Social media is one of the newest ways to market your company on the internet. However, many site owners are just not taking advantage of social media, either because they don’t know how or they don’t realize how much their business could benefit. Don’t fall into that trap! Here are some ways you can use social media to market your business and boost your bottom line.

1. Find out which social media sites your target market goes to. If your target market is suburban mothers in their 30s, they may use Facebook. Conversely, if your market is teenagers, they may use Tumblr instead. Social media won’t help you at all if you don’t keep your focus on your target market.

2. Post helpful content on your social media websites. You can only succeed in marketing when potential visitors visit your site. By posting relevant content on social media, people are encouraged to find out more from you. Even better, they can share your link almost instantaneously with everyone on their network. You are definitely going to boost traffic by posting useful content.

3. Have a sense of integrity. That means that it is not a good idea to be spammy. Don’t collect contacts just to spam them with your product links. Not only is that incredibly rude, but put yourself in their place; how often do you respond to someone who spams you?

4. Remain focused. It is very easy on social media to fall into anecdotal updates that have no connection to the subject you are trying to market. Save the stories about your cat and your favorite coffee for your personal social media profiles.

5. Don’t go for the hard sell. Social media is not the same as some other marketing methods. People on social media can still be encouraged to buy things they need, but using the regular hard sell is frowned upon and makes you easily de-friended and ignored. Use a softer sell approach that focuses on value.

6. Be different. Social media is a great place to get creative. Everything is so easy to share that anything you do that is unusual or different stands a bigger chance of being shared and talked about by a lot of people. Come up with a viral video or a contest, and watch your site visitors increase tenfold!

7. Don’t be a nuisance. You may find yourself wanting to post something every hour while you are watching whether anyone is visiting your site. Don’t do that. Keep yourself to 2 or 3 posts in a day unless you are directly responding to people. Feel free to interact and reply to others, but do not initiate so many posts that people mentally block them out.

8. Maintain branding. Do not forget to customize your social media profiles so that they are consistent with your website and other promotional materials. Failing to do this can cause confusion and look shoddy.

Social media is a smart addition to any Internet marketing plan. Use these tips and you will see results.