There are much more to social networking than Facebook or Twitter. Read this article to learn more about these and other options.
Your customers more than likely have a Facebook profile; find out how often they check it and what kind of content they share on this site. The main advantage of Facebook is its popularity. Every blogging platform will allow you to add a Facebook button to your posts and to display a Facebook ‘like’ box where your latest posts can be seen. Creating a Facebook page for your business should be fairly easy, but make sure you familiarize yourself with different features such as the ‘check in’ option, tagging or events. Use these features to get your Facebook friends to mention your business to their friends; you can offer people a discount when they ‘check in’ at your store with Facebook or launch a contest for the best picture in which your page is tagged.
Twitter is becoming increasingly popular and allows you to share quick updates with your customers. Pictures and videos are not displayed on Twitter; you need to focus on writing interesting updates to get people to click on your links. You should use the hashtag feature to connect your updates to a certain topic your customers are likely to look up or even create your own hashtags and encourage your audience to use them in their updates. Reward the people who used your hashtags by ‘retweeting’ their updates; they will appreciate getting this kind of attention and will probably use the hashtag again. Make sure you create an account with TwitPic and use a URL shortening service to share your pictures and links on Twitter.
LinkedIn is fairly popular but it is mainly used for professional connections. You should use this site if you can sell products to professionals or if your own personal network might be interested in what you sell. LinkedIn allows you to start discussions and polls; you should explore these message boards and post useful answers on anything related to your industry. LinkedIn users are required to complete a rather long profile that can be used as a resume; this could be a good opportunity for you to give detailed information about who you are and talk about your business. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is visible by everyone, and anyone who looks up your name on Google will find it and get a good impression of you.
Do more research about your target audience and find out which sites these people are using. You should stay up to date with trends; right now, Google + and Pinterest are becoming more popular. Create profiles on these sites and explore different features. Make sure you connect your different profiles with each other so that people can subscribe to your updates on more than one site, but adapt your content to each social network.
Use these tips and take the time to familiarize yourself with different social networks before you launch your marketing campaigns. Keep track of your results and adapt your campaign to your audience and to new trends.