Get your business started in Social Media Marketing in 8 simple steps

Social media marketing. Social network marketing. Web 2.0 marketing. Whatever you choose to call it, you know it’s the big thing now. It’s the way ahead. It has the power to change your whole business around. You know all that, but you don’t know where to start. Well, fear not! Just follow through these 8 steps to starting social media marketing for your business and you’re good to go.

1. Sign up for a Gmail account using your company name (for example SortedSites@gmail.com) to gain access to a wide range of Google services. One of these is Google Docs, which lets you upload and share documents with the rest of your staff, so that the information is available from anywhere and everyone is updating the same thing. You’ll see why you need this in a second.
2. One of the headaches of having accounts on many different social media sites is keeping track of all the usernames and passwords. It’s no fun having to try out a dozen passwords when you just want to get on with blogging about your newest special offer or uploading the photos of your latest staff party to your Flickr account. So we’re going to make it easy for you. Simply download this spreadsheet and use it to manage all your usernames and passwords. Upload a copy to Google Docs, grant access to the people who need it and make sure it is kept updated so that everyone will have all the information they need at their fingertips.
3. Start a blog for your company and update it regularly. Your blog will become one of the mainstays of your social marketing campaign. It will let you establish your authority in your field. It will help you build a relationship with prospective clients and find out what they have to say through their comments. It will improve your search engine rankings. All that and much, much more. If you don’t have a blog, you desperately need one.You can either get a free blog on one of the many hosting services available, line WordPress or Blogger, or if you want to have full control of your blog, its appearence, and most  importantly, its contents, we can set up your blog for you with a customised look and feel for as little as 500€.If you already have a blog but it’s a little weak at the knees (or it’s doing well but you want to make it even more effective) then learn some tips and tricks you can use to give your blog some much-needed gene therapy.
4. Get accounts in your company name on the main social media sites, such as Flickr,  StumbleUpon, YouTube and Twitter. Also, build a FaceBook business page and encourage your staff and clients to create accounts on LinkedIn, so you can tap into each other’s business networks.
5. Log in to each of these accounts and update your  profile as best as you can. Put up photos or videos of your staff, your offices, your work, your clients (with their permission). Post links to your website, your blog, your client’s websites and anything else that could be useful to your audience. Include as much information as possible so that whoever comes across your profile page can start to get to know you right away.
6. Actively participate in the different communities on all these social media platforms. Don’t just share your stuff and publicise yourself. Comment on other people’s photos. Comment on their blogs. Comment on the websites they share. Comment on their comments. Of course, as you do this you will want to focus on things that are related to your business or that are of great interest to your target audience, so that you make sure that you are communicating with a group of people who are indeed your potential clients.
7. Register for Google Alerts for your company name and for the names of your products to be notified whenever Google finds some new web content that is talking about your business. When that happens, post comments, say thanks for the mention, and expand your social network.
8. Search Google for keywords related to your industry to find websites, blogs and forums that belong to your field. Participate in these communities by commenting, sharing your own opinions, and building new relationships with like-minded people.

Now that you know what to do, it’s time to get started!

Social media marketing is not only very effective in its own right, but it is also a great way to market your business for a very low cost, and more and more companies are embracing social media marketing as a way to tackle the current economic downturn.

What are you waiting for?

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