Social Media for Business: Make it work for you

As Social Media has become such an important part of daily life for a huge percentage of the population, more and more businesses, large and small, are increasing their Social Media time and budget allocations each year.

These days, for the majority of businesses, Social Media is an integral and often their solitary way of listening to what people are saying about their products and brands. And in the past 2 – 3 years we have seen many businesses shifting their marketing budget allocations from print media to online media, and to engaging their customers and the community in on Social Media Platforms.

Social Media Influence

Ask anyone who is using Facebook, Twitter or another Social Media platform, and they will tell you just how easily they can be influenced by posts of their friends. A brand, product, movie, place or a restaurant recommended through social media, can quickly become “liked”, purchased, watched or frequented by their online friends. Conversely, one person’s complaint about a business through social media can result in their friends being less likely to become a customer of that business. What people communicate about you on social media can become a central factor in consumers buying decisions.

Nowadays, people are actively involved in sharing links, posts and information about your brand. This means that if you publish great information, or create something the community considers noteworthy and exciting, the potential that your brand or product will be talked about online is very real. Cross pollination across social media platforms is increasingly common and becoming more and more rapid making opportunities for social reach even greater.

Social Media for SEO

With Google’s latest algorithm, we have seen social media become a far greater influence in SEO. Like people, search engines are placing more and more importance on the numbers of tweets, mentions, shares, diggs, likes, +1′s. Social media is going to play a huge role in SEO and when it comes to ranking on Google, Google+ is going to emerge as a major player. Social media is integral to a solid online business strategy.

Social Media Strategy

If you are ready to embark on building your online brand presence, start creating your social media strategy by answering these questions;

1. Why are you employing Social Media in your marketing mix?
2. Who is your audience?
3. What is your goal
4. How will you achieve it? What tools, techniques and tactics will you use?
5. When will you launch, and when will you roll out on additional platforms?

Facebook for business

For steps 4 and 5, I recommend launching one platform first. I recommend Facebook be your starting point, Linked In your second for B2B, or Twitter for B2C. Once you have set these up and worked on growing your user base, progress to include StumbleUpon and Reddit, Digg and other such bookmarking sites. Facebook is has the largest user base of all the Social Media Platforms, in this year in Australia, 97% of Social Media Users are on Facebook. The second biggest user base is held by Linked In at 16% and the third, Twitter on 14% (The Sensis Yellow Social Media Report 2012, Sensis 2012), across the If you have an ecommerce website, build a blog and create a strategy to build traffic by getting your Social Media fans to flow to your website. Build your audience and regularly post great content, and you will have hundreds, thousands, or in some cases, millions of loyal brand ambassadors sharing your brand, service or product information online.

Getting the most out of Social Media for your business does take time. It’s like a garden, and needs to be tended so that it is in good order and the flowers can bloom. Small businesses without large marketing budgets can connect with and engage their online audience, and large businesses can outsource to experts to harness the ever changing and ever powerful Social Media movement, and use it to encourage loyal, engaged brand champions in the community.