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Small business owners in today’s internet environment can benefit from using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, MySpace and even YouTube, to help market their products and services. The trick is to make sure that these efforts don’t miss the mark. If you are unfamiliar with the various tools be sure to spend some time learning about the various SEO tools by familiarizing yourself with each one. Most social media tools have on-line tutorials so be sure to do your homework.
1. Picking the Right Tool: Understanding which tools are most appropriate to your customers and the differences between business to consumer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) marketing is essential. Some tools that are appropriate for personal social media connections with automatic tweets throughout the day might be inappropriate for customers who may not want to hear from you so frequently.
2. Overuse: If you own a business consider blogging and do tweet, Google+ and link the blog to Facebook, but do so only once. This will prevent your customers and followers from viewing your posts as SPAM or outright attacks! Be smart or your posts may soon become unwelcome.
3. Analyze: Be sure to study the metrics and understand which tools are working best. Most of the tools and websites offer an analytics component so you can evaluate how well the tool is working. Also, Google’s algorithms still show that selecting the right keywords and making sure your SEO efforts or blog leverages them in your campaign, is very important.
4. Be Consistent: Make sure your efforts are consistent. Do not start and then stop using SEO tools or your customers may assume that you are no longer in business. Your articles and blog content needs to be timely and relevant.
Use social media to expand your on-line presence and enhance your branding efforts. If you’re unsure exactly how to use the analytics on your website contact your provider and ask them to walk you through the analytics process. It’s important in the long run to understand where most of your requests for information or newsletter subscriptions are coming from. For example, is it Twitter or Facebook that generates the most leads for your company? And, don’t forget to consider opportunities for mobile marketing as well! For more information on this or related topics give us a call at 510-357-2000 or email us at info@signworks.us.com.
