Social Media for business – Get Noticed

Social Media has been taking over the world for a good 8 years now; but it is only within the last 2 to 3 years that the business world has caught on.
Social media for business

Create a Social Buzz

Facebook has been the stronghold of the social media world and can perhaps be credited with kick starting the buzz.

More and more businesses are increasing their social media presence, not just a Facebook page, but a Twitter page, Instagram account, Linkedin profile and a company Pinterest page are becoming more common.

There are hundreds of millions of people using social media every day, why would your business not have a profile?
Social media benefits

We are in a period where people trust their friend’s recommendations over social media very strongly. Being mentioned positively over social media is one of the best forms of advertising.

A company can no longer rely solely on their company website to attract online traffic. People hear about companies and services and then want to research them. If they can only see the website, it’s a bias view. Where, as on Facebook and Twitter for example, they can see feedback from customers and interactions with their page.

Maintaining Your Page

The number of followers or likes that a company has on their social media pages is also very important. There is no point going out and starting a page for every social media outlet and just leaving them to themselves. Even with Facebook, if you don’t actively manage the page you will end up with just a handful of likes. Then when people are researching your company they stumble across the Facebook page and see that only a few people like it. Why would a potential customer choose a company with a few likes over a company with 100?

If you are going to jump into social media for your business, my advice would be to start with the basics. A LinkedIn company profile is very easy to create and it gives your potential customer a different view of your company.

Twitter and Facebook are very easy to use and they don’t require too much attention. Posting something at least once every two days on Facebook is a good rule and once everyday on Twitter is the minimum that I would recommend.
Twitter infographic

Pictures: Powerful Social Media

Once you gain a good following from Twitter and Facebook, you can start to look into other outlets like Instagram and Pinterest. These are both picture orientated outlets, which scares a lot of businesses away, but hang with me for a second.

They can be used by any company, not just photographers or bloggers. Pictures are the most powerful type of social media, because they appeal to the emotions of the viewer. Even an IT company can post a picture and people will ‘like’ it. For example an IT company based in New Zealand specialising in software, obviously won’t be posting pictures of their products. But if they post a picture of New Zealand people will like it, which means others will see the picture. More people seeing the picture means more people will click through to the company website and checkout their products.

A lot of people are put off Instagram and Pinterest for their business because they are not a visually based business, you don’t have to be, you can just post pictures of your staff enjoying themselves or your surroundings. People prefer looking at beautiful pictures far more than reading boring product reviews.

Social media is constantly changing and new outlets are appearing, it is important to not over commit, start small but keep up with play in terms of posting new and appealing content. At the end of the day, the more people that visit your website the better, social media creates another path for potential customers to take towards purchasing your products.