Social Media Marketing

Are you using Social Media Marketing to effectively communicate with prospects within your target market with compiling messages to inform, educate and engage them?

Social Media Marketing is today’s “word-of-mouth”. Social Media can attract and hold the attention of vast demographics that have grown numb to more traditional forms of marketing and advertising. It also has a tremendous capacity to reach wide audiences in just a short amount of time and sustain visibility on the Internet.

In today’s Internet-fueled world, digital traffic flies around the globe at the speed of light. It is now possible to befriend someone you’ve never met in Singapore, trade services with an entrepreneur in Finland, or sell to a farmer in South Africa. Email is all but instantaneous and social media fills the figurative airwaves in ever-greater numbers.

In the midst of such possibility, it can feel difficult to figure out how to connect with the flesh-and-blood people in your local area. Yet if you don’t, how can you ever hope to drive them through the doors of your brick-and-mortar business?

Simply put, you can’t.

Is Social Media Marketing Right for Your Local Business?

Many people, particularly those in the older generations, put a staunch foot down and declare that they will get business the way they’ve always gotten it: word of mouth. To which we say, awesome! You absolutely should.

The catch? A lot, and we mean A LOT, of word of mouth happens on social media these days. Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest are hotbeds of consumer activity and potential leads for you, if only you know how to leverage them. Even if your business is “just fine” as it is, by using social media, you can snag more and better customers than you have right now. With a wider customer or client pool, you’ll have more opportunity to create the responsible customer base that you want to work with.

And chances are if you’re reading this, you’re not just fine. Chances are you know you need to get in on this digital game and start putting the word out over social media so that you can beat the competition and get those awesome customers in your door. Only then can you create a business that meets your goals for success.

First things first, though.

Understanding your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Before you can launch social media campaigns, you need to understand how they work and what they can do for you. Even if you’re still a skeptic, go ahead and read through the following pages, where we’ll briefly cover six of the main social media superstars: Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. These platforms are not only well-established with tons of traffic, but they’re excellent for local business, so it pays to know how to use them.

In each of the related pages, we will take a look at one type of social media, asking the same questions each time: What Is It? How Does It Work for Local Business? What Are Its Benefits? Why Should You Care? By breaking down each type of social media into its main components and uses, you will have a much easier time seeing how it relates to your small business.

Of course, there are a few local business marketing strategies that work for all of the social media platforms. These include following the local businesses in your area and sharing their content in the hopes that they will do the same for you, as well as networking with the owners and managers of these businesses. You’ll also want to research and use relevant, local-centric keywords, i.e. “Morningside chiropractic specialist.” Be sure to include the area (down to the neighborhood, in larger cities) as well as the service. We will go into strategies that work for individual social media platforms on their pages, but always do keyword research and cultivate local networks.

Nervous about how to get going? It’s okay to need a bit of help! The team here at MarketBlazer can help you set up a campaign, then teach you to use it in far less time than you could figure it out on your own. And time is money, right?

Summary of Social Media Marketing Components: