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Maximize your social media experience for your business
Social media is taking over the internet as the #1 way people (especially Generation X and Y – comprising those 45 yrs and under) prefer to communicate. In order for your company to compete in today’s web 2.0 world, you need to jump on the social media bandwagon! We recently completed our Social Media Madness webinar and accompanying hands-on workshop, for those who wanted to simply – Get it done! This article is a follow-up that recaps what we’ve learned and will help you thrive in our world of social media madness.
(If you have not already done so, click here to watch the social media madness video before proceeding with this article)
The 3 key objectives for setting up social media channels is not to make sales, but rather it is to:
- Gain exposure, promote your company and advertise your brand
- Provide opportunities to get to know your customer more intimately (so you can market to their specific needs and sell to them better on your website)
- Increase traffic (visitors) to your website (by always including back-links to your website) – as this where you CAN make sales!
Now that you are signed up to some of the most popular social media channels on the internet today, let’s recap on some of the most important points you’ll want to remember, in order to enhance the social media experience and MAXIMIZE the benefits of social media for your business.
The first rule in marketing is to know your customer! Social media provides you with an outlet to ask questions, offer coupons and incentives, chat with others, direct people to your website, and most importantly, get to know your customers intimately.
The keyword in social media is “social”. In order for social media to work for you, you will need to spend some time on each of the sites. If you are just getting started, then I suggest you work on 1 or 2 sites at a time, at least until you build up your contact list and get familiar with the different social media websites. Choose 1 site per month and spend 3 days per week (more if you can spare) posting comments and your website links, and adding contacts/friends to your list.
IMPORTANT!!!
Remember to always include a full back link in your comments – best placed in a designated link field box or at the beginning of your comment (be sure to use the http:// which makes it a *live* link that users can click on to get to your website) – it can either be a link to your home page or to a specific page within your website, and in fact, you will want to mix it up and use both. Some social media platforms, like Facebook and Linked In, have a small icon (usually resembles a chain link) that allows you to include a website link. Click the icon and type your website link in the field provided, then type in a quick comment before you click the [send] or [post] button.
For example, I just created this new post on social media and want to announce it on all my social media channels to all my friends and potential clients. To do this, I will go into my Facebook and type in the comment:
“http://SweetSpotTraining.com/social-media-madness Are you getting the most out of social media for your business? Sweet Spot Training has just posted a new article on maximizing the benefits of social media –check it out!”
Your comment can be anything: a friendly greeting, a special offer or coupon, an invitation to view something on your website (like my sample above), it can even be a topic that it totally non-related to your business. For example: “what do you think about all the snow we’re getting lately – love it or loathe it?” Ask open ended questions to get a conversation started amongst your friends. The objective here is to talk to your customers and build relationships with them, so use a friendly, professional, personable tone in your writing. And try to avoid using acronyms and slang, as they are not always understood when being read – especially in our diverse culture where English may not be your reader’s first language.
I cannot stress enough the fact that “NOT ALL BACKLINKS ARE CREATED EQUALLY!” Google ranks websites from 0 to 10 – with 0 being the lowest (Google itself is a 9). Of course, in order for your website to compete amongst a billion+ other websites on the internet today, you want to get as many back links as you can. Period. BUT… when the search engines are analysing all your website criteria (age, activity, keywords, number of back links, quality of back links, etc.), getting a back link from a high page-rank website is much MUCH more valuable and higher in quality than getting a back link from a low page ranking website. If you have rich, high quality back links from high page ranking websites, and your main competition has more total back links but they are from lower quality, page ranking websites, and all other criteria was the same, your website would show up higher in the search engine results than theirs.With that said, most of these popular social media channels have very high page ranking. So posting your website link on them can provide to be very valuable! Not only will it increase your own website’s page ranking faster but it will also get you closer to being on page 1 of Google – and other major search engines.
More simple strategies to MAXIMIZE your social media experience:
- Log in at least once a week and leave a comment (IMPORTANT!! You must be logged in before doing anything – or your actions will not count)
- Look through the tools, options, and settings to familiarize you with the site.
- Look for opportunities to
- add a back link (your website link) everywhere – every time!
- invite friends (many of these sites will automatically link to your Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, etc. and send an automatic request for your friends to add you or join your channel)
- link to your other social media channels (such as adding your Twitter ID and password to your Linked in Profile, so all your comments on LinkedIn will also post on your Twitter profile automatically) - Be social! Don’t just comment on your own page, channel or wall. Leave comments on friends’ pages and provide feedback on their posts too. When you post on a friend’s page, not only can your friends see it but so can all of their friends, thus expanding your social network.
With literally hundreds of social media channels available on the internet today, it can be difficult to choose which ones to join and which ones to spend time on. Here is a short list of my top social media picks with some key notes. Use the few simple strategies outlined above on each site, to advertise your company and brand, increase visitors (traffic) to your website and drive higher sales:
1. You Tube: video site; post promo videos, add friends, learn, rate other videos
2. FaceBook: friends & family site, with ‘fan pages’ for businesses
3. Digg: news site, post the headlines to your latest blog posts and articles
4. My Space: music and social site – add links, greetings, headlines that link to your articles
5. Twitter: limited to 140 characters (letters, numbers & spaces) greetings, status and back links
6. Linked In: professional business networking
7. Delicious: a bookmarking site where you can add your website to the listing
8. Google: get to know Google! Google has some of the most powerful, usable tools available – most of them free. Add your business to the local search engines and use a Google map on your website.. this directly links you with Google and willBOOST your website ranking
A few added thoughts about YouTube
Even if you do not have your own promotional videos to post, you can still get much benefit from having a You Tube channel. You Tube is a VERY HIGH page ranking website that is owned by Google. That means that every back link you post on your You Tube ‘channel’, provides you with a very high, rich back link that will help your website page ranking AND contribute to your getting on page 1 of Google – and the other search engines like Bing and Yahoo too. Even if you don’t have videos of your own to share, here are some key strategies you can do to enhance your experience on You Tube:
- Watch a couple popular videos on You Tube and leave a comment. This will show YouTube that you are active AND when you do leave a comment; your name automatically becomes a link to your channel. Therefore, when you visit popular videos and leave a comment, you will start to notice an increase in visitors to your own channel.
- Invite your friends to join your channel
- Post greetings to all your subscribers and friends (don’t forget your back link!)
- Change the settings, so comments and friends will first need to be approved by you. This will prevent spammers from using your channel to post SPAM!
- Be interactive! Use the icons below the videos to rate it, post it to your FaceBook, or mark it as a favourite (favourite videos are listed in your channel and doing this provides a great way to bring fresh people to your channel). If you have any friends who have videos posted, watch their videos, leave comments, rate them, and add them to your FaceBook. That way you will not only be racking up activity points but you’ll be helping your friend’s success in the process!
About the Author: Zelda O’Connor is an Internet Marketing and Communications Consultant based out of Pickering, ON, and Director of the Sweet Spot Training Centre in Pickering, ON where she runs various workshops on social media, internet marketing and website building geared to entrepreneurs and small businesses. To view our course calendar, please click here: http://sweetspottraining.com/calendar/
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