When you first start using social media to reach out to your audience, usually one particular social network stands out as being right for your business. For some businesses, Facebook seems like a natural choice; for others, it may be Twitter or Pinterest or another social media site.
Now that we're heading into the third week of the government shutdown, businesses across the country are affected to varying degrees. Obviously those business owners with direct governmental ties, for example those with government contracts, are affected the most, but the longer the shutdown continues, the further down the effects trickle.
Facebook and Twitter are always there. You can pop in and check your accounts, disappear for a couple of weeks, and when you come back, everything is just how you left it, people carrying on the global conversation without you. What you're not seeing, however, is what your silence is costing you in followers and potential customers. Here are some reasons why it's important to stay consistently active on your social media accounts.
The concept of a social media crisis is nothing new. Tales of people saying regretful things on the internet are nearly as old as the internet itself. The snag with online foot-in-mouth syndrome, however, is that unlike in real life, the things you say online continue to live on forever. Even if you delete the text in question, if someone has already drawn attention to it and reposted it, that text can still be spread around and read by countless numbers of people, long after you unsuccessfully tried to take back what you said.
If there's one thing we can always count on, it's that Facebook will keep changing things, and the most recent set of changes involves how the news feed algorithm decides what stories to show at the top of a user's feed page. Previously, the average Facebook user read 57% of the stories in their news feeds, but older content got lost in the shuffle as users failed to scroll down far enough to see the other stories.
Pinterest is one of those growing social networks that's still somehow elusive to many people. Sometimes, if the nature of your product or service isn't particularly visual, it can be difficult to see how to create boards with compelling content, and to build a following for those boards. If you've been having trouble getting your pinterest account to grow, here are five ways you can help get the ball rolling.
We all know the importance of periodic website redesign. Over time, you'll find that your site has outdated contact information, old photos that need updates, or design features that do not reflect current standards. However, though most of us keep up with our websites, often we don't give the same attention to our social media accounts.
Twitter, perhaps more than other social networks, has somewhat of a reputation for marketing spam. Quite often you'll see companies using their Twitter accounts for nothing but self-promotion, to the point where the entire tweet stream becomes tantamount to spam. Not surprisingly, this is a good way to lose followers fast, and what these companies are not realizing is that there's a reason the word "social" is the first part of social media. Here's how you can avoid making the same mistake.
Marketing over social media, like most online endeavors, is less a monetary investment, and more an investment of time and effort. It takes work to keep up with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, or however many other social networks you belong to, and keeping those conversations going strong is the key to making the effort worth it. So when you run across a new smaller, niche social network that seems like it could be promising for your business, it can be difficult to decide what to do. Do you really have time to be taking on another set of social media responsibilities? On the other hand, could a social network more tailored to your specific audience be exactly the boost your strategy needs?
For many years, it seemed like LinkedIn cruised along without making many changes. As a result, many people, both on a personal and business level, set their accounts up and then left them to stagnate. Over the past year, however, LinkedIn has made a lot of improvements to the site, so if you haven't updated your profile in a while, now is a great time.
If you're one of the literally millions of people who is using LinkedIn only as a personal résumé and business-related social network, you're missing out on the numerous ways that this powerful site can help your marketing strategy. Here's a list of tricks you can use to turn your LinkedIn account into a marketing workhorse:
For most of us, social media benefits our businesses for two reasons. One, it gives us a way to engage and interact with both customers and potential customers on a personal level. Two, it gives us a platform from which we can market our products and services in a way that will help us connect with the largest audience possible.