If you have any kind of business, website, brand or anything else you want to promote, then you need exposure. You can have a great product but if nobody knows about it then your product will not sell. Social media services give you more social exposure to your business, grow your business and give you more brand awareness. How you decide to get more exposure to your business is the important thing. It is easy to make mistakes and use social media services for the wrong reasons.
The first decision you need to make is whether to get more exposure yourself or get professional help. Getting more social exposure is certainly time consuming and also tedious if you want to get great results. If you have little experience and are short on time, getting help is inevitable. Using the help of people, who have more experience and know-how in this field, does pay off!
One of the biggest mistakes that people make, when using social media, is to use it for making money by promoting their products or business. Too many people rely exclusively on social media for promoting their business and products. It is much more effective to use social media together with other marketing efforts and should relied upon exclusively. People do not use Twitter, Facebook or Twitter to buy new curtains or a computer. There are lots of examples of people getting lots of traffic but they are not able to convert the traffic into something useful like more subscribers or sales.
The main purpose of using social media marketing is to interact with existing and any potential clients through online communities and social networking websites. Getting new customers to your business is not the function of using Twitter, Pinterest or Facebook! The purpose of this method is to drive as much traffic as possible to your sales page or landing page.
There are lots of various social media services a person should use to promote their business: RSS feeds, viral content, social account management, share buttons on your website or blog, consistent engagement, off site link building, having a company blog etc. Some of the more popular sites for promotional purposes are: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Stumble Upon, Foursquare, Reddit and Digg.
Using these services is really important for your business because they bring lots of benefits to your business including:
•       More exposure
•       Branding
•       Increased traffic
•       More subscribers
•       Inbound links
•       Low cost, high return (potentially)
•       Better rankings in search engines
It is really important to keep your hand on the pulse and be aware of what is working and what is not. Too many people put a lot of time and effort into promoting their business on Twitter or Facebook, but statistics show that Pinterest out does both Twitter and Facebook in terms of average order value. When you use social media services, make sure you do not put all your eggs in one basket. The technology gives us the opportunity to give large amounts of exposure to our businesses. The key is knowing how to take advantage of this!
