When looking at social media marketing it’s important to focus on the key objectives and strategies.

The first of these would be maintaining your social media profile. This means ensuring profile and cover photos remain recent and relevant and that the profile stays regularly active. A way of showing regular activity would be through posts with photos, stories and videos that are interesting and relevant. Remember that everything you share reflects on your brand so consider your audience carefully before posting.

Ensure also that you engage with your audience. This could be liking comments or responding to comments as well as replying to any direct messages or queries you receive. Low engagement reflects negatively on your brand and could cause you to lose followers.

It’s important to seek out other people you could follow, these maybe influencers or other companies that compliment your brand. Always think about the prospect of a collaboration.

Advertising is a key area to focus on also, this may be paid advertising like pay per click or you may post your own adverts possibly offering discounts or promotions.

To be able to keep track of your social media marketing and which of your strategies is having the greatest impact you will need to use some analytic software that can provide you with this information. This should keep your marketing effective and on track.

Having a business website is possibly the most effective marketing tool for many companies as once optimised effectively, a website should attract potential clients to the business and increase sales. Employing a web designer and developer to ensure the site is successful at promoting the business is a worthwhile way to start this exciting marketing move however for those just starting out paying for a website can be quite costly it is for this reason that many start-up businesses choose to use social media marketing initially.

Social media marketing is a fast-growing platform that can be utilised to boost the marketing potential of any business. Using social media advertising is a way to get your brand known and can often be quite rewarding financially without much cost to your business. The use of online competitions or give aways that encourage social media followers to tag others can increase your potential customer base dramatically and result in an increase in interest in your business and products. Using positive customer reviews on the social media business page will also be a valuable feature to include as more and more people are relying on reviews to give them information on a company they are considering dealing with.

Social media marketing is one of those things that can work amazingly well for some businesses and not so much for others. Sometimes it has to do with how much the business puts in to it other times it can just bed down to the industry you are in. The businesses that do best on the social media platforms are those that appeal to the masses. Businesses that sell niche products or services may not do as well as they are trying to essentially find that needle in a haystack. Social media marketing is all a numbers game. The more people you can get to see your ads or posts the more likely you are to have people interact with it. These interactions can then lead to enquiries or sales.

If your target audience is very specific, you may find that you are not able to reach them easily. You may struggle to know how to get your page shown to them and this is where paid for advertising can come in. When you set up paid for advertising such as Facebook ads, you can select groups of people to show your ad to. For example, if you have a product that you wish to promote that is for horses then you can choose people that have shown an interest in horses. This can work really well for many and once you have go them following your page you can then easily reach out to them.

Launching a new business can be tricky as you may be starting from a completely blank canvas. It may be that you are launching a new product or service that is not known so you will have to make people aware of who you are and what you are offering. Having a website is a great place to start, but if none knows you exist then they may not search for you or your products. Social media is a fantastic way to get your brand and products recognised. You can opt for the paid for advertising or you can choose to build up a following organically. If you decide to go down the organic route then you need to think about how you care going to get your posts seen. You may be able to advertise on some local groups but be aware as sometimes these groups have restrictions regarding advertising. You can also ask all your friends to share posts and links to your social media pages.

The best way to build up a following quickly is to offer a prize draw. Some many companies quickly gain hundreds of followers by running a giveaway competition in exchange for a share and like of their page / posts.

A popular way to communicate with the local community is through the medium of social media as it is a good way to publicise community events, dispense information and safety advice. Although the idea of using a physical noticeboard situated in a prominent position has been used for years this is becoming a less common way of communication largely due to the fact that fewer people are walking to shops than previously and therefore they are not seeing the notices posted there.

A social media community page where two or three members act as administrators on the page and monitor the posts and comments is becoming a regular sight. Members can request to join the group and, in some groups, have to wait to be accepted before they can begin posting. This method of communication is useful as it can convey new information quickly for instance in the case of a cancelled event. Local businesses can advertise their services and any special events that they are holding such as open days.

A disadvantage with this type of community noticeboard is that there are people who do not use social media so they will not be aware of posts that may concern them.