Check out Part 1 of our 2-part Social Media for Your Business Series.
In the past few years, social media has truly grown into a full fledged field in the business world. Marketing companies boast their social media marketing skills and article after article details how social media can benefit your company, improve your conversions and make you more money. While this is all true, it can be overwhelming and at times frustrating to navigate the big bad social media world and figure out what sites, tools and strategies will work for your business and what is a waste of your time. In this post, we look at how social media is part of a great marketing strategy and how to get started using social media for your business!
Advertise!
According to statistics, the average Facebook user has 130 friends and “likes” around 80 pages on Facebook. Many of these pages are brands they like or are interested in following to keep up to date on news and products or because they just like the company. This is great news for you!
While Facebook Ads cost money, social media in addition to paid ad campaigns provide a great free resource for your company to advertise your programs. You can post news, application deadlines and links to your products. If you have 100 followers, and each of those followers have 130 friends on average, just think of the exposure you could potentially connect with just by your followers sharing your updates, posts and photos! You can connect with audiences you would never otherwise have access to through social media.
Competition
This is the “easy” section since it requires nothing active on your part! Since social media is all the rage these days you can rest assured some if not all of your competition is using social media in one form or another. Viewing their social media efforts is a great way to keep tabs on what your competitors are doing and “borrow” ideas that you think are great and would work well for your audience. There is no shame in seeing that a blog for your kind of business seems to be thriving with your competition. Then take the same idea but make it your own! In fact, make your blog even better!
Depending on your company and your relationship with your competitors, throw in some friendly competition and banter online if you like too. If a competitor is running a similar program but at a different time than you, why not comment and say how fun their program looks! You can throw in a line to readers that if they can’t make this program, you’re offering a great one next month!!
Get started using social media for your business if you haven’t already!
You don’t need to hire a fancy marketing company to use social media to your advantage.
If you have no social media platform set up at all, start a Facebook page and go from there. Open a Twitter account and start tweeting news, articles and links you think your applicants and participants might find interesting. Or start writing a blog discussing things in your field, ongoing or past programs with pictures and anecdotes from past and current participants.
Be sure to evaluate what you can handle. Who will be responsible for tweeting and Facebook posting? How many hours a week can you devote to the task? Once you know that, then create a plan that matches your ability to invest time and away you go! Consider using social media engagement tools, if you have the budget. At Regpack, we love using Buffer or Hopper to easily manage our posts across all of our social media platforms.
Tip! You don’t want to spread yourself too thin with too many social media accounts if you can’t provide valuable and worthwhile content.
Once you decide which aspects of social media you want to engage in and how much time you’re willing to spend, you then need to start by thinking WHO you want to engage with. Once you define that, you can better decide what forms of engagement make the most sense for your target audience. Remember, what works for one company won’t work for another and what works for your competition might not work for you either. The key is to be yourself, be real and have fun!