en­gage your au­di­ence and pro­mote your product.
• En­cour­age shar­ing of your posts on Face­book. You can even cre­ate in­cen­tives for peo­ple who share (a dis­count, for ex­am­ple). Shar­ing works ex­po­nen­tially, so even a small amount in the be­gin­ning stages can have a huge im­pact down the road.

These are just a few ideas, but there are plenty more. The main idea is to get peo­ple in­ter­ested in your account/page and keep them in­ter­ested. Con­sider hir­ing some­one to do this job for you full time—it might be a worth investment.

If you make your way through this to-do list, you will be well on your way to suc­cess­ful so­cial me­dia pro­mo­tion. It may sound com­pli­cated, es­pe­cially if you are not a “tech-minded” per­son or are not fa­mil­iar with these plat­forms. But the guys at Face­book, Twit­ter, etc. are ac­tu­ally hard at work every day mak­ing it eas­ier and more in­tu­itive for folks like us to use these tools, be­cause that’s how they build their own company.

Start learn­ing now, and you may be very sur­prised at your level of success.