Making Time For Social Media
Gone are the days when traditional marketing strategies were enough to push sales up.
These days, business owners have recognized online digital marketing as a powerful technique to attract more customers and bring in more leads.
Some of the best online marketing techniques include social media, which has become a standard go-to destination for millions of people who want information on demand. It has become imperative for companies and businesses to have social media presence, unless they want to gather dust.
Here are some of the benefits of using social media for marketing as shared by HubSpot:
- Identify your target market’s preferences easily
- Reach your target clients in a more effective manner
- Expose your business to more people
- Receive feedback from your customers conveniently
- Boost site traffic and enhance SEO
- Provide opportunities for your target market to share your content
- Improve lead generation for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing
Businesses such as retail shops, restaurants, and physical therapy clinics can benefit much from social media marketing. Unfortunately, maintaining social networking accounts may demand much of a business owner’s time for the strategies to work. As a result, priorities may shift from operations to marketing, which is something you don’t want to experience in your own business.
According to this article from Entrepreneur, you need to make time for social media. Here are some effective tips to carve out some hours for social media marketing:
Follow a fixed schedule
Just like reading e-mails at specific times of the day, maintaining social media accounts for your business should follow a fixed schedule. This way, you can commit to logging onto Facebook, Twitter and your other social networking sites on a daily basis.
It’s also a good idea to determine how many hours a day you will spend for social media.
Don’t go overboard
If you want to build social media presence for your business, make sure that you keep it simple. Aside from saving you time, simplifying your strategies on social media allows you to have a regular stream of content without burning you out quickly.
Most social media users troop to their favorite social networking sites not to digress on deep philosophical discussions but rather to simply have fun. Therefore, it’s probably in your best judgment to keep things light for them, and not let them think too much about your business.
Use social media tools
You don’t have to do everything manually and in real time. A lot of social media marketing tools are available in the market to help you plan out and execute a perfect social media strategy for your needs.
Each social media tool has a specific purpose, some of which include automating and scheduling posts, gathering social data to help you understand your target market, and predicting upcoming trends related to your niche.
Having said that, don’t make the mistake of focusing too much on social media marketing while your business operations are running amok. Remember that – first and foremost – your purpose as the company owner is to run your business, and not create the best and most amazing social media marketing campaign.
Social media has changed the way we do business. Make sure that you find time to craft an effective social media marketing campaign, so that you can maximize the benefits of this amazing online tool.
This is a contribution by Charles Dearing
