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.