When social media first started, people thought it was a fad. Now in 2010, we are facing a revolution. Social media has changed the way we use the internet completely. Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites have made the internet personal, dynamic, fun and has made networking much easier. Google is the first most used website in the world, followed by Facebook and then YouTube, which can say a lot of how many people use and trust the social media.

Now, let us a look at the business side of social media.

Facebook Marketing

There are several social media marketing strategies that can be used to generate business, let's start with Facebook, the most used social media website:

*PPC Method (For LinkedIn, read further): With social media, you can target advertising directly to users, depending on their age, country and city of residence, whether they speak french, which school they go to, whether they are male or female, and many more options. This makes it amazingly easy for many businesses to target advertising to their target market. Example: Targeting University of California Santa Barbara students between 21-24 to come to the 21+ new UCSB Jazz Lounge down the street.

Facebook Snow Ball Method: Creating a group for your company allows friends & customers to 'Like' your company. This works well for businesses that have a motto, like an energy efficient lighting company could have a motto 'Go Green', making more sense for people to Like it, potentialy starting the so-called Facebook Group Snow Ball Effect. The snow ball effect occurs when a Facebook user Like's something and it is posted in their wall (usually happens automatically). All his friends see what he/she Liked and some of them Like it too, then their friends Like it, and it goes on and on, creating a snow ball effect. Get it?
Of course, it doesn't hurt to just have a group so people can like a business just for its service. Like the group box you see on the right... go ahead, Like it.

The Facebook Business Page Method: Instead of just advertising your website with PPC on search engines and private websites, you can advertise your website's Facebook page. This allows people to 'subscribe' with just one click on the "Become a Fan" or"Like" button. This gives you the oppurtunity to continue advertising to them, in case they don't convert instantly, avoiding the waste of a paid lead.

Twitter Marketing

The next most popular social media website used for business is Twitter.

Twitter is known a social networking and microblogging website that allows users to post miniblogs also known as tweets, with up to 140 characters. The idea is simple, but has rapidly expanded and is now not only used to follow friends but also follow businesses and public figured. Twitter has become a powerful tool, allowing users not only to post tweets via the website but also allows posting via external applications, like with SMS. Twitter has overall over 100 million users worldwide and is used to generate traffic by simply having many users follow you. Watch a good explanation on the concept of Twitter on YouTube.

Now what's social media marketing with Twitter going to do for your business?

Twitter has become a powerful business marketing tool. Twitter allows businesses to reach to all their customers that are following it. Every successful business has a Twitter account, which permits customers and clients to follow it and stay connected. You can update these customers with news, specials or new produtcs to always keep the feeling involved. It is a new innovative way of reaching out to customers, without getting into a spam folder.

So how do you start marketing on twitter?

Starting your marketing on Twitter is simple but time consuming. You simply start by signing up a Twitter account you want to use for your business. The next step would be to follow the businesses you are interested or have something in common with your business. After wards you start posting relevent tweets that people might like to read or follow. Avoid keeping your tweets dry and boring because your goal is to attract users to follow you. Make sure to keep your Tweets relevant and dynamic, keep a conversation going because as fast as a user can follow you, they can unfollow you as well.

Set your Twitter up correctly, to Market on Twitter correctly.

When setting up your Twitter, make sure you create widgets and badges to paste these on your websites, facebook group and blogs. You should also have the Twitters RSS feed on your Facebook group homepage. This will not only save you time but also increase your exposure much more efficiently. Here is the best way to do it: Connect your Twitter account with your blog, so that it will automatically update when you do a blog post. You should also connect your Twitter to your personal RSS feeds and Facebook business group to make life easier and keep all your accounts dynamic and constantly updating.

As long as you keep posting relevant and good quality information, your social media marketing strategy will be a success.

Other Social Media Websites for Advertising

There are many more social media websites that offer social media advertising applications. LinkedIn for example, a social media website for business professionals, has their own *PPC application and Meetup or ASmallWorld have other social features that allow people to advertise. Depending on your business, Maximus Business can evaluate which social media websites we think seem fit and are worth advertising on for your business.

*PPC - Stands for Pay-Per-Click and is a method used by various websites as an advertising method, where advertisers pay everytime someone clicks on their link. This is one of the methods used by Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and various other websites to make it more affordable for advertisers. Find out more about search engine marketing.

Social Media Marketing is Time Consuming and needs to be well planned and maintained.

For assistance in Social Media Marketing, contact one of our consultants to get a free quote.

Get your Social Media Marketing started.