Most small businesses understand that internet advertising, which includes website websites, email marketing, and online advertising, is typically less costly and often more effective than using more traditional, more common methods of advertising such as radio and print. However, with the proliferation of social networking sites covering the electronic landscape, small businesses now have a new channel for advertising and marketing: Social media marketing. If you are looking for a technology that allows many different businesses and companies to accurately track, and maximize their Business Marketing, Asset Management, Fleet Management, People Management, Tracking, Security, and Market Research, you should know more about geofencing
Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Digg are probably the most used types of social networking. However, there are other channels available for companies. These include bookmarking sites like de.li.cious or Digg, corporate blog and blog-related sites like Technorati, YouTube and video sharing websites like YouTube. This is not surprising, as there are numerous ways you can market your little business on these low-cost and free social websites.
However, it is important for small businesses to identify the best social media marketing channels that are appropriate for their particular company and then find ways to make them work for them as a marketing tool. These are some ideas to think about if you are considering using social websites in your business’ marketing mix.
* Keep your eyes on the “biggies”, which include Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This is the place where there are the most users every day. So put your effort into the sites that can give you the greatest visibility and your focus on your industry.
* Be consistent. For search engines like google to keep site visitors interested, it is important to post new details often. This is because no one wants to learn outdated, irrelevant information. This is also true for your website, but that’s another article!
* Reuse existing promotional information. Create a Facebook tab for your enewsletter and share it with your fans. You can increase how-to movies and recommendations on your YouTube channel. You can add your press release to the world-wide-web website. Tweet a link using Twitter. If you promote your work using social media, you can get a lot more from it.
* Make sure you integrate all your social networks channels so they can work together. Integrating will reduce the time it takes to submit details, rather than leaving every profile as an “island” that must be updated independently. You don’t have re-enter data multiple times and integration ensures that all social media channels will hold the most up-to-date information without having to add any more. (Do you need help with this type of part?) For a compact organization, take a look at our Integrated Social Marketing products and advertising ISM(r).
* Keep track of and evaluate the results. There are many tools that you can use to track and monitor social networking. Google Alerts (googlealerts.com), which is a cost-free service, provides an index of all instances of your firm or key phrase that are being found online. It also e-mails you the appropriate e-mails. Other useful tools, such as BackTweets and Techrigy (techrigy.com), can be used to help you measure and monitor your effects.
* Include links to your social channels on your net site. This is also a part of Integration. It’s worth repeating. These links will provide social networking visitors with inbound links to the high-value articles within your net web site. This gives them an easy solution for finding out more about you through direct inbound hyperlinks between your web-site, social channels, and other web sites.