Best Approach Towards Promoting Your Business On Social Media
In 2012, 54 percent of small-business owners, who participated in a survey administered by Constant Contact, reported they needed help with social media. This year, that number has significantly gone down.
This confidence seems to be translating into success, with 72 percent saying that their marketing efforts across the channels that matter, including social, email, mobile and Web, are working.
Socially savvy entrepreneurs know that it’s all about engaging the right audiences with valuable content. The online community has little tolerance for self-promoters who view social media as a means to free advertising. Given this, small-business owners face a challenge when it comes to striking a balance in using social media to engage and promote their businesses.
Promotion and engagement are really two sides of the same coin. Engagement is rooted in consistently sharing insight and providing value every time you connect with a customer. This establishes credibility while building trust and inspiring customers to tell their friends about you. Promotion extends your engagement efforts by presenting a valuable offer that’s based on your customers’ interests and needs. Social media amplifies your efforts so you can be found and engage a wider audience to grow your business.
To sum it up together, in this post I will be showing you six best approach towards promoting your business and engaging your customers through social media.
- Follow the one-in-seven rule.
This rule is where only one of every seven posts overtly promotes your business. The remaining six should be focused on sharing valuable content, including posts from the community. This doesn’t mean you can’t promote your business in those other posts; just be sure you include it with great content.
- Share your expertise.
Post little-known, fun facts in the form of questions with a special offer presented to the first person to answer correctly.
- Ask conversation-starter questions.
Most people enjoy sharing their opinions, so ask Facebook fans to weigh in on topics that are relevant to your business and interesting to them. For example, a fitness center may ask fans to vote on their favorite summer sports in order to be entered into a drawing to win private lessons for them and a friend who joins the club. The questions should engage fans and inspire them to refer business while giving the business owner great insight.
- Provide value.
While including fun posts that reflect your personality is a must, it’s important to create content that benefits your followers. That can mean posting tips on best practices, providing access to white papers, or offering special deals on products or services.
- Enhance the rewards for virtual check-ins.
For a specific period of time, double the points each time a customer checks in on Foursquare and triple the points each time he or she brings a friend. Their friends on social networks will see when they’ve checked in while you expand your reach exponentially.
- Avoid syndicated messages.
While you can use tools that allow you to write one message and have it appear on a variety of social media outlets, you risk losing the sincerity behind the message. You can use similar language as you promote your offer on different sites; just be sure to change up the words while reflecting the tone of each network.
If you find that your customers are scattered across a variety of networks, focus your efforts where they’re most active. Not sure? Ask. Otherwise, you may waste a lot of time skimming the surface of multiple networks with little results.
Conclusion:
When small-business owners apply these best practices to social media engagement and promotion, we’ll likely see that already impressive 72 percent success statistic continue to rise. Always remember to include your Vendorfy Store URL when you create a post on your social media, this will give your audience the opportunity to explore your store front where you have all your products and that can possibly make as more purchases if they find other products they are interested in. If you don’t own a store on vendorfy, you may need to apply now for free.
Adetola Adele is the head team leader at Vendorfy a subsidiary of GoPanta Media. He is a highly motivated, entrepreneurial minded and result oriented self starter with the focus on Ecommerce as the next big thing in Africa.
