Using Social Media to Engage Your Audience

Using Social Media To Engage Your Audience

Small business can benefit tremendously in growing your online brand using social media - but getting it right can often take several months and huge amounts of time and effort on your part. Think of it this way. You place and advertisement in your local newspaper often several times per year, costing you anywhere between $50 and $500 per ad and the only ones who get to see your ad are those who subscribe to that newspaper or magazine. With some success you might recover the cost of that advertisement in direct sales, but let's be honest, in most cases you seldom recover print advertising costs.

If used effectively, social media is much more powerful and most importantly, it allows your audience to ENGAGE. By this I mean that readers can comment on your products and services, your audience can engage each other in conversation, they can offer testimonials, and all of this allows you to tailor your business to your own specific market group. With the right social marketing strategy that includes images, videos, and carefully chosen words, the sky is the limit - you just have to throw yourself out there.

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, YouTube - just to name a few, can be powerful form of advertising for any small business. Here's the best part and I know you're gonna like this - it's all FREE! You don't need to feel pressured into tweeting daily or posting on Facebook daily because it's all about quality - not quantity. You can have a much more effective impact by carefully choosing "what you say and not how often you say it." 

More and more people are making their buying decisions online. I would venture to say that those decisions to buy or not to buy are based largely on consumer feedback and this again, is where you benefit directly from the use of social media.

It takes an average of between three to five years for any small business to reach it's prime - that is, to attain a plateau both physically and financially. Time and money of course, being your two largest assets. You've got the time or you wouldn't be in business. As for money, you can conciously choose to spend it carelessly on small community newspaper advertisements or you can put that 30% budget back into your own pocket simply by taking advantage of social media and giving up as little as 2 hours per week of your valuable time.