If you have not yet incorporated Social Media in your marketing strategy, then now is the time. Small businesses are becoming big businesses online through social media, so why not see how your business can benefit from 'being social'.
At Marketing Eye, we understand that social media is not for everyone. For instance, if you are selling power tools just to the mining sector, then the only social media platform that would benefit your business is Linkedin. However, if you are selling financial services, to consumers, facebook, linkedin. blogging, twitter, pinterest and many others may help drive your sales performance.
There are many social media platforms that every small business must consider. They include;
Social Media Platforms that help you Network:
Classmates: An easy, simple-to-use site that can help you track down former classmates.
Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg multi-billion dollar facebook.
Google+: This is the new kid on the block.
Friendster: A way to stay connected to hobbies, interests, causes, business, etc.
LinkedIn: Anyone in business, or works for a business needs to be on Linkedin. Make sure you join groups and if you have a blog, share your blogs with the groups that they are relevant to.
MyLife: A clean, simple site that helps people connect with family, friends and other relationships. Over 750 million profiles.
Ning: This site connects groups of people who are passionate about particular interests, topics or hobbies.
Plaxo: Currently hosts address books for more than 40 million people.
Twitter: My favourite social media platform. I get a client a week through this platform - see how you can do it too!
Bing: Bing, Google and Yahoo aren’t technically social media platforms, but they are tools that can be used to promote your product or service, so we’re including all three in this overview.
Blogging Platforms: These are tools that are used to create blogs. Some of them, like Blogger, Tumblr or Xanga are straightforward platforms that are great for people who want to do a simple blog about their vacation, their company or their family reunion. If you’re ready to create a more robust blog that adds a lot of SEO value for your website, you’ll want to use Joomla, Drupal, Typepad or WordPress. These are the blogging platforms used by serious bloggers.
Flickr: This is a photo-sharing site that can be used to build awareness and drive traffic to your product pages. If you’re selling hunting rifles or tennis rackets or widgets, you’ll want to use Flickr to a) build awareness for your product and b) drive people from Flickr to your website.
YouTube: Of course, YouTube is one of the better-known platforms used to promote businesses. The key to YouTube is to keep the videos short and sweet. Make sure they solve the “what’s in it for me” equation. YouTube is perfect for “How To” videos, but it’s not a good place to upload the CEOs annual speech to shareholders.