Instagram: A New Easy Channel to Make Your Business Known

Because of the many social media channels that sprout out nowadays, it is important that you, as a businessman, take advantage of this technological advancement. If you want success in your business, actually joining the 21st century and its advancements is a must. 

If you don’t have Instagram, then it is about time for you to create one. This social media channel is beneficial for your business because:

1. You will be able to produce photos with good quality.

2. Business advertising is free!

3. You can gain trust from people.

4. You can easily gain traffic to your website.

5. There are many more people in Instagram now!

Because people are visual, it is easier to get their attention by using quality photos, and Instagram can help you do that! Instagram’s filters can help you transform ordinary photos into fabulous, attractive ones! You can balance and correct lighting or even add something creative to it. 

Getting started is quite easy. If you’re new to social networking sites, you don’t have to worry about it. Here’s how:

1. Sign up! Of course, this is step one. And a little tip: choose a username that could best represent your business. Make it simple!

2. Don’t forget to add a profile photo. Together with that is a link to your website and a biography.

3. You can connect your account to other sites, such as FaceBook. Go to Profile, then Edit sharing settings. Sharing is important because you will be able to share your photos to those sites. If you’re an apple user, you can include your brand’s FaceBook page. Also, you can make your FaceBook friends find you easily. Click Profile, then Find Friends, then FaceBook Friends.

4. You should announce to your FaceBook friends that you are now on Instagram. Share your Instagram username.

5. Use tags to connect with people.

Instagram can also help you look for customers. It is really easy. Here are a few basic steps:

1. When you take a photo, tap “Where?” before you upload it.

2. Locate your business by searching for the location or in the nearby results.

3. Select your business, and then you can upload your photo.

4. When you have uploaded your photo, you can tap the location name in blue text above the photo for you to see the photos that have been tagged with the specific location.

It is always good to start off by reaching out to Instgrammers who are taking photos of your business. if you haven’t found photos in your location page yet, you can host contests, so you can get things started. 

Instagram is a good platform for you to showcase the best of your products. Profits follow if you create a good, decent presentation of your products and your business. 

So, instead of boring posts that people on-the-run have to read, you can use Instagram to publish eye-catching photos. Remember, photos paint a thousand words. Make sure that these words are positive.

Do not forget to reply to your users. And when you’re uploading photos, do not forget to add your website in your description. Add hashtags that are related to your industry. Tease your future customers with good content, so that they will want more. That will easily lead them to your website!

To know more about Instagram and other Social Media like facebook for business, you may visit business social media.

Social Media to Get a Buzz for Your New Biz

If your business is not visible in the online world, it is similar to a caveman living in the 21st century. It’s about time to think outside the box, and that means you have to jump outside your “traditional” marketing strategies and be introduced with the new, very effective way in making progress with your business.

Starting new is starting small. However, that is not an assurance that people won’t know about you. And once you join the online world, do not fail to join it whenever you can. Having an account is not the only thing that you’ll do. Engaging with people, responding to questions, and even making strategized, well-structured posts and blogs are just a few of your responsibilities.

Here are a few things that you need to do before engaging in social media and what happens after that:

Take a good look at your business.

Here are a few questions you need to ask to complete this first tip: 

• What am I trying to promote?
• Who are my target customers?

Knowing your target customers can help you gather more and more people. Know where these people hang out, so you can make promote your business better. Millions of people spend time online every day. It is easier to reach out to them.

Take-off with Social Media

There are many channels that you can use: FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google +, etc. FaceBook, for example, allows people to create business pages. It is important, however, that you read and understand the policies for business. 

It is also advised that you don’t dive in untested waters. If you know how to use FaceBook, use it. But don’t use the others (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) if you are not familiar with them. Master one channel first before signing up to another. Also, make sure you have time to spend to your other channels. Others should be well-maintained. You might discourage people if you have a poorly maintained account.

Have a page with good content before adding friends.

Why? It is simply because people don’t want to follow something that is not well-established. Even for personal accounts, people don’t want to add or follow faceless profiles or those that don’t have any relevant or interesting posts. So, before asking people to follow or like your page, make sure that you have established your page well. Give valuable information.

Photos and videos are very helpful. You can also upload photos of people (including testimonials) who have enjoyed and benefited from the services you offer. Videos can also be uploaded in your page. 

When updating statuses, posting content, posting photos, and making videos, do not forget to make quality as the main consideration. This is what helps you lure people to your page or account and make them actually stay to read stuff about you...

Then, you can look for friends and followers.

Of course, this is to be done after you established a good, well-maintained account. When looking for followers, Twitter and Google + can be really helpful. If, for example, you have a small airport, the keywords “pilot” and “flying” can be used. You can start with small things, such as searching for local areas to find bloggers, outlets, city officials, and key influencers. 

When aiming big, you can add people using Google+ and immediately comment on one of their posts. If using Twitter, you can immediately mention them in a post. You can comment in their posts to express your willingness to follow their great content. 

You can gain trust from a blogger if you give him or her leads and story ideas that have nothing to do with your business. 

When using FaceBook for business, it is always better to start with your friends and family. They also have friends to reach out to. You can post an ad on FaceBook for as low as $100.

Establish relationships- business aside first.

Some people can easily gain trust if you come to them as a person, not as a businessman. If you add somebody to be his or her friend, make sure to type a personalized note. A robotic note is not appreciated. The extra effort, on the other hand, is. Product pitches should be forgotten first. There is a good time for that.

Ask for a little help: Look for a Social Media Manager

Managing many accounts can be very taxing, if not intoxicating. That is why you need a little help from your friends- the virtual ones. Friends like Ping.fm and Hootsuite can help you manage multiple accounts. Remember that having a few channels is not enough; these channels should be well-maintained. So to buzz you for reminders, learn how to use these helpful tools. Through these social media manager, you can trace brand mentions in Twitter, for example.

If you get too familiar with these things, you can actually venture into other social media managers, like SproutSocial.com. A 30-day free trial is offered for a test drive- if it really works for you or not. This helps you track engagement of those who follow you. You can also have one inbox for messages from all the other networks.

An important thought; do not forget this:

Do not expect for miracles. Do not get discouraged after one week and you’re still not famous. This is a slow, gradual process that needs to be nourished every single day.  It’s a step by step process, which you will have to invest a lot of thinking, strategizing, and even creating and knowing various approaches on how to handle things in social networking.

Stay updated for immediate action.

Everyone is on mobile today. If you have an account, the best thing to do is to get a good cellular phone that can alert you with updates and that can access your accounts anytime, anywhere. This is one way of being connected with your community. Always read and know what people say about you. Act immediately! 

To know more about social media and tips for small business, read more on business social media.

Your Business Needs a Tweet: Start Tweeting Now!

Heads up, business people! It’s time to invade social media.

For those of you who have not registered to Twitter now, I’m telling you, you’re missing a lot of fun and tremendous opportunities

Why Twitter? You ask. Twitter is filled with people who share different ideas, thoughts, and opinions every single day. One “tweet” can make a lot of difference for a topic to talk to. These people also long for fresh ideas and insights.

In Twitter, you can easily find out how many people are talking about you and your business, and you can track down comments and issues. Therefore, you can effortlessly address customer queries, complaints, and whatnots. This is a good way of building a positive business image to all Tweeple out there- building relationships and addressing customer issues as soon as you can! Don’t miss the chance to grow your business without spending much and learn from people all at the same time!

Browse around a little bit, and learn the ropes. Then start talking to people in Twitter and eventually engage in conversations.

How to use this powerful social media for the benefit of your business? There are a few basic steps, but we should start off with presenting your brand.

So how should you present your brand?

When doing so, there are a few things that you should remember.

Choose your business name.

This expresses your brand the most.  This name is the one that appears with all your Tweets. This is what people see. Make sure it’s catchy, and leave out punctuation marks to make your name easier to type using cell phones. If people want to tweet about you, they won’t have to go through an excruciating process of typing your complex, over-punctuated business name. They might not want to do it again!

The Profile Image

There are two types of profile images: the Twitter profile photo, and the Twitter profile header.

The Twitter profile photo is a square photo, and it appears with every tweet you send. You can use your company’s logo. However, for a lot of businessmen, they use their own photo combined with their business name for the account. They do this to establish a more personal touch to the account.

The Twitter profile header is equivalent to Facebook’s cover photo. The background that people see when they visit your profile can be customized.

Complete Your Profile!

No one wants to read an unfinished profile, right? Yours should be complete as well. This is a good venue for you to talk more about your business. And when completing a profile, do not forget the following:

1.    To provide additional information to Tweeple, do not forget to share your website or blog, and make sure your site or blog has a good Twitter landing page, where you give out information about you and your business that you did not give out in Twitter.

2.    The “location” helps people find you. Give enough detailed information about where people can find you. Some people might not be from the same state or neighbourhood. This way, you can help them spot your definite location.

3.     Fill out the 160-character bio to tell people who you are. Mostly, tell them what you can offer and the benefits you deliver.

Look for People... and follow them

But take into consideration Twitter’s rules about aggressive following. Choose whom to follow, follow them, but take it slow. Let’s not get our accounts suspended, shall we?

Don’t just follow people in random. Make sure they’re customers, contractors, suppliers, business partners, business in your neighbourhood, professional organizations, etc.

For now, focus more on whom you are following. People may also start following you, but fix your eyes on the prize.

After following people, what next?

It’s time to Talk!

But before you do that, listen first. As soon as you get the confidence to speak, you may send a Tweet, which is a message in general- you send this out to people who follow you. Apart from tweets, you may also send a reply, mention a username, a DM or direct message, and a retweet. These will get you to connect more with people.

Go Mobile!

Welcome yourself to the 21st century where phones can access to Twitter. You’re a businessman; you need a good, up to date phone. You can set up your phone’s push notification settings for you to know when someone actually mentioned you, retweeted, sent you a DM, or even get a new follower. This can help you immediately connect with someone, especially if the message is about your business.

Your smart phone can also help you post photos in a snap! People love to look at photos. When you get to have activities about your business, get out your smart phones, take photos, and share with your community. And most importantly,

Establish a Good Name

... and you can do that by giving people valuable information and answering their questions as well. It is important to talk about how your business can benefit people. People will consider you as a valuable member of the community if you started paying attention to others rather just merely promoting your business online. And if you had to send out tweets, be creative. Try saying the same thing differently. See which approach gets more responses. Use that approach for future posts!

Spread your Virtual Influence now.

Is Social Media Our Secret Weapon In Business?

Social media is an internet technology that transforms regular communications into a more interactive dialogue. It allows millions of people to instantly interact with one another even if they are separated by thousands of miles or kilometers. It’s a tool that is used often by individuals and you probably have a social media account yourself – Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare to name a few…

While individuals use social media almost on a daily basis, many businesses still haven’t found its benefits. Social media marketing can help your business grow by allowing you to truly connect with what every business needs – customers!

When it comes to application, social media can be used for a lot of things in business. You can use it to promote who you are, what your business is and what you have to offer in terms of products or services. You can use it to attract new customers and strengthen your relationships with current customers. At the same time you can use it to find out what people think about your business and how it can be improved.

As for the benefits of social media, well where do we start?! For one thing you get free marketing. It’s a place where you can interact with your customers and offer deals or freebies that not only engage them but keeps your loyal customers happy. Customer acquisition is almost a byproduct, simultaneously attracting new clientele who hear about what you have to offer and are influenced by your engagement with current fans. Because social media has such a broad reach, you can touch as many potential customers as you want. Think of this – If you have only 100 raving fans each with 1,000 friends, then your potential reach is up to 10,000 people!

At the same time you can target your marketing to specific demographics or groups of customers using social media. For example, Facebook and Foursquare allow you to target specific groups based on different criteria and locations. This way you can pinpoint your message to these specific people and make it more personal and heartfelt.

You also get a chance to manage your reputation. Reputation management is important for any business and social media gives us a tool to monitor what is being said and even respond to any negative comments about you. Bad reviews will be on social media regardless of whether your business is - this way you have a chance to do something about it before any damage is done.

If you want to use social media marketing for your business you can start by creating an account in any of the social media sites out there like Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. If you’re just starting out, master one first before you add more. While doing four or five may sound like a good idea you do want to give it some attention so it’s better to focus on one and develop your connections first before expanding.

Be active on a regular basis! Creating a social media account is one thing, but there’s no point having one if you’re not showing up there and taking your interaction with people seriously. Schedule a regular online presence. Take this opportunity to launch your secret weapon - engage your audience in 2 way conversation, show customers that you really care, and watch your business grow.

Inexpensive Ways to Measure Social Media Results

Social media marketing is one of the best ways to get your product or company known to the public. It is fast; it is cheap- if not, free. All you have to do is to register your product or company to Facebook, Twitter, or even YouTube. These sites are visited by literally millions and millions of people every single day. With just a few strategised types and clicks, you can already promote your business and expect it to reach out to tons of people every day. How is that for a good start? For a big or small business, this marketing strategy is not to be disregarded.

If you have already registered to these sites, then, Congratulations is in order! That is the first step. What next? Do you just leave the site be? Definitely, no! Aside from all the efforts of making accounts for your new products to be promoted online, what else is there to be done?

Listen To Your Customers

Social media marketing is pointless if you don’t pay attention to your customers. You have the chance to connect with them; grab it!

And how do you measure listening? Take Twitter, for example. When you choose to follow potential clients, make sure that you monitor their tweets every day. You need to be aware of what they say about your business. You can answer questions; extend help when you can. Customers are always impressed with businesses that care for them. With Twitter, you can monitor the number of people you are actually helping and if the number of people is actually increasing. You will also have the chance deal with customer issues that may lead to negative impressions about your business.

After identifying all the problems through measurement, immediately take action for improvement. Delaying can only cause problems and sustained customer issues. After taking action, you can measure its impact through the cost savings or additional revenue.
Use a Rating System

This is one of the best strategies when you want to measure your hard work that you invested in social sites to make your business known. When posting an update about your business launch in Facebook, for example, you will notice that people will start liking the post. The following day, you post another update of your launch, and you will notice that your posts don’t just get “likes”; they also get comments. Not just that, people will start sharing the post, which is better for you and your business. Likes do indicate support, and comments signify more interest of the post. Lucky if you get shares, for the updates will go beyond your page!

A tiered point system for Facebook used for measurement may look just like this:
Shares = 10 points/share
Comments = 5 points/comment
Likes = 1 point/like
   
Also a similar thing for Twitter:
Reply = 1 point/ reply
Retweet = 5 points/ retweet
   
You can create a numeric goal for objectives at the start of your campaign. The tiered points system will be your tool to measure the kind of engagement people commit to your posts and updates. By adding up the numbers during your campaign, you can see if you are improving in terms of reaching your goal or not.

Create More Value. Sell. Measure.
   
Sounds easy, right? So what’s behind this strategy? Say for instance you are a proud restaurant owner, and you have a new entry in your menu. The goal is to have 200 people to try the new entry over the approaching weekend. Are you reaching for the stars? Not quite, if you use a good strategy and a add a few good punches to your new menu entry, things may just work out fine for you.

Now, you are so convinced that your new dish is a hit, but it won’t reach that level if people don’t get to try it. A visually appealing entry can be very attractive when posted in Facebook or Instagram. Make sure the photo can make mouths water. However, instead of solely talking about how delicious your dish is, you can start posting articles and FAQs about healthy eating, which will eventually lead to your newly created dish as one of the foods that qualify as healthful. The good thing about that is your customers will feel that you care for their well-being, and it starts with you being a responsible restaurant owner who serves healthful food.

With that value added to your new food entry, you can use your Facebook or Twitter again to offer coupons for your restaurant. You will be able to measure the fruits of your labour through the number of people who redeem the coupons.
   
You can actually go back to Use a Rating System- the tiered system to be more specific, as evaluation to see if you’re moving closer to your goal or not. You can also create landing pages for the customers to easily purchase or download what you are currently selling to them. Make sure that the landing page is unique or specific, so that you can clearly see or measure the success of your campaign.

Social media marketing should be inexpensive- or if not, free- right? These measuring guidelines will save you from settling with expensive measurement tools. Take advantage of social media now to market your business!

Use Social Media For Your Business Advantage

Social media is that internet technology that transforms regular communications into a more interactive dialogue. It allows millions of people to interact with one another even if they are separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles or kilometers. It’s a tool that is used often by individuals and you probably have a social media account yourself – Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare to name a few.

While individuals use social media almost on a daily basis, many businesses still don’t which is a shame. That’s because doing social media marketing and making use of social media for your business offers benefits that can help your business grow by allowing you to connect with what your business is looking for – customers.

When it comes to uses, you can use social for a lot of things for your business. You can use it to promote who you are, what your business is and what you have to offer in terms of products or services. You can use it to attract new customers and strengthen your relationship with your current customers. At the same time you can use it to find out what people think about your business and what you have to offer so you can fix it.

As for the benefits social media offers that and in spades. For one thing you get free marketing. It’s a place where you can interact with your customers and offer them deals or free stuff that not only engages them but keeps your loyal customers happy and at the same time attracts new ones who hear about what you have to offer and because social media has such a broad reach you can reach as many potential customers as you want.

At the same time you can also target specific demographics or groups of customers using social media. For example, Facebook and Foursquare allow you to target specific groups based on different criteria and locations. This way you can pinpoint your message to these specific people and make it more personal and heartfelt.

You also get a chance to manage your reputation. Reputation management is important for any business entity and social media gives you a tool to check how people see your business and whether there’s any negative comments being said about you. This way you have a chance to do something about it while it’s still relatively new and has not had a chance to escalate.

If you want to use social media marketing for your business you can start by creating an account in any of the social media sites out there like Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. If you’re just starting out, start with one first before you add more. While doing four or five may sound like a good idea you do want to give it some attention so it’s better to focus on one and develop your connections there first before adding more.

Be active on a regular basis. Creating a social media account is one thing but if you’re not showing up there then there’s no point and other people will see you’re not serious about interacting with them. Schedule your online presence so you can interact and show customers that you exist and are there to talk to them.

Local Business Marketing Is Important

Unless you’re a multinational corporation chances are you are running a small business either in the city or in your local neighborhood. If that is the case if you want to be marketing small businesses like yours then you need to take a look at local business marketing in order to make your small business grow.

It’s not just small business that will benefit from this. That’s because with the proper adjustments medium and even large businesses can make use of local business marketing in order to boost their presence in the local demographic area. Done right it does have the potential to make a business brand known such that it will attract attention and potentially, customers.

Knowing how to do this is important because let’s face it: as a small business you won’t be competing directly with any other business in another geographic area. This means that if you live in Town-A you won’t be affecting the business in Town-B that much. What this ultimately means for you is that you need to focus on marketing yourself in your geographic area in order to attract customers that don’t know you offer this or that service or product within their locality.

A simple method of marketing locally is to have fliers in other businesses around town that don’t compete with yours. This gives your business some exposure that it otherwise wouldn’t have. Being active in local community events can also help get your name out there in one form or another. Having a business card that you can give away is important as it is one way people will know who you are and what your business is all about.

Radio, TV and newspaper ads are also an integral part of the marketing scheme. Same goes with having your business in your local phone directory and yellow pages. They may seem outdated but don’t make a mistake – these are still viable mediums of marketing and can still bring in the customers.

Of course, when you’re marketing small businesses you need to look at having an online presence as well. You can do small business marketing as part of your search engine marketing system for your business. The thing is there are a couple of free marketing tools you can use online that will greatly help you in this regard.

For example, signing up for and using social media sites can give you an online presence to start marketing your business. You’ve probably heard of Facebook and Twitter but you can also sign up for FourSquare, Yelp and CitySearch. These sites can basically put your business on the map in the virtual world of the internet.

Using these accounts you can share what you are about and what your business is and what it can offer customers in either products or services. You can share photos and such that will make you closer to your target audience – your current and potential customers.

Combining both offline and online marketing strategies is an important aspect of any small business marketing program. Even if you’re on a budget there are a lot of cheap and sometimes free ways you can make use of the many different marketing tools available. These are important if you want your small business to grow and have a presence in your market.

Small Businesses And Facebook

As a small business owner are you using social media and especially Facebook as part of your marketing mix? It’s a simple question that can actually do a lot for your business bottom line.

Let’s be straight to the point here: Facebook for business is really something that small business should take advantage of as a tool to engage their customers. That’s not hardly surprising since Facebook is a great networking tool and it is where your prospective customers and current customers can, more likely than not, be found. In a nutshell Facebook allows you to target your specific customer base.

That’s because it has lot of information stored in its database. This is information that is taken from each and every member that has signed up for it. Like it or not, this is the kind of data connection that a lot of marketers would die to get their hands on and if you can make full use of it then you should really jump at the chance.

That being said you need to be a part of Facebook before you can do anything else. This is not a problem since signing up and creating your first page is simple and easy. The page is important because this is, in all intents and purposes, a representation of who you are and what your business is.

You may also want to create ads that get posted in the sidebars of the Facebook pages. This is basically how you can get the word out that your page and you exist. Think of it as letting people know that you’re open for business. The good thing is that you can even focus the target of your ad, say to all people who live in Australia between the ages of 25 and 30.

Once you get the word out your next step is engagement. This is pretty simple – just have fruitful conversations with the people that are part of your page. It’s a way of giving them valuable and exciting content that not only gets their interest but also builds loyalty and gives you the opportunity to potentially generate sales in the future.

Hard selling is not a good idea as you will find that this tactic will backfire and make you lose the contacts that you will have. Be relevant for the people who visit your page and give them information while being friendly and open at the same time.

When you post your messages do so in a consistent manner. Being all over the place can make it confusing and may put up a flag in your prospect’s mind that you’re shady or something like that. Post frequently as well. Don’t post once a week because let’s face it, people who go online have short attention spans and if you don’t engage them regularly and often they will move away.

In order to really maximize your use of Facebook for business you need to become a part of your prospect’s social world first. This means becoming one with who they are and what they are all about. This means joining Facebook groups and showing them that you are one of them and can be counted upon so that they trust you. After that it’s a matter of turning that trust into potential sales.