Search & Social Media Marketing Training
Digital marketing course from the University of Salford
Being the Marketing Manager at www.webuybooks.co.uk social media is a big part of my marketing plan – Should it be a big part of yours?
Self-proclaimed social media gurus bill social media as the messiah of online marketing – where as I believe social media is an important weapon in your marketing arsenal but it won’t turn water into wine!
Social media is important for business and all businesses should have a social presence. Having social media pages and profiles will add new ways for your organization to be discovered and accessed by potential customers. It will also help your business dominate the first page of Google – if a potential customer types your organization into their search engine and your website is number one followed by your Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages it lowers the chance of them clicking through onto a competitor’s website.
This video gives few reasons why your business should be using social media
Here are some important tips I’ve learned during the search and social media marketing CPD at Salford University:
Don’t just try to sell your product or service – be social, talk to your customers, create relationships and build a community that know and trust your brand and they will promote your company all over the world for free.
Something I found successful was to do a competition. When you have a decent number of competition entries and a bit of a buzz surrounding your page post a voucher code offering some money off – this will gently push people from your social media page to your website and give them an incentive to buy a product or use your service.
Have a strategy! Plan what you want to post in advance – this way you will be prepared for seasonal trends like Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Christmas. You will be providing regular content to your audience and not spending hours flicking trough Google images looking for funny pictures of cats to post.
Provide quality content that your customers will want to engage with. I focused on getting people interacting with each other on my organizations social media pages. We achieved this by giving away a kindle every week until Christmas – every week we would ask a different question i.e. what was your favourite childhood book? Who is your favourite fictional character? Their answer would be their entry into the competition. This sparked interaction! Within minutes people were not only sharing their favourite books but reminiscing with each other about childhood memories and other books they enjoyed.
Don’t worry too much about bad feedback; even the most famous household names have unhappy customers who leave bad reviews. With social media everything is in public there is no hiding. Your priority should be to solve any problems a customer is having quickly. People will look at how you deal with problems and if you deal with them correctly people will recognize this and know if they have an issue with your organization it will be dealt with promptly and in the appropriate way.
- Create awareness
- Build a community
- Customer service
- Promote your latest offers
- Competitions
Remember people use social media in their leisure time and don’t want to be bombarded with sales pitches. Use social media wisely and your customers will sell your brand for you!
ABOUT BEN WADSWORTH
Ben is the the marketing manager for www.webuybooks.co.uk and is responsible for creating, managing and enhancing products and services so that they reflect well on the companies brand. Analyzing and investigating price, demand and competition, devising and presenting marketing plans and strategies, promotional activities, writing reports and monitoring performance.
One thought on “How To Use Social Media For Business”
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Great post Ben, I like the writing style, it’s short and to the point and a good how to guide. You’ve clearly thought about the title and good to include a video. Aside from our platform that needs updating, for future posts it will be easier to add your own images, videos and if relevant additional links for further reading. Think also about the anchor text for your link back – should you like by url as you have, brand name or would a primary key phrase and the brand name be better? You could even consider deeper linking to specific pages with relevant anchor text keywords. Great job though!