Many of us now know the power of social media and how marketing through these platforms can prove very profitable and worthwhile, especially for certain businesses or industries. It can be a little confusing knowing which social media sites you should focus your efforts on and what you should do on them to get the best return. There is no one plan for everyone and so it is important that your social media marketing is designed with your business in mind and tailored to its specific needs.

For example, for one business, Facebook marketing may work well. They may be able to quickly build up a following by running competitions and sharing images of their work that they have done. They may not need to go down the paid for ads route and will instead spend time of communicating with their followers. Another business may find that they get very little engagement on Facebook and Twitter works best for them or LinkedIn. This is not to say they shouldn’t have a presence on the other sites, just that they may not want to focus on them as much as perhaps some of the others that they know will help them build up their brand or even get sales directly through their marketing in these places.  

Social media can work so well for lots of different business. Some have been said that without social media advertising their business would of failed. Getting the balance right is essential when it comes to promoting your business through sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Too much and people will be put off following you, too little and you will become forgotten about. When you first start out with social media marketing, you may well feel that you can do it all in house but if your business does start to grow quickly there may come a time when you feel it has gotten too much to handle. Missing messages and not responding can be detrimental but rather than cutting down on your social media marketing, why not look to out source it? A web marketing agency will be able to offer you a quick package where they manage all your social media marketing in your behalf. They will obviously change a fee for this, but it is usually well worth paying it rather than stopping the marketing altogether. You can also then call on their expertise to advise you on what you should and should t be doing to get the most out of the sites.

Facebook can be a great tool for businesses that are looking to engage with or attract customers. Not only do you want to promote your Facebook page within Facebook but also externally on your website, business cards and sign writing for example.

Your Facebook Page is the first thing people see when they come to visit you on Facebook. Let visitors know why they should like you. Make sure that your description or welcoming paragraph sums up what you do but in an interesting way. Make sure that you have the correct tabs within your page and if you are selling a product or service, then have a section dedicated for photos. Categorize these photos if possible, to allow the views to go straight to the ones they are interested in.

When your page first goes live, be sure to ask as many friends and family members to like it. Then when new people come on to your page it already looks like you are popular and they are more likely to want to like / follow you too.

Facebook ads are another great way to increase Facebook likes. Experiment with different types of ads to see which ones work best for you and give you the best return on investment.

The idea of social media marketing is to allow you to quickly engage your customers with relevant and useful information. The social media sites can prove very effective for a number of businesses who take the time and effort to post the right sort of information on them.

Knowing what to post can be tricky and that’s why it is often worth investing in the skills of a social media expert who will no able be able to advise you on what content to distribute but also when to do it and to whom.

Images are often as important as the content as they do say a picture speaks a thousand words. I recently came across a social media post with an image of a man running and the caption said “looking for a carpet fitter?” The image had no connection to the post and was irrelevant, which put me off reading any further.