When you’re starting a new business, whether it is an online or offline venture, you’ll want to tune in to how social media is one of the most influential business-building and brand-developing tools ever developed. It works so well that even advertising, the long-established favorite of businesses looking to win over the public, pales in comparison.
Why Use Social Media
It was not that long ago that the best way to build a business was to use word-of-mouth marketing. Now in a tech-driven era, when people would sooner text than talk, word-of-mouth has gone digital. With social media, consumers get the word out for you. It’s a simple and direct way to influence your market without really trying. While logos and wordsmiths are still used by businesses, they are destined to go the way of the typewriter—something that was a good idea at the time but that which a new generation now considers passé.
How Social Media Works
The way social media works is a remarkably simple two-step process. First, people come to know, like, and trust you. Second, they become curious about you, click your posted links, and check you out.
Understanding the simple dynamics of building relationships online has enabled smart companies to focus on leveraging relationships rather than image enhancement.
Relationships are formed by asking and answering questions. Becoming curious and choosing to be helpful are the main skill sets necessary to get good at relationship building online.
Social media is not about direct pitching. It’s much more discrete. When people get to know you, they will subscribe to your newsletter; then once they become insiders, they will be open to your marketing messages.
Begin a Blog
A website used to be enough to build an online presence. However, since they are often static, marketers added blogs for dynamism. Blogging keeps Google’s crawlers interested while simultaneously engaging visitors with a consistent stream of new content. A blog can be considered a way to tell your story and win people over to your way of thinking.
Add Social Media
If a blog is like a flower, then social media is like a collective bee hive that you want to influence.
While, to continue the analogy, there is an inexhaustible list of hives, it’s best to stick to a few densely populated ones, like Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook will give your business its own page, but it’s not enough to just solicit “likes.” You have to do much more. Make your page a rich source of content, offering enough resources to keep visitors coming back for more. How to Market Your Horse Business is an example of a social media marketing business for horse business owners that has done everything right when it comes to Facebook marketing.
Twitter is another go-to social media website. Its charm is that your content can be short and sweet, like writing a single sentence that introduces an idea or a link. On Twitter the number of followers you have is not as important as their loyalty. It’s better to have 100 loyal followers than 1,000 indifferent ones. MegaPath is an example of a technology service provider that has fine-tuned the art of keeping its loyal followers updated on the latest tech news relevant to SMBs and enterprises.
Summary
When it comes to brand building, social media is the new frontier. Relationship marketing has replaced image building. It is actually easier to deploy than traditional methods and it works more effectively.
Image Source: Social Media Branding
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