Have you ever been told that it’s a great idea for your business to be on many different social media networks in order to gain more customers?
Your friends and colleagues probably tell you all the time that everyone is using social media and your business should be using it too. So, you take a couple of hours to create ten different accounts and start posting/tweeting away. After all of your hard work, you find out that there is limited customer engagement and few leads brought in from your social networks. You’ve posted great deals, interesting pictures, and even a video about your business. So what’s wrong? Why is it that your social media presence isn’t bringing in the type of profits you were told it would?
It’s more complex than just posting status updates and deals. There are specific social media networks for specific purposes and targets. If you want to start increasing customer engagement and ultimately your bottom line, then read the following tips about how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ effectively.
- Facebook is best for interacting on a personal level with current and potential customers.
- The best things to share are videos, photos, blog posts, and poll questions that engage your fans and make them want to share with other friends.
- Try to keep constant contact and engagement with fans.
- Try not to connect with too many people because you do not want to reduce the genuine connections since many users hardly know or keep in touch with their “friends”.
- Facebook Pages can contain all of your company’s information in one place and adds an exciting look and feel to your page.
- The largest segment of users is males ages 21-24, followed closely by 18-20 year olds and 35-44 year olds.
- Twitter is best for short updates, finding potential customers, and monitoring conversations about your business and/or brand.
- The best things to share are links with relevant content, popular hashtags to your industry or field, answering questions, and conversing one on one with followers.
- Instant status updates are useful for addressing customer concerns and questions immediately in front a large audience of followers.
- More females use twitter than males (54.6%).
- Users aged 31-49 make up 42.3% and 18-29 year olds make up 41.5%.
- LinkedIn is best for networking with other professionals, showing what you and your business can do, and your professional accomplishments.
- You can create a group and lead discussions about your industry or field.
- On an ‘Answers Page’, answer common questions with your industry expertise. People will start to follow you if you share great insight about your industry.
- The most users are males ages 35-44.
- Google+ is best for starting conversations and adding people to them.
- You should share blog posts, interesting articles, industry insight, and spark conversations about your industry with questions and answers.
- With Google Circles you can target certain groups with specific messages by placing contacts into circles.
- Male users make up almost 70% of Google+ users.
The key to using social media networks is to connect with your fans, followers, and potential customers on a personal level. Provide your followers with knowledge and resources about your industry. Engagement and responses will come more frequently this way rather than just telling followers to buy because you have a great deal. Start implementing these strategies now on the social media sites that work best for your business.
The information in “Social Networking for Your Business the Effective Way” has been gathered from http://mashable.com/2012/04/16/social-networks-tips-infographic/.
Bradley Parcella is an Account Executive at Response Marketing.
