Why Does My Business Need To Be Using Social Media?

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn.......Help!

As a business owner you know you should be using social media to promote & grow your business , but how?  Where do you start?  How do you keep it up?  Social media sites are free.......but they do cost you your time.

All social media sites are meant for you to interact & engage with people.  Social Media is how we are communicating in today's technological world.  Your potential clients are already on social media sites...you just need to engage them.

Over the next several weeks I will blog about different social media sites and how best to use each site to grow your business. I hope you will leave comments and ask questions.

Many of my clients have set up Facebook Business Pages and Twitter accounts and never used them.

Facebook---How to use it for Business Purposes

 Statistics  from Facebook News Page:

One billion monthly active users as of October 2012. 
584 million daily active users on average in September 2012. 
604 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products as of September 30, 2012.

With those statistics how can you not be using Facebook to promote your business?

Facebook is like being at a cocktail party. 

Many people have a personal Facebook page where they share pictures and talk about their daily lives. Your friends like to read your news feed so they can see what is happening in your personal life. A lot of people are turned off when people promote their business on their personal page. 

Sharing your business news and happenings occasionally, is widely accepted.  Your friends on Facebook do not want to read your “commercials" about your business. Just like at a cocktail party, if all you talk about is you and your work, you will eventually get tuned out.  If someone has recently unfriended you, look at your news feed and see if you are posting more about your business than your personal life.

Creating a Facebook Business page is the perfect place for you to announce and promote your business.

Your friends, clients, & business contacts choose to " Like" your page. They find value in the business page you have created and want to be notified when you are adding information to that page.  We create business pages for Realtors.  Their business page is a perfect place for them to post new listings, open houses, price reductions, photos, videos, client testimonials & so much more.  When people visit their page they are looking for information about that Realtor, the services they provide and current Real estate news.

Restaurants should create a business page where they list their specials, promote upcoming events, showcase their menu & promote their restaurant. They can ask patrons to comment, share photos of them eating at the restaurant & run contests to get them to interact with their page. 

A nonprofit can use a fan page to host videos of their charity events, thank sponsors, promote their next event & have testimonials on how their organization is changing lives.

Each business has tons of ideas and fun ways to interact with their clients.  You can run contests, provide special deals for you fans, announce upcoming events & so much more.

It does take some time to create a custom branded Facebook business page. But the only way it will be successful is if you are posting fresh content regularly. You have to post things of interest to your fans to keep them coming back.  You need to set aside time to follow up on the sites you have created or hire someone who can manage it for you.

Please share your success with your business fan page.  Feel free to post your link to your business page.  Feel free to contact me if you would like ideas on how to improve your fan page. We help Realtors, small businesses & nonprofits create and manage social media.