Effectively Market and Promote Your Services and Products With Social Media

Social media marketing is one of the newest forms of online marketing, but it’s also become one of the most important. Unlike posting ads, sending emails, or updating your website, social media gives you the chance to directly interact with your customers and potential customers. You can post updates about your business and offer special discount codes to your followers, but you can also post funny things or links to websites you think they will find interesting. You and your customers can even carry on conversations about anything you want.

You Have to Keep it Up

However, social media marketing does have one major drawback: if you ignore it or don’t consistently use it, it becomes much less effective. You need to post status updates, photos, videos, or links at least once every few days. Otherwise, you won’t be able to compete with the many other posts people see in their feeds every day. You also need to research what days and what times of day are the best times to post. It takes a good amount of work, and you’ll need to dedicate about an hour a day to it.

Gaining Followers

Before you can make posts or upload photos and videos, you’ve got to gain followers. These are people who like your profile and want to see what you post. This is also one of the most difficult parts of using social media. One method is to start a contest and ask people to follow you for a chance at winning something. Just be sure you follow all of the site’s rules for contests – some of them can be very specific. You can also put your social media information on your website, blog, business cards, flyers, and much more. Basically, put it anywhere you think a customer or potential customer would look. If you don’t work on gaining more followers, all of the other work you do is wasted.

You Have to Watch what you Post

While it’s a great idea to post things that your followers will be interested in rather than always posting links to your business, you do have to be careful that you don’t offend anyone. Posting highly political statements, for example, may drive off some of your followers. Attacking your competition may also make you seem unfriendly. Think for a moment before you post something that may upset some of your readers.

You Have to Keep up with Changes

Social media platforms, like search engines, change up their algorithms and guidelines on a regular basis. For example, Facebook has changed how posts with links appear—businesses that post links may find that those posts aren’t viewed by as many people due to the fact that Facebook would like businesses to boost these posts (which means paying money). The guidelines as to what is acceptable in photos and what isn’t might also change, so you’ve got to keep up with any updates to the terms of service.