Have you been looking to use social media to promote your Company?

2015: The Year Business Owners REALLY Embraced Social Media

Despite a few celebrity tweeting, social media had been mainly ignored by Business Owners until early 2013. By June, reports were that Twitter was becoming the key referral source for Business Owners, with a 663% increase in people asking for recommendations on the social network. Twitter? Really?

How Business Owners Can Benefit from Social Media Marketing?

Social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and blogs provide a fast and cheap way to keep in touch with clients and potential clients. You call also keep a watchful eye on your competitors, and keep up-to-date with industry marketing trends.

Many marketing internet savvy Business Owners are now using social media to gain exposure for their Companys, communicate with niche markets normally difficult to reach and networking with strategic partners.

If you want to do the same, it’s imperative that you start with a great looking website that has a consistent message and a branded image (logo) that can extend across your social media profiles also.

Once you have updated your website and configured your social media profiles, the number one strategy for delivering highly targeting traffic to your site is to create great content. The home base for all that content should be your Company’s blog, which should be hosted on your own domain. NOT blogger.

The Social Media Marketing Plan for Companies

10 steps that outline what you need to do to develop a social media marketing plan for your Company.

1. Find out What People are Saying about Your Company

The first step is find out what is currently being said about your Company or your Business Owners online. Head over to Google and search your brand. Next, see what bloggers are saying by doing the same search on the Google Blog Search. Finally go to Twitter and do the same searches there. Each conversation or result that you find is an opportunity to make a statement. If no-one is mentioning your Company you’re probably not interesting or remarkable enough (we’ll talk about how to fix that in Step 5).

2. Find out Where People Discuss Topics You Care About

Create a list of keywords that reflect your Company’s area of specialty. Phrase them in the way your clients might talk about those topics. Next go through each of the major social networks and search for those terms.

Don’t forget the niche social networks either. If you specialize in family law for instance, parents network MumsNet might be a good site to get highly targeted traffic. If you’re not sure what the niche networks are for your sector, feel free to contact us – 303.448-8841.

3. Choose Your Platforms, Plan Your Approach

Based on your research, now it’s time to choose the social media outlets you are going to invest time in. Don’t spread yourself too thinly. Start with one or two outlets to begin with. At this point it may be worth taking a look at what your competitors are doing. If you can spot what types of activity is proving successful for them, you may be able to easily copy their approach.

4. Set Some Goals

How will you know if you have been successful, or if the return has been worth the effort?

Make sure you set yourself some specific, measurable goals before you start. Your initial goals can be fairly modest. To begin with a valid goal may simply be learning – e.g. learning the outlets, better understanding your clients, potential clients and their motivations, and learning what types of content works.

Eventually, set some goals around growing your audience of fans and followers. This should only be a short-term objective though. In the long term your social media goals should be directly tied directly to your business goals.