Using online Social Media to help your business
Building your online presence is about more than having just a website. At the very heart of your business's online identity sits your website but today there are so many tools available for small businesses to use that cost in time rather than money, that will help bring in potential customers to your website and build up your online presence and in doing so, your business reputation.
Typically termed social media, these are using tools such as Twitter, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn and business blogs. Many of these online applications started off purely for the purpose of personal social networking, finding friends and telling them what you had for lunch. Riveting right?!
However, these often alien-to-us social networking websites are in fact potential goldmines for small businesses who already have the 'personal touch' down pat. The benefits of integrating social media into your every day, every week or every month customer building AND keeping strategy is huge.
• Firstly they can help showcase your knowledge and expertise in your given field building your reputation and credibility.
• They can help build dialogue with customers and provide an easy means of feedback and showing customers that you're open to two way conversation.
• They are brilliant for giving customers resources and information otherwise hidden within the depths of the company filing cabinet and they are a fantastic way to build credible back links back to your website and another place to utilise your keywords building strength in your optimisation efforts.
The search engines love these tools mainly due to their constantly changing content! Believe me it can be worth the effort.
>> Want to learn more? Come along to one of our Social Media for Small Business courses!
The first thing many of us do when we're looking for products or services is look online, the same is true if someone recommends a business, most of us will try and find their website. By having your online presence in more places than just your website, you help bring credibility to your business and people will intuitively feel a sense of trust which may just prompt that phone call or visit to your shop.
So what are these Social Media Tools and where can you find them?
It's important to note that this is only a very small list to show the types of social media tools available to use and these are possibly the most popular.
Linked In
- LinkedIn is a business tool for business professionals to 'exchange ideas, information and opportunities'. Once you've set up your own profile detailing your career to date you'll be able to find other people that you know and build your network of contacts. LinkedIn helps you control your online identity, create a company profile, and very easily allows you to utilise the knowledge of other professionals in the network. Many businesses use it as a way to find business opportunities.
>> More about LinkedIn www.linkedin.com
- For business Twitter is a simple tool to quickly disseminate information to the 'listening' audience and here's the catch, you've only got 140 characters to get your message across. It is also the most fantastic way to keep track of what is happening in your own industry. It does take a little getting used to especially finding some good Twitterers to listen to. You can use Twitter to highlight new blog posts, new product launches, offers and promotions, office updates, actually anything that might provide some value or insight into your business. It is a way of showing customers the personality behind your company and many say that this is the trick to using Twitter, providing a good balance of business and soft business related tweets. Hard sell is definitely bad etiquette!
>> More about Twitter www.twitter.com
>> Read Mashable's Guide to Twitter and katproductions blog post about Twitter
>> Some Twitterers @katproductions @stephenfry @rosskimbarovsky @sainsburys
Facebook Pages for Business
- A Facebook business page is a fantastic tool for business because it places your company right at the heart of the world’s most popular social network, it will help your business connect and engage with customers, meet new ones and will help spread your business message via the friend network. Plus the search engines love them.
>> Read more about Facebook Business Pages
>> Read katproductions blog post about Facebook Pages and
>> See examples katproductions Innocent Drinks and Skittles
Business Blogging
- Blogs are a particular type of website that were more traditionally used as online journals. What marks a blog from a normal website is that it allows the blog owner to post information via a content management system and these posts are then listed on the blog in chronological order. What makes a blog so appealing for business is that it's a brilliant vehicle to disseminate information to your potential and actual customer base whether it be company news, event information, product and service information, testimonials, case studies, industry discussions, how-to's, top tips... the list of potential items for posts is endless!
Today's blogs are fairly easy to set up, there are a few basic guidelines and etiquette (these will be on the website soon) to be aware of but there is plenty of information on the internet about business blogging and of course katproductions is able to help set up your business blog and give you plenty of advice on how to make it work for your business.
>> Some blogs to have a look at katproductions mashable Three60 Marketing
>> Blogging Platforms Wordpress Blogger Typepad
Very soon we'll have some good case studies of these to illustrate how other small businesses are using these tools to help bring in more customers.
We're happy to tell you a little more about what optimisation means and how it works with your website.
>> please contact katproductions: give us a call T: 01482 864064 or send an email to Kat
