The Impact of Social Media On Branding – Branding through Social Media

The effect of Social Media on Branding & the best ways of branding on social media platforms- More than 40% of digital consumers use social media platforms to research about brands, products or services. (Source: GlobalWebIndex ). Many brands have also seen positive outcome by effectively doing social media marketing including paid advertisements. Most popular social media platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, SnapChat, TikTok, Pinterst. So we can’t deny the important role of social media in branding. Now let’s explore how social media impacts branding & the importance of it.

Introduction

This world is a changing place that rapidly undergoes alterations sometimes it moves forward and sometimes moves backwards. Since the inception of this universe mankind has a thirst to acquire knowledge and explore the possibilities that are present in his surroundings.

This has led to much advancement and has provided him with great discoveries that have transferred humans from caves to highly furnished flats. Every upcoming generation enjoys much better and improved living standards and facilities than the previous ones.

It is like one generation suffers and the next can take benefits from the hard work of their ancestors. You don’t need to go back into the histories very far for that just consider the difference that is present between you and your parents. Your parents have grown up in an environment where there were very limited options available for interaction with people living in other parts of the world.

But for you it is a piece of cake all what you need to do is to log on to the internet and send a friend request utilizing the various forms of social media that are present on the internet. One thing is valid that a great convenience has been brought into the lives of people because of the advent of social media.

Definition of Social Media

In simple words the social media can be defined as tools that are utilized by individuals to interact, share, express and make contacts with others. These media mostly included the social networking websites that provide a platform for people in enhancing their communications with others.

These days the social media are being regarded as the most powerful networking tools of this world. They actually employ the use of internet based and mobile technologies for keeping people in touch with each other. The most important part that is played here belongs to the internet because it is the main medium through which people interact.

The power that now social media exhibit is very strong this can be analyzed by the fact that it’s the fastest source of news updates.

Types

When you talk about various forms of social media you come across many varieties some of them are being mentioned below.

• Internet forums
• Social blogs
• Weblogs
• Micro blogging
• Social networks
• Wikis
• Podcasts
• Photographs or pictures
• Video rating
• Social bookmarking

These are only few products the list can go on and on.

The recent stats show that almost 800 million users are registered on the different social networking sites. The numbers are increasing on daily bases with more and more people giving their appreciation to the power of communication.

People are getting smarter and recognizing their true benefits and point towards the direction of the blowing wind. No doubt that social media these days have become a major source of influencing and impacting upon the minds of others. But one thing needs to be kept in mind that excess of everything is bad you should utilize these facilities, but within limits.

Brand building through social media

Launching your business to the next level involves proper planning, strategies & implementation, given the budget constraint & the timeline. However, the evolution of the social Media has marked a significant change in the outlook of the investors.

Marketing a particular products’ brand is an art, social media is just the perfect platform to exhibit your art. The wide popularity of social media from a business point of view is just because for its cost effectiveness & time. The only platform that takes your brand to a millions’ pc , iphone or android in just minutes at minimum expenditure.

No doubt, promoting your brand identity is a time consuming process, especially for the start ups. However the real challenge comes in the consistency or maintaining the goodwill of an already promoted brand. Let us broadly classify our discussions into two broad categories. One Brand Promotion for the start ups & the other being the brand management in the long run.

Brand Promotion for the start ups

A start up should strategically chalk out plans targeting its customers ,targeting the markets or specific locations & obviously keeping in mind the taste, preferences & the choice of its customers. Analyzing the given parameters, one should focus briefly on the following tasks :

Defining the brand :

know your brand out & out ,with what your brand has to deliver to its targeted clients. Don’t confuse your clients with unnecessary rich text contents. Try to be brief & to the point, with what you do, deliver & offer. Don’t make false promises & offers that you can’t deliver.

Focus On Brand Message : 

A short-crispy brand  message attracts new clients & carries a long lasting impressions upon the minds of the existing clients. Try to be unique in choosing an effective slogan or message. Make a comparative analysis of your competitors & then make a note of where you are unique & different from the others. Keeping all these in mind, choose a suitable message. Make sure you carry the sense of your message, throughout your updates, posts & tweaks.

Building relationship with clients:

Whatever, be the hectic- busy schedule, try to engage with your clients, make room for interactions with them. Respond to their comments, questions & queries .Engage them in solving puzzles, crack jokes & fun videos. Run occasional contests, promotional offers & rewards for the visitors.

Graphical Illustrations: 

Beyond regular content tweaks, one should concentrate on photos & graphical tweaks also. Nowadays the social–strategy is more into image–driven strategies, incorporating logos, photos & graphics. Other than facebook, there are various other photo-centric social sites like – pinterest ,instagram  & tumblr .Image driven social marketing is totally a new concept, but an effective tool  that can boost up your sales, revenue & ROI.

Brand Management In The Long Run

Once you establish the brand identity of your concerned products or services, prepare yourself for the next level –to maintain consistency in the brand management for the long run. Do not deviate from the above scope of actions, keeping all the above plan of actions consistent, execute some more ideas.

We are now going to discuss few more ideas, of how you can earn a consistent reputation of your brand in the long run :

Analyze your clients –

The most important aspect of reputation management is to get a complete idea of your client’s choice, demand & preferences. Try to promote your services or product accordingly. Example – if you are in the fashion industry, try to promote your apparels & dress materials, in a way so that it speaks of the quality of the product. Like the comfort levels of the garments, how whether friendly it is, weather your products are free from color fade, or not. Tweak your posts & updates accordingly.

Cross Branding the Products –

Once you are able to locate your targeted customers, try to promote your products across other industries. Example – the obvious targeted customers for a fashion industry are the models. Try to cross brand your product, say promote your products across the educational institutions, where  you can take the advantage of designing uniforms for the students .Go for promotions in the film industries or promote your brands through linkedin where you can directly attract the attentions of the corporates of other industries.

Know your competitors – 

knowing your competitors’ move is one of the major strategic analysis you have to continue with. It may happen that your competitors going for paid ads on facebook, ultimately resulting in thousands of likes, don’t get tensed or confused; promoting a particular page organically is much more effective in the long run.

Don’t post updates that would directly hurt your rivals’ brand, rather say positive things about your own brand –its unique features, quality, and values & if possible arrange some of your clients’ feedback who have had bitter experience in the market, but now satisfied with your services.

Again, you have to be tactical in it, don’t be rude to your competitors. Try to chalk out the drawbacks of your competitors’ products/services, just play smart & let your visitors know in brief the point of advantages your products/services delivers in compared to your rivals’.

Corporate Social Responsibilities –

At a certain stage, it is very important to represent   your   brand having a wider outlook .I’m not asking you to deviate from your core business, but try to observe the national or international events. Find the calendar of the events by Google search.

This in turn would help your brands to earn added values. A certain section of our community with having patriotic or social sentiments can be easily attracted. Don’t avoid this trick, you can get number of NGOs, govt. agencies & educational institutions attracted to your brand.

Again it is worth saying that the above plan of actions is a continuous process that earns result in the long run. So do not get demotivated, if your hard work does not reap immediate results. It may be boring or stressful at times, but please do not give up, stick to your plans & devote at least 2-3 hours regularly in the promotional process.

Although the above discussed points are the real effective tools to promotion, but your performance would also be judged upon how actively you participate in the offline activities. Offline activities may involve media ads, pamphlets, hoardings, designing t-shirts or caps giving detailed information of your web address, social sites’ links, data like no. of likes & share etc.

Hope, I am able to convey some ideas about the ongoing strategies & actions that could be executed to grow your business in the long run.

Actionable Social Media Strategies for branding

How to do brand building through social media.

Complete the basics

• Perform audit across all of your social accounts
• Ensure logos, banners, about us and social handles, hashtags are consistent with your brand guidelines & do regular audit.
• Make sure you’re maintaining a consistent social calendar and your content aligns with the look and feel of your brand.

Amplify your visual branding

• Write your visual brand guide to include fonts, their uses and colors in a brand guideline doc.
• Create brand specific graphic templates for similar type of posts.
• Create photos and videos that keep your brand’s aesthetic and color choices in mind.
• Experiment with 50-50 or 70-20-10 social content strategy (A balanced blend of low risk domain specific content or medium to high risk trending content)

Develop your buyer personas

• Create multiple buyer personas (A buyer persona is a research-based profile that depicts a real target customer) and assign them with the social media networks that match.
• Examine your networks’ different demographics or set up listening queries or survey.
• Create content to match the personas.

Set up your brand voice & tone

• Develop and write out your brand voice / brand message and brand tone guide. Use social media listening tools.
• Audit your own social media posts to see where you can improve in voice and tone.
• Share the guide and educate your content writing team & customer support.

Create multiple accounts on multiple platforms

• Create profile, pages, groups or community per social media platform as per your target audience. If you have multiple set of TG specific to different geography or locations set up your profile accordingly keeping neuroscience neuro-psychological pattern of the TG.

Start Conversing

• Tell compelling stories
• Talk like a human (not Robot)
• Do interaction with customers and prospects
• Be transparent & flexible
• Use automation wherever necessary, do not overdo.

Brand Messaging with Social Media

Using social media sites for promoting brands is nothing new. Almost all the businesses, large or small, have used this tool. One of the key reasons why social media sites get so much attention when it comes to branding is their ability to get out a brand message effectively.

They are, in fact, excellent venues for promoting your brand message say in terms of popularity, reach, ease, or interactivity. However, the real challenge is to make your targeted audience hear your message.

The crowd is enormous in these social channels. As mentioned, almost every business is using it, as a result branding messages that start with great intentions often end-up being nonexistent.

The problem lies elsewhere! There are certain ways to use social channels in order to get your message out in the popular social media sites. You need to understand the various social platforms and the ways they can help you to promote your branding message.

I have often seen marketers getting confused while selecting the platforms to promote their branding messages. It is essential to determine when to use a particular platform to promote messages. For example, press releases are ideal for the initial burst, but they tend to fade quickly once the message is published.

Though it is a strong method of promoting brand messages, blogs and social media sites provide a superior message delivery system on long-term basis. In fact, social media spread out your message over time, while blogs can diversify it and break it into individual components.

Also, press releases are not for showing your creativity. Your PR content needs to be simple, brief and to-the-point. There is no way you can play with the words. On the other hand, creativity plays a crucial role in social media and blogs.

Thus, you need to be strategic while promoting your brand message through social channels. With the fierce market competition, you don’t have the luxury of focusing on one or two channels and leaving out the others. Thus, your goal would be to incorporate all the channels of online marketing to achieve a better result in promoting your brand message.

One solution could be to announce the message through press release to the initial burst, where press releases provide the best possible result. Since there is hardly any scope for creativity in your press release, keep the message simple.

Now, to promote the message on social media slice it up to different small segments, but don’t go into much detail about any your components. The blogs are the place to tell the story to your audience, to connect with them and engage them. So next time you plan a brand message don’t forget to incorporate the aforementioned tips, and thank us later.

Social Media Marketing And The Effects It Can Have On Your Business

We are all familiar with the super-fast growing social media platform known as Facebook. Many of us have probably also heard of numerous other social media outlets currently used by many cultures all over the world to interact, communicate, trade ideas and preferences, and most of all advertise.

Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media applications can become confusing, and easily a burden if you are not sure what to do or how to create interaction with your friends, followers, subscribers, and possible customers.

What I would like to do is just take a few minutes to show you that social media can truly be made easy and that it can also have a great impact, not only on SEO, but also on allowing your target audience to get a personalized feel for your company while increasing their trust in your brand.

With far less effort then you may think, you can create a very genuine interaction and following through conversation, poles, and your everyday thoughts on multiple different platforms. Who truly would not want that? Remember that more than 800 million users take part in Facebook alone, let alone the other platforms.

Many of these consumers look forward to being able to interact and give feedback with their favorite brands and local businesses alike. Are you having a slow week in sales, run a special and advertise on Facebook and Twitter letting your local area know that they can come in this week to receive a deal. Curious on what flavors the public prefers, develop a pole easily on Facebook and allow your friends to give you unbiased consumer survey information for free!

When engagement is original and custom tailored to draw in potential customers, Social Media can quickly go to the very top of your lead generation techniques. Many experts say to be lighthearted and visual, lending loving support and using pictures to draw in your crowd. Do not be judgmental, hurtful, or overbearing as there is enough of this in the world and tends to drive people away rather than draw them in.

Show the lighter side of your business. Integrate sales pitches with humorous pictures, sharing fun office moments, and most of all letting your social media friends and followers feel that they can relate to you in more ways than just in a business customer relationship.

Showing that your business consists odof real life employees and your daily fun in the office tends to generate a higher trust factor within the consumer yielding higher sales, more frequent orders, and most importantly greater word of mouth and social media shares of your posts.

Twitter is all about engagement, which can happen with a single person or millions, depending upon the number of retweets that your tweet receives. Tweets grow exponentially, for example when you tweet something interesting to your followers, and one or more of your followers retweets it, then all of their followers see it.

Then let’s say for instance one of their followers reads it and retweets it. It is very easy with this method for a single thought or idea to be transmitted to oftentimes thousands and sometimes even millions of people within just a few minutes.

Using Social Media For Marketing Purposes

Social Media and Marketing

The popularity of social media platforms in recent times has opened a new avenue for small business owners to advertise their products and services to a wider audience without spending a dime or very little on promoting your brand.

This avenue has gone a long way in closing the gap between smaller businesses and larger organisations in terms of advertising for SME’s no longer have to set un-reachable budgets for traditional advertising on Television programs and Newspapers.

This article intends to provide tips for small business owners to help them harness the power of the social media in driving market sales, reaching a wider audience and achieving profitability in your business endeavours.

Tips to Using Social Media Platforms

There are different social networking platforms available on the web and each platform has its unique features, method of use etc. which makes each one suitable for meeting different marketing purposes. The first step in maximizing the web is obviously creating an online presence for your business and this presence could either be a complete website or just a blog depending on your available capital. But launching your website is just the first step which brings us to the process of attracting clients through social networking and creating contents on a regular basis for your website.

Choosing the right Social Networks: 

Contrary to popular knowledge, your brand does not need to be on every social media site for you would end up expending more energy than needed in maintaining those website which would be counter productive in the long run. We advice you to conduct a market research on what platforms would best serve your business and capitalize on them.

Update regularly: 

This goes for both your blog posts and social contents. updating quality contents pertaining to your business and creating links which direct interested visitors to your site is the most important feature needed to market your business for it gives you visibility on diverse search engines. We know updating regularly can be quite difficult therefore taking advantage of freelancers by outsourcing blog posting and updates are recommended.

Understand your Audience: 

This also calls for a form off research, you are advised to study your competitors, your prospective clients and what drives them. This information should then be used to create a unique strategy for your brand without copying the competition.

Be Lazy: 

This may sound unconventional, shocking and bizarre but ask yourself what type of clients do you want to attract? Paying ones or just followers? Therefore we advise you to create unique contents, sit back, relax and let the true clients who need your services come to you. Avoid unnecessary one on one contact but focus on providing unique solutions to diverse problems pertaining to your business and watch clients flock to your firm.

Have relentless focus: 

Once you have created or identified your business goal, focus on that goal and tailor your messages on your social media account to show that focus. It pays to be a master of one trade than a jack of all trades.

Bloggers And The Social Media

Blogging for a change:

Today, after five years of success on the internet, blogging is well known to everyone with basic computers known how. Blogging might be described in the simplest words as the true expression of one’s opinion on the social media through the internet.

Blogging is one of the most used words in the past year according to Mariam Webster’s dictionary. It is not just subjected to a specific age group, but it is readily being used by professionals, college mates and even school going whiz kids. It is the ultimate platform to express your thoughts regarding any topic. Blogging has been in use for the past 5 years and now we can see many making a living out of it.

The better way to blog:

The internet is today’s quickest means of earning a living and blogging just adds to it. The writer is called a blogger and is in charge of the blog. The success of the blog depends on the number visitors, who termed as traffic of the blog. The more visitors, more will you be subscribed, and per subscription you may earn a little amount, if you know the figures and tactics.

There are many ways of increasing traffic to our blog. The first and foremost may be advertised. Many bloggers like to advertise their blog in order to get attention. Other than that, pages on social media websites, like Facebook and tweets on twitter will help. Most social media websites and search engine advertisements may be recommended but make sure your advertisements are directed towards your specific audience.

The kinds of blogging:

There are blogs regarding each subject. May it be healthier, there will be blog regarding each detail of health. You find bloggers specifically discussing cancer, hospitals, doctors, major and minor surgeries, etc. when it comes to fashion, you will have different blogs regarding bags, shoes, tops, pants, jumpsuits, designers, fashion weeks, runways, models and what not.

Blogging has become life itself. Everyone is aware that people turn to blogs for personal and true opinions. There is not much of fakes found in the bloggers as they give authentic suggestions. Other than these fun topics, you will find many detailed blogs on politics, politicians, self-help, transportation, mapping, and history and capital cities. You can find celebrity blogs too.

They are very common now. Celebrities love to write on blogs and express themselves in self-made sentences rather than paper written speeches. Doctors give daily advice on their specialized genre. You will find many people running their businesses through blogging. There is a lot of buying and selling going on these commercial blogs. And many multinational companies and turned to blogging in order to showcase their selves and find potential clients

Advantage: 

the advantages are endless. You may connect with people across the globe. You may carry out successful trading through blogging. Advertisements and promotions are also a full advantage of blogs. Lastly with so many blogging, there are healthy arguments and group discussion. Information is exchanged and ultimately increase in your know. Blogging is highly useful.

Public Relations and Social Media

“Information Overload” – This is the age we are currently in, where you can virtually gather information about anything out there. In fact, Google caters to more than 11 billion queries per month and Facbook has around 700 million users. In addition, there are more than 5 billion mobile subscribers.

The age of digital communication has largely affected the relationships between brands and consumers. As a result, big brands as well as mid-size and small businesses are focusing on social media sites to create brand awareness and a firm public relation strategy. Social media sites have proven to be a powerful tool for PR professionals to affect the company’s online brand visibility and customer engagement. This is why communication professionals are now mastering the new rules for discovering consumer information and for sharing them.

However, before shaping up a social media strategy, the PR professionals need to understand how intersection of social media and search engine optimization work as a powerful tool to reach and engage consumers and inspire interaction and meaningful business outcomes. The following are some fundamentals that PR professionals must seek to understand if they want to create a difference in the world of social media.

• Your company must stay on top of future trends, when it comes to search engine optimization and content marketing.
• PR professionals must learn to develop search and social personas, keeping in the mind the consumers that they are catering to. Simultaneously, they must gather knowledge about how to use their social and search strategy to amplify the company’s public relations outcomes.
• Social media is not only about Facebook and about Twitter. PR professionals must have a sound knowledge about the best practices of SEO for YouTube, Blogs and other digital channels. Strategic as well as on-demand research for topics and keywords relevant to the social web is also necessary.

Public relations and marketing expertise is now unifying, thanks to the popularity of social media sites. And it is helping to bring powerful brand messages to influence the social web, eventually influencing the buyer’s decision. This development can be a compelling opportunity for the PR professionals to improve their reach and placements. And as a public relations professional, you must start implementing social media optimization while marketing your news content.

Social Media to Acquire New Customers

Roadmap to Acquire New Customers via Social Media.

Every marketer will tell you that social media is essential for customer acquisition and brand awareness. However, no one can give you the exact roadmap to convert the random Twitter and Facebook users into your real-life customers.

It is not even possible; different businesses have to address different challenges when it comes to acquiring new customers through social media channels.

As Lisa D’Aromando, the social media community manager of Equinox says, “If you’re our customer, you’ve signed up for a year-long service, unlike the Starbucks of the world, where you can be a customer by coming in for a cup of coffee one day.”

Thus, it is essential to tailor your social media strategy based on your specific industry. However, there are few universal ways to help organizations to attract new customers on the social channels.

Focus on your search

The first one is to create and share meaningful content. In fact, it is the best bet for any business for attracting and sustaining new followers to grow their business. Mashable spoke with some leading social brands few weeks back, asking the companies about their strategies for finding new customers as well as to connect with their existing customers.

This social media news blog found that it is essential to keep a track of the social media behavior of your brands. Every day, more than 340 million tweets are sent and a few of them are likely to refer your brand without you noticing them. McKee Floyd, Sweetgreen’s director of brand development says, “Just because chatter on social media channels isn’t mentioning your brand by handle or hashtag doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”

Thus, you need to be proactive. One of the best ways to keep a track of what people are saying about your brand on the popular social channels is to set up notification for searches and mentions for your brand or relevant keywords. You can use the personal social browsers like TweetDeck to pull tweets and Facebook mentions, even if the users are not using the hashtag.

The key here is to start monitoring all of your brand or related keyword mentions religiously. While monitoring the mentions about your brand helps to know what people are saying about your company, monitoring relevant keywords specific to your business will help you to understand the need of the people as well as the market trend. Based on such information you can create strategies to cultivate a new audience, attracting them with your new offers and products that address their needs and demands.

Another good way to find new customers is to peep into your competitors’ account. Look for the people engaging with your competitors and let them know about your business. Usually customers like to be handpicked; since you are asking them to check your products, they are more likely to take it as an honor. However, be charming and human in your approach rather than simply pushing your sales message.

Use engaging images

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

This concept is also applicable when it comes to acquiring new customers through social media. Take Facebook for example, photos posted on this social channel drive the engage the users twice as much as the post can do. Why do you think Facebook acquired Instagram? Yes, images attract people and promote user engagement. Thus, the tip is to start using images to attract new followers and fans.

When asked about the trick of using images to attract clients, Danni Snyder the owner of Dannijo says, “You can subliminally market without annoying your customers because each post is capable of accomplishing a number of things.” And it’s very rightly explained, as images can successfully inspire discussion and user engagement while helping you to gain valuable customer feedback. At the same times, images provide visual inspiration and insight about your brands to your social followers.

However, there is no hard and fast rule for the images to be only product-focused. In fact, too much of promotional images are likely to annoy your followers, rather use any images that will attract and interest the social crowd.

Hosting competitions

Nothing interests customers like the freebies and contests are one of the best ways to offer your giveaways. Better yet, contents are great to boost your user engagements. However, you need to be strategic about your offerings. While discussing one of their contests, Natasha Khan, the social media manager of ModCloth said, “The social actions surrounding that event brought in thousands of new fans, which we otherwise would not have gained.”

Contests and offers, if planned strategically, can create high impact on generating new customers. For conducting social media contests, make sure you are allowing the users to share the content of the content to their social networks. This will not only increase user engagement, but will also increase virality. Tailor the contest to fit the platform where you are running it. Finally, be in-sync with your brand for relevant customer generation.

7 Tips to use social media in selling process

Social Media is a term which easily gets associated with any individual these days. These days, life is fast paced, we lack the required time & energy to indulge ourselves in every single detail be it in the domain of day to day activities, establishing connections with our peer groups and in various others ways.

Companies tend to suffer in a number of ways as customers tend to move away from traditional ways of marketing to more newer modes of marketing due to the “over evolution” of internet in every hook & nook of the globe. Hence almost every company is establishing a connection with the masses through the utilization of “social media” as a platform to showcase their product, break the established clutter, and ultimately sell the product to consumers.

Companies are formulating newer strategies to overcome the threat of stagnating sale, to become a company with thumping sale figures. Now we will talk about the 7 different uses of social media in successfully selling a product.

 7 tips to use social media in selling products or services

Impact of social media on small business

Information, Infographic and presentation about the impact of social media on small businesses. Know how social media helps small business.

It has been long since the first networking website launched but already social media has become a thing. There are unlimited number of people who use the social websites for networking and that’s one thing the small businesses can take advantage of.

There are some great aspects of social networking sites that can help a small business to spread and grow. The social networking sites have become a tool of marketing and increasing number of expected customers. This is a strategy that doesn’t require a lot of budget and that’s why the small businesses use these sites for their improvement.

The personal relationship strategies with the customer are the key to success for small businesses and the social media websites are the best medium of maintaining the relationship. The customer loyalty can really benefit a small business and that’s why the small business owners use the social networking sites to reach out to their customers and build a personal relationship with them.

That way the customers stick to that small business and provide them the financial flow that they want. These days, the small businesses even hire people to maintain public relation through the social networking sites and increase business.

Related reading – Creating customer evangelists 

The social media sites can help small businesses by connecting them with potential customers. However, it’s always smart to keep the number of followers, of a business page, to a limit. Overflowing number of followers is not easy to be maintained and be in touch with.

Small businesses need to make sure that they have enough number of loyal customers but the numbers are limited to some extend so that they can maintain personal relation with them. Setting up a strategy for social media networking is very important in order to get the best results possible from the social network.

Related reading – Your customers will love you

The most important thing for a small business to do well is to keep updating their customers with new services and products. A social media community for the business is the best place for the small businesses to let everyone know about their latest triumphs and services. That way a follower will immediately know how a particular small business is doing and that is the quickest way to impress and attract more and more customers.

Another thing that these social networking sites make easy is the responding of the small businesses. Answering the customers becomes really easy with a social networking profile. The success depends on how a small business uses these facilities for better results. The more they reach people, the more chances of their success increase. It has been seen that small businesses use these networking sites for marketing and reach everyone at once.

Related reading – Small businesses join Twitter

The social media sites have changed the web world and that’s why every business has a place of their own in it. These days every small business starts with a social networking page as they want to maintain their online presence from the very first day. It has changed the way that small businesses follow to increase business.

How Effective Social Media is for Small Businesses (Infograph)

The Significance of Social Media in Modern Business

As you all know social media has emerged very recently but it growing popularity has given it a significant place in the market. Social media holds a prominent place in business marketing platform. These days, social media has become a necessity for the business which desire to secure a prominent place in the digital and traditional market.

Previously, a website was sufficient to accomplish an online presence but now the scenario has changed. Now, you need social media tools to make your website interactive and robust. If you are stepping into this world for the first time, it might be confusing for you. Check out some of the tips that can speed up your business through this medium.

“Big two” of Social Media

In the recent times, three social media websites earned huge popularity in the business world. Many people are using these sites to firmly establish their brand and service across the business world. However, though many use these sites but there are few of them who actually know about these sites.

First comes the Facebook, a simple network tool initially designed for the college students to get connected with their friends and share their profile and pictures with the distant people. But now, Facebook is an established tool of business marketing. Business professionals tend to create a “page” relevant to their business and this is nothing but exploitation of the marketing possibilities of this site. With the help of this page on Facebook the businesses can promote their brand and product and offer deals.

Twitter, alike Facebook, started as the social networking platform but gradually turned into a marketing tool. In this social media site, there are tweets or short messages on the walls of the users. These tweets are also help for the business since such tweets can be used for marketing products, offering updated news and seeking the attention to special offers and so on.

Hashtags are another feature on Twitter. If any user is looking for any kind of information on a particular topic, they can go to the account directly by attaching a hashtag to the idea or concept in the business tweets.

These social networking channels are pretty advanced and can offer you the right tool for your business.

Points to remember in Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is a very common strategy used to attract attention and gain traffic towards the mother site. We all know how it works and how it is useful for us but every good thing in our life comes with some disadvantages and that is why here I am mentioning some points  which should be kept in mind while social media marketing despite the advantages  of it.

Time is a very important factor for Social Media Marketing as updating the social networking accounts do take a lot of time and effort needed is high as well and so if you think social media marketing is free it’s actually not because it is costing you time just not for updation but also for working on new angles to make it attractive and to post and then re-post information.

And also one thing has to be kept in mind that the information should be presented in conversation form so that you don’t lose followers  and this should be done for the simple reason that social media world doesn’t accept publishing of advertising copy.

And make sure to handle the social media presence you involve some one rich in knowledge about the company. And the accounts need to be checked several times a day because negative comments are inevitable and you can’t do much about it as you have no control over what people say so I would say try and give feedback even to the negative reviews and that will lead to a positive impact over the existing customers.

Branding is another factor which should be kept in mind because a bad or wrong online brand strategy can put you on back foot.  An example will be of Sony PS3 which always ranked no.2 because it neglected the value of social media and gave way to Microsoft Xbox which is ranked no.1.

Content is something very important and has to be relevant. While blogging and Twitter feeds what happens is the authors focus on themselves and consider themselves as the blog and generally forget that they are writing for their company. So make sure that you are writing something which is representing the company and its product.

Another reason is any company hiring someone famous (influencer) can have a huge fan following but then again what if that person decides to leave, you will definitely not like the fan following to disappear will you? So the main thing is relevance of the content which no one should ignore.

And another thing is once you are glued to Social Media Marketing, don’t quit seeing the returns being negligible. It takes time to be effective so aiming for returns in short time and giving up if not seeing the results a strict no no.

Hope you follow the factors above which I have mentioned and I am sure the article will be very helpful to you. Any comments or feedback  positive or negative you’re welcome.

Related Reading: How to build brand loyalty & brand advocacy?

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