Create value with social networking and promote your local small business

posted on Oct 03 by MBarry in the Social Media Marketing category

The latest marketing innovation is incredibly fastest growing—social networking. It’s so pervasive that it’s changing the way that small businesses are promoting their businesses.

The beauty of social networking is that all it really takes is time… the not so beautiful aspect is that small business owners don’t know what they’re doing. What this amounts to is a lot of wasted time, but it can also mean damaging your company’s reputation.

Since using social networking for marketing is constantly evolving there’s no definitive resource to turn to. Please give us your ideas on how you promote your business using social networking.

The Right Stuff

When you put a tweet out or post a message on LinkedIn or Facebook—what should you say? Should you send an offer a bout your business, or talk about how you hoisted a few too many with the guys last night? Neither—the first rule of social networking is to provide value to your readers.

1. Share information that your readers will find important. Whether it’s a link to a news article or an offer from a business that you have no financial interest in—these subjects will boost your credibility in the social networking world. Your readers will appreciate the information and you’ll strengthen your relationships with businesses that you are promoting.

2. Add a link to your postings and tweets that go back to your Web site. The link should go to an article that provides additional information about the subject of your message.

3. Don’t write just about you. Sure, your family and friends want to know what’s up with you on Facebook, but make adding value to your friends’ lives your first priority.

4. Don’t send spam or you’ll find a lot of people blocking you or unlinking their profiles from yours.

5. Don’t stop following or break your link to too many of your friends. Sometimes it’s appropriate, especially if you’re getting unmercifully spammed—but be cautious. Although social networking feels as if it is virtual, there is a real person getting the message that you no longer want to be linked. This can cost you goodwill and business.

Local Internet Marketing Tips

Now that you have the right techniques to market through social networks—what should you keep in mind on the marketing side? In addition to ensuring your site is using local search optimization techniques.

1. Link to businesses that you do business with—but only if you have a good relationship. If you provide testimonials for them, they’ll likely proved testimonials for you.

2. Link to businesses that are in the same business category—for instance a real estate agent should link to an interior designer. It’s likely that their target customers are also yours.

3. Make certain you have a blog or area of your Web site that allows you to offer information that’s useful to your clients. This will allow you to send your readers to the blog from tweets and posts so that they can read additional information.

4. Your Web site should have a “Follow Me on Twitter” message.

5. Figure out what’s relevant to your clients and make that the subject of your posts. This will help to bring your clients back to your Web site to read more.

6. Establish a solid plan to market via your social network. Find resources that will provide you with information and ideas; identify the vendors and business owners that you’d like to promote.

To read more about online marketing for small businesses, check out one of our past blogs,“11 Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Business Site.”

Good luck and happy tweeting!

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