10 Out of the Box Ways to Use Social Media for Your Business

Social media sites offer a way for people to communicate online and interact with their favorite businesses. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are among the most popular and most visited on the Web, and many of their users check theirs every day. Here are ten ways you can use social media to better connect with your fans and boost your business.

1. Improve Your Customer Service
These sites give your customers direct access to you. This gives you a chance to listen to what they have to say and learn how they feel about your business. By being responsive and offering them access, social media works wonders for your customer service.

2. Manage Customer Complaints
Social media sites let your customers leave comments on how you're doing. When they complain or criticize your business practices, you not only get valuable feedback, but also a chance to reply and repair your image.

3. Share Real-Life Customer Stories
Social proof is powerful in establishing your company's credibility, and social media gives you lots of opportunities to get real testimonials. Positive reviews from your customers can be seen instantly by anyone who accesses your profile or theirs.

4. Get Your Employees Involved
You can use your social media sites for idea development. Give your employees a platform where they can share their ideas. You can also use it to keep in touch, offering newsletters, updates and employee incentive programs.

5. Boost Customer Loyalty
You can use your profile to run your customer loyalty programs by offering incentives and rewards. Everything can be done through the site so you don't need to deal with any more punch cards.

6. Attract New Business
Your social media presence gives you free advertising on the world's biggest message board. People can find your profile through Web searches and their friends' profiles. This is a great way to attract new customers.

7. Get to Know Your Market
Social media makes it extremely easy to get to know your target market. You can find out exactly who enjoys your products and services, as well as find out what else they like. Companies have spent millions in marketing research to gather this information and all you need to do is invest a little time.

8. Create a Brand Message
Every company has a brand message, like Nike's 'Just Do Ití. You can use your social media site to communicate this message to your fans and prospective customers.

9. Connect Everything
By integrating your social media sites with your blog or website, you can generate more traffic and leads. Widgets and apps allow you to link everything together for maximum exposure.

10. Use Multimedia
Most social media sites have multimedia applications. You can make a welcome video showing what your company is all about or offer a streaming podcast to your customers. These help by branding your company and giving it a more personal touch.

The most important thing to remember about social media is that people don't use these sites to shop. They use them to socialize, share common interests, and generally hang out. Make your page an interactive place where they can get involved and spend time. This keeps your brand in their mind and whenever they're ready to buy, they'll come to you.

The 4 Cornerstones of Business Success on Facebook

As  I go through my daily professional life I find that the most common questions that I get asked about Facebook aren't high level questions about the ins and outs of Facebook Insights, or questions about how to craft the perfect Facebook ad, but more often than not I run into business owners that simply would like to know how to get started with Facebook, and what steps they need to take to be successful with their venture into social media. What I'm going to do in this blog is break down what I consider to be the 4 simple cornerstones for a business to realize success on Facebook.

First of all, and this might seem obvious, but you need to build a Facebook Page in order to get started. Don't use your personal page to promote your business, give your business its own identity and its own venue to promote itself. Many Facebook beginners make the mistake of using their personal page to promote their business, and while you can see results from promoting in this manner, you want to brand your business as its own entity, allow it to have its own personality, and be able to focus your efforts on that page so that your results can be measurable.

Secondly, you need to connect with people, your "target audience" ideally. There are several different schools of thought on how to accomplish this, and I will save discussion of the how-to for another Blog, but what you need is to build a base of fans so that someone is listening to the message that you're putting out.

Now once you have those people connected to your page, you need to engage them. This might be the biggest stumbling block for Facebook rookies, right up there with actually creating a page. The key with engagement, real engagement,  is that it involves you producing genuine content that your audience is interested in and that will cause them to interact and participate in your page. While I won't dig into this topic in depth as this could not only be its own blog post, really it could be its own blog series, content is really key when you speak about engagement on your Facebook page, and the one tip that I will offer up in this forum is that spamming advertisements is not the content that I'm speaking of.

Finally you want to take everything that you have built, your page, your fans, and their engagement and then utilize this to create more fans for your page, that will then create more interaction that will then lead to more fans. This circle of interaction and content, is what will truly allow you to build your page, build your brand, and build your Facebook presence into something that you can truly see results from in your business.

I hope that these four tips were helpful for you, please feel free to like and share this with your friends, and visit us on Facebook if you have any questions.


Chris Case

5 Tips for Social Media Success

Are you looking to succeed in your business using Social Media? The good news is, success isn't far off, you've taken the first step by reading this blog! In this blog I'll be touching on a few simple tips to help you utilize Social Media to grow your business.




1. Commit to spending a set amount of time each day focusing only on social media.
   
     While this may seem like a no-brainer, this really is one of the foundation not only of success with Social Media but success with any venture that you embark on. Commit your time, whether it is 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or an hour each day, and then be consistent with that commitment. Without consistency you won't see success, and isn't that the reason that you're committing to this?

2. Pick a topic to focus on with your Social Media that you are passionate about.

     This can be directly related to your work or not. If your passion is gardening than write a blog about gardening, take pictures of your garden and start engaging with others that enjoy gardening. While it may seem counter-intuitive to use something non business related to "promote" your business, the reality of business in general is that people will do business with people that they like, and showing off your passions is a great way to show people the real you and allow them the opportunity to get to know you and, in turn, like you.

3. Take your "passion" and research it elsewhere on the internet.

     Use online resources to find out more about the subject that you are passionate about. Begin at first by simply Google-ing your topic and searching through those resources to find out more about see where people are discussing your passion. (Note: for more complex resources for researching subjects online, stay tuned for a late blog post)


4. Pick out 5 Blogs that you like and subscribe to them.

     Using the above mentioned Google search, subscribe to several blogs that you like, and go back and read them from time to time. Pay attention to how they are laid out, the subjects mentioned, the comments and interaction by the author. Take notes on the things that you like and you don't like and always be seeking out new content.

5. Use this knowledge and Apply it.

     Most important is take this knowledge that you've learned, and use the time that you have committed to your own social media pursuits  talking about your passions is a great first place to start because it ensures not only that you will stay interested in your own content, but that you will be interested in finding new content and as a result find new and interesting ways to present and deliver that content.

By finding something that you're passionate about and then using that subject to improve your understanding of how Social Media works, you'll not only be enjoying your time online, you'll also be working on your business. By following these simple steps you can gain a better understanding of how social media works and how to be able to better utilize it to promote your business.

Be sure to "like" and share our blog with your friends and follow us on Facebook for more tips, and tricks on clearing the confusion of Social Media.