Social Media Marketing: Take Baby Steps

The biggest problem most people have when they get started with social media is spreading themselves too thin. They see all of the different platforms and want to master all of them immediately. This is a strategy that usually ends with giving up on social media. The more sensible approach is to take baby steps when getting started with social media. It doesn't matter if you feel like you are 10 steps behind, slow and steady will win the race.

The first thing you want to do is pick one platform (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and create your presence on there. The easiest to get started with is probably Facebook. Once you feel like you have a good grip on Facebook you can introduce a new platform.

It is also important to think about your company when deciding which social media platforms you want to get started on. Not every type of business needs to be on every platform. If your business is heavy into graphics or visual stimulation, then it might be a good idea to start with Instagram or Pinterest. Retail stores should head to Facebook or Twitter and business-to-business companies should try Google+ or Linkedin.

Another thing to keep in mind is that social media trends change all the time. It is important to stay updated on the new facets of social media. This allows you to learn along with everyone else rather than playing catch up. It can be overwhelming at times, but incorporating social media in your marketing plan is no longer something you can afford not to do.

Facebook Ads: A Cost Effective Way to Reach Customers

Every business owners favorite thing about social media is that a lot of it is free. No one ever has a problem with free. However, only using the free material will limit how much success you can have.  Most business owners don't bother to look into the paid areas of social media, expecting them to be too expensive. The truth is that advertising on Facebook is actually very cost efficient.

The amount of money you want to spend on an advertisement is completely up to you. If you only want to reach a few hundred people then you only need to spend a few dollars. This flexibility allows you to test multiple different ads at once to see which one works best. Then you can go in and add more money to the successful one and stop the others.

Facebook advertising has many benefits besides just being low-cost. Facebook provides very easy to follow reports that track how your advertisement is doing. It gives you information such as ad reach, total impressions and website clicks. Facebook also allows you to alter the ad if you aren't getting sufficient results.

The best part about Facebook advertising is how specific you can get with the demographics.You have the ability to narrow in on only the people you want to reach. It allows you to manipulate categories such as education, job title, income and relationship status. Facebook also lets you narrow down your search by selecting different kinds of behaviors and interests of the people that you want to reach. All of these different options all you to advertise directly to your ideal customers. That is something that very few advertising platforms offer.

So, now you know why most of the Facebook ads you see match up with one of your interests. And now that you know how it works, you can start doing it for your business.

Joining The Conversation On Twitter

Twitter can be an intimidating place for a lot of small business owners. Most of them get overwhelmed with the constant scroll of information and feel like it will be impossible to break through all of the noise. That fear is very understandable. The good news is that you don’t have to sit back and hope your potential customers see your message. Twitter allows you to go and find people interested in your service and join their conversation. 

The easiest way to do this is by simply using the Twitter search bar. All you have to do is type in a keyword that relates to your business and then every tweet that contains that keyword will show up. For example, if you are in the restaurant business you might type in the words hungry and lunch. There will be dozens of tweets with people saying how they are hungry and looking for a place to eat. This is where that restaurant owner can go in and reply with an invite to their business. That’s turning a tweet into a potential customer.


The best part is that you can decide what geographic areas you want to see tweets from. This will eliminate the clutter, and will let you focus on the people that you want to reach. You can do this in two different ways. First, you can just hit the “Near You” button on the left hand side of the screen. This will automatically narrow the tweets down to your geographic area. 

The other way to narrow down your search is by clicking the "Advanced Search" button. This option gives you a list of parameters that you can manipulate until you get the best possible search. 

These two tips will allow you to use Twitter as a lead generating tool and gain more customers.