For all the hype that surrounds the use of social media when it comes to small businesses, many owners have learned the hard way that a Facebook or Twitter account alone is not going to drive up sales.
Successful social media campaigns need forethought, planning and skill and using a few tips can assist you to give more traction to your social media campaigns.
Advertisers often see Facebook as the social media site of choice but other social networks might actually be more effective for your particular brand.
LinkedIn for instance offers a wide array of users from the world of business while B2B clients might find Slideshare the ideal vehicle.
Advertising a niche product in a magazine aimed at the mass market is an obvious ‘no-no’ and the same applies to social networks.
Profile pages offer an amazing amount of data about users and this can be used very effectively to target the audience that best fits the demographic that you are targeting with your product or services.
Make use of video marketing
Seventy two percent of business executives watch videos that are related to business on business websites a minimum of once a week, according to Forbes. This means that you are seriously missing out on what may be one of the greatest lead generation techniques ever devised.
The bottom line is that creating an informative and compelling video is an excellent method of attracting attention from other businesses and indeed today video marketing is almost essential as a lead generation technique.
The main thing when it comes to using video marketing is to have a plan.
Think about the audience that you are attempting to reach with this video, as there are likely to be different approaches and language used when trying to reach executives as opposed to average people.
You also need to think about the benefits that targeted viewers can glean from the video as without benefits there will be not much in the way of follow-up!
Keep things short, make sure the sound quality is good and include the logo of your company at both the start and end of the video.
Content publishing tips
Having a good hold on content generates a lot of opportunities before you have even started promoting your business due to the fact that you can create and edit and then even publish that content by yourself.
When you have become efficient enough to be able to cope with B2B content you will then be able to help the online reputation of your business grow. Publishing content leads to increased exposure over the internet and results in more and more potential clients paying a visit to your website, so making sure that there is a good representation of that business is obviously going to help you generate and keep a good reputation.
The website’s content should be free from errors and feature appropriate and accurate material. The accomplishment of the website, and by extension your business, is dependent on the content being of the absolute highest quality possible, which means there should be no comprises made of any kind.
There are a number of different techniques, both classic and decidedly offbeat, that can be used to help turn customers into subscribers and even passionate advocates for your business and brand.
One tried and trusted method is to give special treatment to your subscribers. This can take the form of office perks, offering services to subscribers (plus their networks) or one-day specials on products via your social media channels, providing online recognition by asking your followers to post their own stories about your services and products.