Getting Started with Social Media For Business
Getting Started with Social Media
Getting your business on social media can be a time consuming task. Even worse, sometimes you can find yourself floundering around trying to figure out what the best use of your time may be, only to find out you were wrong.
In an effort to get you off the ground and moving, we came up with these tips to get you started with some of the biggest social media websites that businesses utilize today. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. It will get you the most bang for your buck… or time.
Google Places for Business
Google Places for Business is a free business listing from Google. It offers local businesses the opportunity to showcase their business information in Google search results in an attractive format. There is little setup and almost no management after the fact. It also ensures that your business shows up properly on Google Maps.
Be sure to populate all of the information that Google asks for, especially a business summary and phone number. They provide a meter that evaluates the information provided. When you have populated your profile properly, the meter should should display that the company profile is 100% complete.
Expert Google Places for Business Tip:
Add Photos to your listing to showcase your business inside and out. Include photos of employees, your logo, and products or services. Populating your listing with vibrant, attractive photos ensures the best first impression by visitors.
Adding a Facebook page for your business is fairly simple and necessary if you want to properly interact with customers and prospects on the social media giant.
You must have a personal account to create a page. Once logged in, on the left side panel, you will see a link for “create page”. Follow the steps and you will be ready to go. The same recommendations apply here as with Google Places. Provide as much information as possible and use great photos for your cover photo and profile photo.
Expert Facebook Tips:
Don’t commit to a URL. If you are not sure of the URL that you want to use, select the option to decide later. Once you pick a URL, usually the business name, you can only change it once more.
Develop a plan and don’t let it stagnate. Facebook is constantly improving its algorithm to show its users only the content that they want to see. Posting engaging content on a regular basis will ensure that you show up in your fans’ feeds. Plus, if a potential customer is doing a little background research before contacting your company, having newer posts always looks good.
Get it out there. Invite your friends to like your page. Share your best posts on your personal account. Also, be prepared to boost posts. Gone are the days where you could post something and 80% of your followers would see it. Now, it’s more like 5-20%. If you want a post to be seen, boost it.
Bonus Tip: If you choose to advertise on Facebook, take advantage of their targeted marketing tools. You can focus your ads toward people with specific job titles, fans of other pages, income, location, and more.
Twitter is a social media outlet that requires a bit more work. The best way to grow and maintain a twitter following is to post consistently and get involved in conversations.
There are many social media experts that will recommend a certain number of posts and some sort of etiquette. This is the one medium where we disagree. The largest problem for small businesses is usually anonymity. At the pace that tweets fly down someone’s screen, the chances of a Twitter user seeing your one or two tweets per day is slim, if at all.
Expert Twitter Tips:
Curate good lists. Lists enable you to focus on certain topics and groups of people or brands. It helps cut the noise. You can also easily see what your customers, competitors, and influencers are talking about.
Utilize Twitter Analytics to see important data about your followers, how successful your tweets were, and demographic information about your followers.
Find a scheduling program such as Hootsuite that allows you to schedule tweets to go out at a later time. This enables you to segment a block of time to create your tweets and not be tied to the app or website. We like Hootsuite because it can also find suggested articles based on your interests to tweet out to your followers. Incidentally, Hootsuite also works with Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and LinkedIn.
We think of LinkedIn as a way to create your own personal brand. It is a place to showcase your own personal expertise and skillset and, by extension, your company’s. The most value you can gain from LinkedIn comes from creating a professional image where other professionals are looking.
Expert LinkedIn Tips:
Treat your profile as an informal resume and update it frequently. When you update your profile, your connections are notified of that update, making your profile more visible.
Create a custom URL. Under your profile picture is the current URL for your profile. Click the gear next to it and you will be taken to the public view of your profile. To the right, you will see the option to create a custom link. We like to use our names but, if you feel creative, go for it. Just be professional.
Post regularly. Do not post nearly as frequently as Twitter, but be sure to mix a combination of credible business articles that resonate with you along with some original content. Nick tends to post about productivity, entrepreneurship, and motivation. Over time. it becomes a conversation starter.
LinkedIn Company Tip: We have seen less success with LinkedIn company pages. Fill in the information and have your employees link their current employment to the company page. Other than keeping it current, don’t spend too much time here. It’s better spent doing just about anything else we talked about above.
Now What?
Decide which social media platform is most advantageous to your business and commit to keeping it updated. You do not have to spend hours a day updating your status. In fact, that’s probably the worst thing that you could do. Get in, freshen it up, and get back to work.
Getting started with social media can be an overwhelming task. Set the proper expectations, see it as a long term investment, and stick with it. Do not expect immediate results. It will take time.
Good luck and happy socializing.