Social Media Basics for Beginners: Top Tips for Your Business

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Understanding the Importance of Social Media and Social Media Trends

By  JAN ASHBY

ln approaching Social Media for your business, you should lay down some goals and get organized in your thinking.  Why? Because this will benefit your business, to know and LIST down what has been successful in the past; also it’ll help you brainstorm some ideas on how you’re going to educate/advise others.  The more you understand about GooglePlus and social media, the better off you and those who follow you will be !

 

 1)  What are your top business marketing goals for this year?

       ______________________________________
 2)  What has been your most successful marketing effort and why?
       __________________________________________
 3)  What was your biggest social media & marketing lesson learned in 2012?
       _____________________________________________
 4)   What successes have you had with your social media (Engagement, awareness of brand, sales)
       ________________________________________________________________

 5)   What platforms will you engage HELP with, in terms of education?

        _____________________________________________
 6)   Who will you CONTACT and when?
        ________________________

This is just a sampling of a workbook with social media questions to fill out.  You may want to see it in full:

 

 

    social media marketing

 

There is much to be learned from the above guide, and now I’ve got more useful social media marketing info.  It makes you think on who you’d like to correspond with, what goals you wish to accomplish, and the timeframe in which you’d like to do this.  Additionally, you NEED to have in place a method for evaluating your results.  Thus, you may need to use tracking tools or software to accomplish this.

The general dynamics of social media makes it seem a challenging procedure for a lot of businesses to get going, so all the more reasons to be aware what you’re getting into prior to beginning. We have observed a lot of businesses hop on the social media marketing band wagon without having properly planned their strategy and it may get terribly wrong. Regardless of whether you possess an established social media plan in hand that is in serious need for an upgrade, or if perhaps you still have to get round to compiling a social media plan altogether, then look no beyond than this list of thoughts underneath:

 

Precisely what do you expect to accomplish?

 

While exploring straight into social media, regardless if it is for personal profile usage or perhaps your firm, you still need to evaluate everything you aspire to gain ou of it. Over a personal point, this might be just to develop a community of friends and contacts to talk to socially, whilst business objectives might include to enhance customer satisfaction, generate business prospects and speak to customers or clients within a relaxed and personal way.

 

Who would you like to correspond with?

 

Companies have to know exactly who they would like to talk with and also who will eventually purchase their particular service or product. You need to know the online routines of the audience and exactly where they enjoy to spend their time on the internet. Attempt profiling your audience demographic by considering their gender, age group, region, hobbies and interests and purchasing habits. This may help to narrow it down for you.

 

Which systems would you utilize?

 

Realizing who you desire to communicate with makes it possible to decide, where’s best to converse with these individuals. A Business to business industry, for instance, might think about a LinkedIn business profile along with a blog on the corporate site for publishing company up-dates, whilst a consumer brand would be better positioned to concentrate on Facebook to operate typical contests via Facebook apps, and a store owner may choose to reward frequent customers that check-in, utilizing Foursquare.

 

In the beginning, the majority of companies choose to sign up for the 1 billion plus members on Facebook, but this does not have to be the situation. Be picky and ensure the social media routes are tightly related to your business.

 

The length of time you could invest in this?

 

Like every good partnership, ‘social’ media is surely an investment so you have to be within it for the long-run, should you anticipate seeing any strong outcomes. Each and every platform you choose will require to be fertilized and well watered frequently so you’ve to choose who’ll handle each and every platform and which division within your company is accountable for it i.e. marketing, customer services etc. You might also need to take into account the resources needed to keep track of the accounts and act in response on regular basis, the number of up-dates you may publish on every platform per week – and do not fail to take into account holiday or sickness cover up.

 

There are plenty of inquiries to be clarified but this way of thinking is vital and it’s wise to determine this before you go live to make certain that it is a maintainable model.

 

The way it will go with your current schedule?

 

You will need to conserve a consistent flow of up-dates so that you might learn how to integrate the social media work load with other obligations. Even though social media is usually considered a 24/7 program, it doesn’t have to be monitored around the clock. Look for ways to set aside team members to monitor the accounts at certain times during the day.

 

Specifically what vocal tone must you adopt?

 

In your social media approach, you should consider a tone that your particular company is satisfied with. It ought to stay professional, as well as in line with the persona of your brand, but reasonably casual and you might wish to give consideration to replicating the language of your clients/customers.   🙂

 

How would you evaluate progress?

 

While choosing to devote efforts and resources to social media, it seems sensible to want to understand how it’s performing. There are several resources around that enable you to keep track of crucial metrics for reporting. There are a few excellent tools which are totally free, but for the more in-depth information you may be required to pay. Some free of charge tools which are well worth looking into include Google Analytics for monitoring web site and blog traffic, Facebook insights on company Pages for acquiring fan demographic and which contents are generating the maximum interactions, and HootSuite for checking url clicks and top referrers on Twitter.

 

 

VISIT This Youtube video –Social Media for Dummies .

 

I have listed more resources below:

 

 

Here’s a “social media overview” –

Introduction to SEO from Rand Fishkin

 

 

Helpful Resources:   120 Social Media Ideas – PDF    🙂

How to Split Test

Google Plus: Location-Based Searching

 

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