Marketing using social media has become a very important part in the overall Internet marketing strategy for almost all businesses.This applies to home based businesses, as well as for the large corporations. The technology is constantly evolving and, as an Internet Marketer, you must keep abreast of the latest techniques. If you lag behind you will miss a great opportunity. You need to develop a plan of action, for your marketing campaigns, if you hope to stay ahead of your competitors. Here you will find some useful guidance in using social media to promote your home based business.
First, you must set yourself attainable goals. Be realistic when planning these. They should in general, be designed to challenge you in order to bring out your best efforts, but at the same time, allow you to feel confident that you can actually reach them. Of course, the ultimate goal is to make a profit for your business, but you should set short, medium and long term goals. This will allow you to monitor your progress, on a weekly or monthly basis, and guide you forward. It can be something like growing your customer base by a certain monthly percentage. Or you can be more specific, like gaining increased sales from new customers. You can set a financial target. Whatever you decide the goal will be, put it in writing. You must use a tracking system so you know which methods are being most successful and which are not.
Next, define your target market. Be sure you identify those with a proven interest in your niche. It is of little use having a large list of customers, unless they are interested in what you are offering them. Make use of demographics to segregate people. Teenagers and retirees are unlikely to be interested in the same type of product. Remember the thirty to fifty year age group is regarded as being more affluent then the average, and are likely to be more willing buyers. Think about the typical person who uses social media, and then combine that knowledge with the demographic profile of your existing customers.
How will you deliver your message to your target audience. Join several of the more popular platforms that are commonly used in this type of marketing. Facebook is a great one for describing your business offerings and to provide updates. Twitter is good for real-time conversations with your customers for quick messages and comments that do not need a lot of elaboration. YouTube is great for posting videos relating to your product or service. For instance you can post instructional videos on product usage and maintenance.
The platform you choose will depend on the type of message you want to get across. There may more than one platform that is suitable. For instance, if you are running a simple promotion for one day only, you can post a tweet on Twitter and get immediate responses. If you are running a contest, Facebook would be your primary platform to announce it. You can post the instructions and rules about the contest and describe what the prizes will be. You can use Twitter in conjunction with it, but remember the limitation is message length. One major point with social media is to post regularly. Join relevant forums and engage in discussions. A little research will provide you with answers to many of the questions posted, and allow you to gain a reputation as an expert in your own field.
These are just a few basic suggestions in how you can harness the power of social media to draw more customers to your business. Experiment with different approaches and make a note of the results. If an approach was successful, make sure to do it again in the future. Remember the common marketing phrase. Rinse and repeat. This simply means that you continue to use methods and products that have shown proven success. As you gain more experience in using social media as a marketing tool, you will find many ways to maximize its benefits.
