How to Promote Your Business Using Social Media

These days simply having a website and good SEO isn’t enough. To gain the most out of your online presence your business should have active profiles on all the major social networking sites; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

There are a few steps every business should take to promote their business using social media.

1. Make sure you are on all major social networks, and make sure you have complete profiles.
   Create profiles on all the major social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. If there are any other social networks relevant to your business, join them as well. Make sure your profiles are complete. Be sure to outline your business’s products and services, your hours, contact information, locations and website address. Include your logo for better branding.
2. Update frequently.
   You won’t gain much exposure for your business if you don’t update often. At least a few times a week post status updates, tweets or blog posts on all of your social media accounts. Give customers a reason to check your page by offering discounts, giveaways and sale information. The more often you update your pages the more you will show up on your subscribers news feeds, which will increase your exposure.
3. Find Friends, Followers and Subscribers.
   A profile with no followers is not getting the word out. Start by seeking out previous customers and add them, or request that they subscribe to you. All the major social networks allow you to import e-mail contacts to request a connection. Some social networks including Twitter will allow you to seek out users with similar interests. For example, if you sell bikes you can search for people using keywords such as “biking” or “bike racing.”You can also add your social media addresses to your invoices, fliers and other advertising. Let customers know you will be updating frequently and give them quality content to come back for. You can even cross-promote with related businesses (such as #FollowFridays on Twitter) to promote each others profiles to gain more subscribers.
4. Engage your user base.
   The best marketers will engage their user base. Post polls, allow people to post pictures using your products or ask questions to get a discussion going. Send Happy Birthday messages or discounts to people for birthdays or holidays. Be sure to respond to your user base quickly when they post questions or comments. If a customer is unsatisfied, be sure to rectify the issue right away. Reward customer loyalty with discounts or giveaways.
5. Don’t spam or promote aggressively.
   It’s good to promote your products and services via social media, but keep it under control. You want to avoid posting ads on other peoples profiles unless given permission. Don’t spam your profiles with multiple product updates/promotions everyday. If people log in and see nothing but spam on their news feeds then they will unsubscribe fast.

Following these steps listed above will help get you started on your social media promotion. If you need more help gaining new and repeat business using social media, contact Five Star Creative today and see our social media services.

Article by Mike McKeown of Five Star Creative in St. Louis Missouri. Five Star Creative specializes in custom website design, graphic design, search engine optimization and more.