Social Media for Business: A Marketer's Guide

​Promoting a business was never easy regardless of the business nature and size. Whether you are a huge corporation or a small business, you have to make sure you get to market your brand well. From TV Ads, Newspaper publishing Ads to giving flyers and brochures, you will take all these methods just to spread the word about your brand.

​Reaching out and marketing businesses has never been as easy as when social media has paved its way through people’s lifestyle. Getting in touch with a brand’s target market has been a lot easier since then. However, while you should be marketing your brand through social media, you shouldn't necessarily be on every platform. You have to choose and get to know the right platforms to invest in. Choose where you're more likely to reach and engage with your audience. Take some time to familiarize yourself with each platform. Start getting to know the basics of today's most popular social media platforms.

Facebook

​Facebook could be the greatest social network that you wouldn’t want to neglect. It has the widest population with the most specific targeting. As we all know, Facebook facilitates connection and communication. Having a Facebook page is an easy way to introduce your brand and connect with possible customers. Thus, regardless of the industry, Facebook is an essential platform to have a name in. Establish a good reputation and a number of followers on this platform and see the impact of it on your business.

​Never underestimate the possibilities on this medium. It also offers Facebook Ads where you can invest your time and money in exchange of great exposure of your business and brand name. Target specific demographic too! Post contents of your followers’ interests and build rapport online. Use this space to answer questions and solve problems as well.

Twitter
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​Twitter is fast and responsive. With the limited characters, you can share short text updates. You can post real time and shot updates about your business without getting annoying. Twitter also facilitates fast response to queries and complaints. This means better customer service as people would usually tweet about their experiences on brands. Having a responsive twitter page is essential to make customers feel valued. This also allows fast spreading of the word about your business. 

​Use hashtags to include your brand on trending topics. It helps boost your post’s exposure and interactions. Moreover, you can easily interact with other users by mentioning their usernames in your posts, so Twitter is a great way to quickly connect with people all around the world.

Instagram
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​Instagram is a visual social media platform based entirely on photo and video posts. This gives visualization to products and services that customers can only imagine on posts. This targets users on mobile who are engaging on image and video posts. This is great for business owners that have good eye for detail and at least basic photography skills for high quality content.

​This social network also gives you chance to post sponsored ads. This allows your content to be published on feeds of your followers for a greater chance of engagement and interactions.

YouTube
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​YouTube is a platform where people can view, upload, rate, share and comment on videos. As a huge hub for news and entertainment, it is a great platform to give more thorough information about your business. This is advantageous for businesses driven by creativity so it's important to have an eye for visually appealing content. You can effectively use this social network to target influencers and vloggers called YouTubers who have large audiences that believes on products and services they endorse. It is strategic to partner with YouTubers for product placement, because these users already have engaged audiences. It would be much easier and cheaper to endorse your product or services. As one that is owned by Google, you can also enjoy search engine optimization as your videos could appear more easily on Google results compared to other websites. 

LinkedIn
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Connection is the keyword of LinkedIn. Connecting with business professionals and with people from the same industry is easiest with LinkedIn. The platform allows you to target people by industry, job title, and others. This is the perfect platform for relationship building among business owners and other professionals. Just like in offline world, one can build LinkedIn Groups where discussions could be done.

Pinterest
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​By "pinning" boards, one can save and post visually appealing images. Like Instagram, this is focused on visuals that are classified according to different categories. It is important to use this platform if you have a business under its most popular categories. You may use this platform to post product details and even location maps. The technique on this platform is to keep your boards organized and search-friendly.

Snapchat
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​Snapchat is a platform based on temporary posts. It is known for its disappearing content. This platform allows its users to send videos and photos, available for up to 10 seconds at a time. One can also post public Stories, which disappears after 24 hours. Because posts are so temporary, posts are simpler and less complicated in nature. This platform is useful once you have a good amount of audience as they are the only ones who can view your posts. The good thing with this social network is once you post a content, it gets to be more interactive as your followers know you and they know that your posts are only temporary.

Using social media to reach to customers is now a part of almost all business strategies. It’s very important to focus on the most suitable platform for your business. You wouldn’t want to be having a lot of accounts and end up posting mediocre posts for all of them. It’s important to post quality and interactive contents while targeting the right audience for your business. Now that you already have an idea about the top social media sites you can use start by identifying the most suitable platform for your business.

​Now is the perfect time to use social media to gain customers and boost sales. If you want to make sure you are launching your page right, get an experienced social media advertising company to do the job for you.