Ten years ago, no one would have thought that the social media would have such an amazing impact on businesses like it does today. In fact, few marketing platforms offer the extensive reach that social media does. According to PC World, social media has a second, arguably more useful function in small-business visibility. The reasons why they have such a deep impact on your business marketing drive is because your social media pages is indexed by search engines, and searches for your company name will turn up results for all of these sites. Over time, with consistent and sustained engagements on these social media platforms, your business website could rank top in a search for your business name, with your social media pages showing next in successive orders.
Let’s look at some of the major players in this industry and how they can help your business marketing drive.
Google+
A Google+ page for your business is especially critical. If you have one, a Google search for your company name will add an extra box-out with your Google+ information placed to the right of the search results. This box includes your contact information and your recent Google+ posts, greatly enhancing your visibility to searchers. Google+ allows you to add images of products or services rendered. By joining relevant circles, you get the chance to connect with people and businesses of like-interest. Ideas, suggestions and of course business information are shared within members of circle. However, it behooves you to observe and strictly adhere to circle rules. Spammers are always a pest.
According to PC World, Pinterest creates a massive amount of Internet referral traffic; in fact, the social pinboard recently surpassed Yahoo to become the fourth largest driver of traffic in the world. That’s a lot of window shopping! The traffic potential alone makes Pinterest an intriguing prospect for businesses with social intentions, but a new survey by BizRate Insights suggests that a large number of Pinterest users sign up for the service with real shopping in mind.
With about 1.15 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers your business inexpensive and effective ways to develop online brand awareness and enhance your advertising campaigns. One of the hardest parts of marketing is figuring out where your customers are located and how to effectively communicate with them. Facebook is a fast and effective way to find your target demography. More so, With Facebook ads, businesses can include a customized graphic into a basic text ad. This is important because studies have shown that prospective buyers’ interest has been shown to peak when images, photos or graphics correspond with an ad.
It’s a common adage that “Twitter is for business” and “Facebook is for fun.” The extent to which this is true to you depends largely on your kind of business and pool of business clientele. Generally speaking, twitter offers your business a unique opportunity to create awareness through a number of means. First, twitter greatly enhances searches for your business’ using the search engines. The use of hashtags for key and peculiar terms in your tweets also enhances your visibility especially on twitter search. Contents are great ways of making your business prominent online. Also, Twitter search offers an easy way to find contents that are relevant to your business from content leaders in your industry. Simply pick a topic or hashtag to follow, and you’ll have a stream of relevant content ideas all in one place. Another great thing to do in business is to be on top conversations about you and your business and can offer insights, explanations and clarifications as and when relevant. With Twitter search, you can find out what people are saying about you by simply searching for your name or your business name and any tweet containing those words will appear in your search stream.
Whatever topic is on the top of your to-do list, Twitter search can help expose you to a number of valuable resources that can improve your results.
LinkedIn is a network with 150 million business professionals around the world. One person creates a LinkedIn login every second. Nearly 50% of LinkedIn members have decision-making authority for their companies. With the above statistics, LinkedIn is obviously one of the social media platforms to promote your home business. LinkedIn is generally referred to as the world’s largest audience of influential, affluent professionals in one place. Like other forms of Internet marketing, marketing a small or home business on LinkedIn is relatively inexpensive. Vanessa McGovern (in an Interview with Bryan Haines) offers three (3) keys to success for a LinkedIn profile for your business – Build, Grow and Engage. Ensure you build a strong profile. Ask for recommendations from past co-workers, bosses, members of your community and friends. Grow your network. Vanessa McGovern recommends requesting to connect with a minimum of 5 professionals a day, if are just getting started. Engage with ‘Groups’ and in the ‘Answers’ section. Engaging in LinkedIn forums will increase your exposure and build credibility. Consistency is the key, as it breeds confidence in your prospects.
Conclusion
Blatant advertising doesn’t get as much results as many think it does on social media platforms. Rather, introduce and engage in discussions, especially in your area of expertise; pose questions, provide answers to some other , publish very useful contents. You will be amazed at the followeship you will develop and build up. When you start to think differently about how you approach sites like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or LinkedIn” you’ll discover unexpected benefits you never knew existed.