Expanding Business with Social Media

Does the presence of your business on social media networks get you anything? It’s really not enough just to have an account on some popular network and publish something. Social media networks should serve as a great way to expand your business. How? Keep reading to find out.

If you succeed in creating a good presence of your business with social media than you will see what it can bring you. You will be able to get more customers, build the presence and popularity of your brand, improve SEO optimization of your website and best of all, social media marketing is pretty cheap. The first thing you need to do is to pick social media network that is right for you. You can create accounts on every network, but there is always one network that should fit perfectly for your business.

LinkedIn is a great solution if you have some business where you need to access information about job hunting, networking, productivity and lots of more things.

Twitter is a great way to build your presence with large number of people, both young and older and if you want to reach both genders. Twitter is a great solution for magazine, news and similar business.

Google+ is the best possible solution for improving the SEO rank of your website. Google+ gives you lots of other benefits like connecting with people and getting more customers but if you need only that it is better to use some other network.

Facebook is the largest network and will give you access to the largest number of users. You can advertise your product to targeted users and present your business to large number of people. Facebook is probably the best way to build your online presence.

If you need more information and advices on picking the best social media network for you and your business check my article – social media platform comparison.

Now that you know social media network you should use it is time to build your presence on it and expand your business. It’s not easy as it sounds and it will take a lot of work to do it. To help you with that, here are some tips.

Success on LinkedIn

Just like I mentioned above, LinkedIn is a network perfectly suitable for business people and companies who need that kind of people. LinkedIn gives you a lots of benefits, you just have to know how to use them. One of those benefits is an excellent search function. You can filter the search on many different ways and find exactly what you want with it. Here are some crucial tips on how to be successful on LinkedIn:

• URL’s – when you create your profile it will get a default link with lots of random numbers and letters. You should avoid that and change your URL to something you like.
• Completed profile – when creating profile make sure to fill everything and make it 100% complete. Otherwise it will look unprofessional.
• Connections and request message – after you created your profile it is time to connect. Don’t connect with just anyone and don’t try to connect with too much people. You should also change the request message for connection and make it more personal.
• Invite employees – recommend LinkedIn to your employees and make a team on this network. It will be easier to create strategy and it will benefit your business.
• Strategy – make a strategy that will guide you to what you want to achieve and follow it. If you see that it is not working then try to make it better.

• Premium services – it is always a good choice to invest into some premium features that LinkedIn offers.

So, that are just some of the advices for LinkedIn success. There are a lot more tips and advices that may or may not work but these are probably the most important ones.

Success on Twitter

On to the next one. It can be pretty hard to get audience and expand some business over Twitter. But there are some little tricks that can help you with that.

• Lists – if you follow more people that are very active then you should organize them into lists. You can create more different lists. For example, list with people in category cars, then list for people in category bikes, then one for boats, one for planes and similar. You can create list for different countries, cities, continents, names or anything you want or need.
• 80/20 rule – this is the rule that everyone should follow. 20% of your tweets can be about your website and include links to it and other 80% should be some support for your community.

• Follow back – when someone follows you should follow them back. If you have a huge amount of fan base and lots of people following you then you won’t follow them all back. But engaging with your followers can be very useful for expanding the business.
• Talk – talk with people. Not just your followers, talk with other people and try to engage them and interest them to your Twitter account and website.
• Motivate – Twitter message is limited to 140 characters. That is enough to motivate or encourage someone, make them smile and make their day better.
• Nickname – don’t use weird names on Twitter for you or your business. Always try to use the real name or at least something similar to it because everyone wants to know the real person they are talking to.
• Questions – try to ask questions in your tweets. And do it often. Questions about the service of your company and asking for advice from followers on how to make it better will make them feel important and valuable.

And we’re done with Twitter. Hope you learned something.

Success on Google+

Google+ is nothing similar to Facebook or Twitter or even LinkedIn but it can still be very reliable way to expand your business. It is not a fully personal social media network but it will help you to find and meet some new people who like the same things like you. And as I mentioned above, it will help you to increase SEO ranking of your website. Here are some tips on how to make your business page on Google+ a lot better:

• URL – the same rule that applies for LinkedIn can be used here. Use your own custom URL because it will be easier to remember it and it will help you to start creating a brand.
• Photos – when placing some photos on your profile and cover photo then it is always a good choice to use professional photos. Buy some stock photos that offer them or ask some professional designer to design a unique photo for you. Or design it yourself, if you know how.
• Keywords – when creating a business page always include the most important keywords that describe your business. Place them into your tagline or introduction when creating the about page.

• Promote – add Google+ link to our website, include it into email campaign and everywhere where your customers have contact with your business. It will make easier to get more people into your circle and your business will grow more.
• Hashtags – if you are starting or publishing something about some popular topic then include hashtag into it. You will also get more traffic because Google+ hashtags that you place will show up in Google search.
• Google Hangouts – to improve your communication with customers, employees or all Google+ followers it is smart to use Google Hangouts apps. With that app you can communicate with different people or lead some webinar and inform people about your business or some special topic.

Success on Facebook

Now we got to the last social media network in this article. As you already know, Facebook is the biggest social media networks and it holds an enormous potential for every business to grow and get more customers. Facebook offers everyone a lots of ways to reach success, but you have to know how to do it. Here are some tips that should help you with that.

• Facebook page – your Facebook page is your tool. If you create Facebook page without making a plan on how to use it to expand business then you won’t have any use of it. Define a strategy and don’t expect success immediately.
• Getting people interested – everyone who sees your Facebook page and something that is published there is a potential customer. But not everyone will convert from potential customer to an actual one. Make a strategy that will always offer the most quality content or some exclusive content that is accessed only from Facebook.
• Timing – timing is everything. If you did a good job in creating a quality page and content it would be shame if almost no one would be able to see it. Content published around noon will probably reach more users than something published in the middle of the night. Use analytics tool or some 3^rd party software to check when users are most active.

• Communication – it is obvious that Facebook page is becoming a great way to communicate with customers and solve their problems. Lots of people will ask a question of Facebook rather than sending email through form on website. Be quick and correct with answers because that will help you to build trust with customers.
• Contests and surveys – contests are a great way to get more customers and build your fan base. Try to organize contests often and pick random users from everyone who liked/shared/commented that will win the prize. Another great way of getting trust from customers is with surveys and questions. Ask them what they think about your business and ask for advice on improving it.
• Photos – I will just repeat the same thing I said for Google+ in the same section. Use professional or specially designed photos just for your business to make your page more attractive.

So, that’s it for now. I hope you learned a lot about social media networks and discovered how to be successful on them and improve your business. Till the next time, good luck!