VICTOR OGBE writes on how to use the social media platform to grow your business
Many small business owners rely only on websites and blogs to grow their various businesses but they either don’t have enough drive or traffic to increase patronage or make their presence felt.
Experts have figured out an alternative to website marketing and that is the “social media”. First of all, making use of a website to market your product has its pros and cons, the advantage we all know, but the disadvantages when looked at is more than the advantage for example some business owners don’t know how to create a website/blog or how to maintain it, then a third party has to be invited to help create and manage their website and that is not cost effective. Every business owner is looking for a way to reduce his or her expenses and using the social media as an alternative can greatly reduce the cost of internet marketing.
Research has shown that companies attest to the benefits social media has brought to their businesses because it has increased the awareness of their organizations and products. Social media platforms (facebook, twitter, and pinterest) have created methods and ways through which you can get your brand, products to others. Social media has penetrated into the lives of people if not the majority of the people, so why not carry your business into the social media world which is cheaper, less cumbersome to operate and individuals with low ICT knowledge can use the platform without stress. Different methods have been introduced for the effective use of social media marketing.
KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GETTING INTO (ADS)
The ads sold by social media platforms are used in different ways, different methods. For example, on Twitter you pay for ads while on facebook you pay per impression, so you need to design or customize your ad so that it can look catchy to the prospective customer. Don’t just create an ad; create an ad that will make people take action.
CREATE MIND BLOWING CONTENT
One of the ways to get action customers (people who will click on the ad and take an action) depend on the type of content (ads) you create. No matter what you are selling or providing, once your advertisement isn’t attractive or catchy, you won’t get 100% value for the money you put towards the creation of the advertisement. Don’t believe you know what your customer wants, ask for suggestions or feedback, if they like the product or dislike it, if it’s perfect or needs improvement, if it’s too expensive, etc.
USE SEARCH ENGINE METHOD (SEM)
Search engine refers to GOOGLE, BING, YAHOO, etc. you can pay Google to advertise what you are selling, every day I use Google and I see different ads on the first page. Most individuals surf the net using search engines that are known to be the fastest and easiest way for finding what they need.
NOTE* using search engines entails you know what you are doing, you have to tell Google the search keyword of your product, for example, you sell dangote soap, and you tell Google just soap, Google will not just directly take people to your ad, it will show various things, your advertisement might not be in the first page, could be 25th page depending on the number of things, products representing soap.
USE IMAGES, VIDEOS, GIFS, ETC
The use of images, etc has shown to increase the awareness of your product or services. Content supported with images attracts more engagement as compared to content without images or some kind of visualization.
You could also find/hire people who are involved in the social media world who can help you promote your product/service for a small fee or even for free(be sure they are involved in such a thing, before you get insulted or embarrassed).
FINALLY
While most know the difference between website marketing and social media marketing, I strongly recommend social media marketing because its fast, cheap(who doesn’t like cheap thing), more efficient and depending on your drive you could start seeing result within a few days if not a day. Thanks for reading