Internet marketing is the premier way to drive business growth in our current world. Generally speaking, if a person cannot search for and find you on the Internet, they probably are not going to get to wherever you are, now. There are several components to Internet marketing that can help lead you in a successful direction, and one of those components is through social media.
Using social media is nearly a given nowadays. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, Pinterest - these are just some of the streaming apps you can use in your fight for attention. And to grab your piece of the pie, you just about have to use two or so efficiently and really well, and be somewhat well-versed on the others. Leaving anything out because you haven't done your research to figure out how it can benefit you is like leaving money on the table - a big business no-no.
SMM (Social Media Marketing), as a whole, helps you win when it comes to branding and getting out the word, in other words, effective communications. One of the first things you should do, if you haven't already, is create a business communications plan. Know what you know and understand how to utilize that knowledge. Understand what you don't know and work to fill in the gaps. Decide how big you want your footprint to be - for now, anyway - and then look at how you can use these social media tools to make it happen.
Probably one of the easiest ways to get started is by creating a page on Facebook. When you do this, and then invite your friends to like your page, you start getting yourself and your brand out there in the social space. Craft the page according to your business goals - what do you want everyone to know about you and your business, and how do you want them to respond to the same. Are you looking to generate an emotional response? Then your graphics, videos, blog spots, and posts need to be engineered this way. You might rather generate a thinking, or contemplative, response - same as before, you will take all the elements you put on the page and craft them to get the desired result.
Make sure that if you have a website, you keep the look and feel consistent between the different social media outlets you use. You don't want the warm and inviting look of your website to be cold and just efficient on Facebook, for example. You want to make it flow from one tool to another and back again seamlessly. Work on getting your brand to the point where a word, phrase, color combination, logo/graphic or combination of these things instantly means - you. This is the end-goal of creating a brand.
Throughout all of these social media outlets, make sure you are using the keywords and phrases that search engines will pick up and use to optimize your site/listing so it rises to the top of the search results. As you work to encompass all of the social space that you want to appear in, you need to make sure you're optimizing the results as much as possible.
