I recently gave a presentation at the newly formed Williamson County Marketing Alliance meeting in Cedar Park and had enough engagement that I thought it would make a helpful blog topic for all you small business owners out there.

How to Pick Social Media for Your Business

No, you don’t have to be on everything all the time. It’s important to look at your audience and see what social media they’re engaging in and be there with them. A couple of quick notes: women use social media more than men. So, if you’re marketing to women, you know you need to be active on social media – no doubt about that. Second, you’re better off putting a lot of attention and effort into one medium (such as Facebook) than spreading yourself too thin across several mediums that you’re halfheartedly using. Be wise about which social media you decide to use.

This slideshow from the presentation gives you basic overview of the top 8 social media sites and who they work best for. Of course, this presentation doesn’t take into account the nuances of your specific business. If you have questions regarding your particular business, reach out to us and we can help.

Using Social Media for Your Business from hotdogpr

Make Your Social Media Sites Look Professional

I say it all the time to small business owners. Your consumer is a very sophisticated consumer. The public is marketed to non-stop by bigger brands therefore its taste level has become less forgiving of the mom-and-pop look. Luckily, most social media sites allow you to customize the look of your page or profile so it reflects your brand. If you have a graphic designer on you “team” that has helped develop your logo, hire them to customize the look of your social media sites too. Hot Dog Marketing only charges $45 a site right now for customization using your logo design. It’s a good deal and worth taking advantage of. The slideshow has some examples of how to professional site should look. Take advantage of every customizing opportunity and make the site truly your own.

Develop an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

The heart behind social media is engagement with your audience through good content. What are you sharing? Why should they keep you in their stream? And ultimately, are you utilizing your website to host good content so your traffic is being directed back to your business? Content will depend entirely on your audience and your brand. Coming up with a good content strategy is a completely different blog article. So stay posted for information regarding content strategy in the future.

Final Words

Now that you’ve picked the media you want to use, made it look professional and come up with good ideas for content and how you’re going to drive traffic back to your website, I have some important closing thoughts for you:

Social media marketing takes time (especially if you’re doing it without the support of other traditional marketing efforts). When you’ve found the right formula for your content, growing your audience into a large engaged audience can take 6 months to a year. So be patient.
Be consistent. There is absolutely no point of using social media sporadically to market your business. It just doesn’t work. Strive for daily updates at a minimum. If you have a dedicated marketing manager and you’re focusing on one medium, try for several updates a day. It makes a difference.
Social media marketing doesn’t work unless you have raving fans. If your product or service isn’t producing happy customers, you won’t get any traction using social media. Always make sure the first 3 P’s of the Marketing Mix (Product, Pricing and Placement) are in order before you expect the 4th P (Promotion) to work.

Good luck everyone! And as always, you can reach out to us for more information.