Looking back at the past decade, one can clearly witness the evolution in the marketing mediums. The past decade was quite costlier as far as marketing is concerned. Those were the days of traditional media, when a lot of money was spent to get !
But it’s a different story today; Social media has brought in a wave of change and thus placed small businesses on the same pedestal as the big corporations.
As a business owner, you don’t have to run helter skelter looking for thousands of rupees – before you can reach the target audience with your offers.
The need to build a strong brand has drifted from traditional media to social media. It’s high time you capitalize on this new trend.
Why Social Media?
Welp, your prospective customers are pretty much living there! They’re active social media users, and making purchases as they interact on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Whatsapp, Snapchat and many more.
Just four years ago, I felt like you do. Social media was another language. Foreign! Frightening!
Your anxieties are usual; will I come across as too feeble? Am I too late to the party? Will anyone care what I have to say?
Let ‘em go! Relax. Social media is a conversation. You can join in any time. Join now. You’ll be welcomed. Social media is not a trend. It’s essential. Just as your customers rely on their phones and email, they rely on social media. It’s where you connect. To believe otherwise can limit and threaten the growth of your business or career.
Here we bring to you some very basic essentials for you as a beginner to excel at Social media:
- Create a thoughtful profile: Use the keywords that are most relevant to your profession to enable others to find you via search. Be professional, but personable. Your profile plays a large part in swaying others to follow you (or not), so be authentic and interesting. Be humble, but confident.
- Be Selective: Don’t make the mistake of taking up trying too many new tricks in the beginning itself. There’s no need to dive headlong into a long list of networks, or even the top four, right out of the gate.Pick just one or two. Each will have a learning curve, but none is so complex that you won’t be able to grasp the basics and begin.
- Track your competitors: Visit their sites. Are they blogging? The number of shares they get on their posts may indicate the most active media channels.
Do they have social media icons? Look for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram logos. These are the likely suspects.
- Share knowledge, don’t force rules: Promoting an event, special offer, sale, new product or the like is all fair game. You simply need to strike a balance so as to not put people off. Your updates should be valuable. Try a softer approach to selling. Think of your offers as friendly invitations.I repeat, be humble!
- Listen: Have you heard of the term “social listening” before? Social listening, also referred to as media monitoring is the process of searching the web and social platforms to know what people are saying and how to get into the conversation.
To conclude, I would just like to say that in the rabbit race of the world don’t lose yourself, stay authentic and present what is yours. “Copying is cliché while creating is different”.
All the best, try these steps and let us know the results!