Social MediaSocial media is an essential tool for your online marketing strategy. Understanding your audience is key to determine what will work best for your business. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are more than just platforms for entertainment – I have used these successfully for my own business.

Without these social media platforms, it would be much more difficult to reach and expand your business’ target market.

Facebook

There is no denying that Facebook is one of the largest and most successful social media sites in today’s generation. Most people all around the world have a Facebook account. This is why it is one of the most ideal social media sites to be used for your business’ interest. Just imagine how many Facebook users can be reached by just a single Facebook post. The most common way to use Facebook as a marketing tool is create an official page for your business.

Starters might think it is not a necessary. No, they are wrong. In fact, it is one of the most basic things you need to do get your business known. With a Facebook page, your business looks more legit and professional. Once you post something on it, it will immediately be posted on your fans/likers’ timeline. What a convenient way to market and advertise, right? Aside from creating your business’ official page, you can also make use of the Facebook advertising feature if you want to. It might cost you a few dollars, but it is totally worth it.

I use this feature every now and then to boost the Facebook visibility of my business. In fact, it helped me gain more fans/likes on my Facebook page. These likes are among your target market and if you manage to turn them into paying customers, then you are going to be successful.

Instagram

Without a doubt, Instagram is the best photo-sharing site today. With its popularity, it is on the list of the most effective social media sites to be used for online marketing. Here, you should make use of photos or videos to advertise your business, brand, product or service. You can put a caption on your post as your way of giving more detail. Do not forget to make use of hashtags as well to make your posts searchable.

If you are someone who offers services involving photo or video editing, web design, graphics design and something similar, then Instagram is one of the best places to post your sample designs. Instagram can be used to advertise your services and then direct your followers to your business’ official website. This increases site traffic in a very efficient way.

Twitter

Though the number of Twitter users is less than the number of Facebook users, it is still a great social media site to conduct your online marketing strategy knowing there are a lot of active users. Since Twitter has a limit on the number of characters in a tweet, most online marketers make use of it to direct users to their page.

Hashtags are also very crucial in Twitter knowing that they can help you to easily climb up the list of trending tweets. It is not that easy to make a hashtag trend though. However, at least, with the use of hashtags, your post can easily be searched even by those who do not follow your business’ Twitter account yet.

Twitter may be used for brand monitoring. It can be used for other purposes such as a tool for customer service, monitoring sales opportunities, corporate promotion and many more. It is up to you as to how you want to use it to enhance your business.

LinkedIn

Unlike Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, LinkedIn is mostly used by professionals and entrepreneurs. It is mainly used for building contacts, promoting a brand or business and the likes. Most often than not, beginners are confused as to how using LinkedIn can help their business.

Well, just because most users are professionals or business owners does not mean that they won’t be needing any of your products and services. Remember that each person is a consumer. Even Mark Zuckerberg buys and needs something, right?

In fact, LinkedIn is a great tool for networking and finding big shot clients. Here, you can find a business owner who needs content for his website if you are into content writing. You can also find an entrepreneur who is in need of multiple websites for his corporation – that is if you are a website designer and/or a website developer.

You can also use LinkedIn for linking content for applications, researching potential markets, connecting to new contacts and many more. There are many ways to gain traffic with the help of LinkedIn.

The Right Way to Do Paid Advertisements

Certain social media sites can be used for paid advertisements. You can do this to boost your site’s traffic, convert users to buyers and generally strengthen your business/brand. You can pay for advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and other relevant social media sites.

The best things about advertising on these sites is that they are not as expensive as the advertisements on television.  In fact, they are relatively cheap. However, it should be done in a careful manner. You do not just pay and advertise hastily and expect immediate success. You need to research your target audience first and formulate an effective strategy. In this way, you won’t be wasting a single dollar in your advertising campaigns.

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