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Advertising can be expensive, especially for a small business just starting out. The overhead is just not there to allow for expensive advertisements. Before the internet and social media platforms, this could be a huge problem for a small business. Luckily that is no longer the case. With myriad social media platforms out there for businesses to be on, advertisement seems all too easy and more cost effective. What’s the harm in going out and trying this cheap form of advertising on social media with an enormous reach, right? Well, the truth of the matter is when done effectively social media marketing can help you save time and money, but when used incorrectly…….it could very well hurt your business more than you understand.
Social media experts will tell you that by advertising on social media you don’t have to spend a dime and you can make a name for your business and even index yourself in search engines such as Google. So you start thinking, hey this is easy, I’ll go out find a few businesses like mine, see what they’re doing and do something similar and I’ll be set. Here’s the problem, as much of a blessing as social media is to small businesses, if it is not done correctly you will wind up getting yourself blocked from search engines instead of moving yourself up in the search results. Here are some tips to help you get started on social media which may lead to a successful social media marketing campaign.
1. Find your niche
Start with a niche, I know it can be very enticing to shoot for the stars when you start, but let’s consider somebody selling make-up products. There are hundreds of places you can buy make-up products and all the big names are going to be hard to beat in search results unless you are paying for an ad. So focus on your target audience.
Let us say you are selling organic make-up products, and your office is based in Milwaukee, WI. Now you have a much narrower group of people you are trying to reach. Larger companies aren’t specifically targeting them or they are doing so as a secondary marketing strategy. The more specific audience you can target the more effective your marketing becomes. Once you’ve narrowed your market, you want to choose “keywords” that will get you in front of this audience (basically you are looking for the words somebody may search for that describe your product or service). These keywords will then become your meta-data tags for your social media content.
2. Take online classes
If any of the previous paragraphs went straight over your head, find a social media marketing class. They aren’t hard to find, and many are inexpensive. If you are going to venture down the social media marketing path, you want to do it right, because if you don’t it could have a negative impact on your business.
3. Consistency
Be consistent. You don’t have to post every day. You don’t even have to post every other day, but be consistent in how often you are posting, otherwise, viewers and followers won’t know when to look for content.
4. Blog, blog, blog, blog, blog!!!
Blogging is the easiest and fastest way to help index yourself in search engines. Your blogs don’t always have to be written blogs. Even posting an infographic with a little paragraph description, or insights from you will help. Again, you must be consistent to see results. You will add your tags (the keywords mentioned in Tip 1) to each of your blog posts and the more you do this, the quicker you will see results.
5. Advertising across multiple social media accounts
Finally, you should eventually have an account on multiple social media forums (one for blogging, one for pictures, and one for video). And yes the “Google Monopoly” is under scrutiny right now, but use it to your advantage. Have all your social media accounts link to a Google email with a Google plus profile. Try and get an email address that has both your business name and a description of your business in there (for example a real estate investor whose social media accounts I set up was: investmentproperties@gmail.com). This little identifier will help search engines recognize your business name with your occupation.
If advertising for your business on social media is really just proving to not be your thing, or you find yourself struggling to gain any traction, click here and see how we can help you reach the success your business deserves!