Almost all businesses are aware that social media can help them promote their brand and build an audience. Unfortunately, not many businesses know how to harness the power of social media for building their audience. Sure, they know how to create an account and post updates – but what do you do to turn your social media interactions into a working marketing strategy?
Here are 4 ways you can start with:
• Use social networks to share content that you won’t be sharing elsewhere
There must be an incentive for your audience to follow you on social networks rather than just signing up for your mailing list or reading your blog. Instead of just reposting the content that you publish elsewhere, initiate new interactions and share new content that your target audience will find interesting. This can entice them to follow you on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks.
• Use social sharing as a “payment” for access to premium content.
On a similar note, you can share exclusive content to your audience in exchange for a Tweet or a Facebook Share. Basically, before they access your premium content, they’ll have to Tweet about it or share it on Facebook.
Now, what kind of premium content could you offer? These could be discount coupons for your business, high-quality reports or whitepapers, or bonuses that your customers won’t find elsewhere.
Here are some tools that can help you do that:
- Pay with a Tweet (http://www.paywithatweet.com/)
- Estago (http://wwwestago.com/)
- Cloud: flood (http://cloudflood.com/)
• Be a pioneer and test out new social networks.
Apart from leveraging existing social networks, to have an effective strategy you also need to find opportunities in new social networks. This helps you build credibility in new networks that your competition hasn’t tapped yet, and you can also carry over your audience from the new network to other more established networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
Mezee.me chat rooms is one example. Even with just around 50,000 users as of this writing, it seems to be a network with lively users. You can easily publicize your business announcements and bring new leads to your website.
• Look for subgroups relevant to your industry and use it to share and promote valuable content from your business’ website.
Most social networks have subgroups that users follow. For Facebook, these are Facebook Groups and Pages, for Twitter it’s via hash tags, LinkedIn also has LinkedIn Groups, and for reedit there are subedits. Look for subgroups that your target audience is probably a part of. Use it as your own private channel to broadcast targeted messages and bring people to your business’ website.
Since subgroups are more targeted than just general public posting, you’d have a better chance finding new customers and lifelong followers this way.
Using social networks for business promotion doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. Sometimes the simplest techniques for finding an audience, such as the ones above, are enough to create an impact. And once you’ve found that audience, it’s only a matter of time until they convert to actual paying customers.
This guest post was written by Ludwing Hernandez
