Social Media for Business Growth And Boom.

One of the most powerful ways to generate visibility for your brand today is ‘Influence’ marketing. A simple concept that makes a lot of difference.

Concept: Find someone with a large social following in the industry; someone who is well-known and respected in the community. Get this individual to mention your brad to people, share your material or engage with you.

While I am going to cover this subject in a different (dedicated) post, the idea here is to share ways to get your brand known and eventually increase sales. Using social media is a good way to generate brand awareness. As discussed in my blog Tips for Using Social Media in Business, being transparent about your procedures will take you a long way toward attracting and retaining customers. To keep the lines of communication open, give readers the scoop on your company blog. You will be surprised to know that some well-known companies even post sales and profit figures to show that the company is on solid financial footing!

Watch your words

You don’t want to get involved in legal hassles with competitors or other businesses because of what you post on your website or any other platform that you are using to promote your business. Be careful what you say about others. For example, once the owner of a clothing company described a media company as a “scam”. He was slapped with a $20 million lawsuit. It is alright to recount negative experiences with others. It will not necessarily lead to a court battle and might also help warn others, but be sure to steer clear of name-calling.

Get involved

Putting up a blog or a fan page on one of the social media platforms will not ensure visitors. They soon sense that the flow of conversation is only one way. Experts claim that not being responsive and not participating in discussions or acknowledging comments is a sure-shot way to kill a community. Most companies that really care about the opinion of their customers, are constantly involved in the feedback and comments process, or even outsource the work to another company that can manage it for them. It is important to get involved with the customer, reader, fan, or whoever your target audience is.

Try to avoid stand-ins

As mentioned above, with all the other tasks required within a company, it’s tempting to outsource managing your social media or even to try automating the process. Until your company has grown to a certain level, that is, until you become a large enterprise instead of a small business, try to handle your social media yourself. An automated message can easily be perceived as spam, and a small error done by a third party can cost you a fortune. If nothing else, your contacts will quickly call you out for sending out automated messages. So, spend whatever time you can, managing social media, but let it be quality time.

Avoid false identities

With the system of IP address tracking, fake identities adopted by people, friends, family, employees etc. for the sake of fluffing up the reputation of a company are quickly tracked by observers. Such activities can easily land you in legal trouble and the practice can hurt your company’s reputation. It is common to hear how a company had to pay a certain fine in settlement costs to the state government, or an individual or another company for having its employees post flattering reviews of the company without disclosing their affiliation. Avoid it.

Connect employees

Almost all large corporations today have built in-house networks. These platforms link employees working in different locations. Small and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of readily available tools to facilitate collaboration. Companies even have custom social networks, to connect its staff in the U.S., for example, with employees in Europe and Asia. This not only helps form better business relationships, it makes possible the sharing of best practices across cultures. If this sounds interesting, contact HyperEffects, for a free consultation on the concept, now.

Reward loyalty

Run frequent social media promotions. They have certainly proven to be more successful than coupons sent in the mail. These promotions can not only be run more frequently than sending coupons, they are more whimsical and engaging form of campaigning. Run games and quizzes and offer freebies to customers to earn more followers.

I hope these tips help you in getting the best out of social media. I am going to share more tips in my next blog, so keep coming back!