Using Social Media to Grow Your Business

It’s nearly impos­si­ble to read about mar­ket­ing recently and not hear some guru talk­ing about social media and why your com­pany needs to take advan­tage of it. Social media, net­works and the tools behind them are a fan­tas­tic way to pro­mote your busi­ness, con­nect with cus­tomers and drive traf­fic to your website.

Like any­thing else, if you want to see results, you’re going to have to put in the time, effort and pos­si­bly money. More impor­tantly, you need to get knowl­edge­able or hire some­one to help you under­stand what it takes to use social media to grow your busi­ness. The bot­tom line is you need to have a strat­egy or plan of attack to make it happen.

Knowledge
The first thing you really need to under­stand is how social media works. I’d rec­om­mend learn­ing all you can about social media web­sites that can help you. A few that come to mind are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Digg. Understand that not all social media sites are good for busi­nesses. Likewise, learn about the var­i­ous tools that sur­round social media, like blog­ging, RSS feeds, pod­casts, viral video, user-generated news, wid­gets and wikis, just to name a few.

It’s easy to get over­whelmed with all the lingo and var­i­ous tools, but remem­ber, you don’t need to use them all. Most impor­tantly, real­ize that your social media mar­ket­ing is only as good as your strat­egy or plan of attack, which we cover below. For exam­ple, many social media web­sites are spe­cific to your indus­try and are a bet­ter resource than the more generic, large ones where you may get lost. A good exam­ple of a smaller social-networked web­site is ImageKind, a com­mu­nity for cre­at­ing, buy­ing and sell­ing high-end framed artwork.

Time and Effort
Social media mar­ket­ing isn’t like the old days where you sim­ply buy some ad space and hope for the best. The objec­tive behind social media is get­ting out there, join­ing web­sites that have sim­i­lar inter­ests with your busi­ness and par­tak­ing in the con­ver­sa­tions. It’s an ongo­ing com­mit­ment that requires time and resources.

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Tags: Social Media