Social media marketing has emerged as an important inbound internet marketing strategy. The key to using social media in your marketing program is understanding how social media can promote your brand and build strong customer relationships.
Currently, the most important social media platforms for building these relationships are Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn. While they both have large numbers of users, they are quite different in their focus. Facebook exists to promote networks of users with shared interests: families, classmates, and other groups can easily share information using their Facebook accounts. Facebook also allows users to create pages that exist separately from Facebook user accounts.
For businesses looking to use social media marketing, creating a Facebook page is an important first step. Facebook pages are designed for groups and businesses to promote themselves. Using a Facebook page, you can announce changes on your website, promote special deals, and invite users to “like” your website. This draws more traffic to your website and helps promote your brand to Facebook users.
Businesses also have the opportunity to create a LinkedIn company page. These have increased in importance in expanding visibility. With the ability to add Products and Services to your LinkedIn companies page you are able to encourage the market to recommend the product to others, while making it easy to get more information.
X (formerly Twitter) gives users the ability to communicate with their social network using 140 character messages called tweets. X (formerly Twitter) can be a powerful marketing tool if it is used regularly. By sending out tweets on a regular basis, potential customers learn about your business and can follow you through updates on your X (formerly Twitter) account.
Using social media marketing is just part of an overall marketing and brand development strategy. First, it is important to build engaging content that speaks to your potential customers. With strong content that exists on the Web, you can use social media to attract users to that content and convert leads to loyal repeat customers.