Mediaboss Marketing

In using social media to promote your business online, one can be faced with many options as to what platform to begin with, as there are myriads of them and each one is as useful as the other.

For this article, it is even more difficult narrowing down the social media platforms, due to space constraint; and it is for this purpose we will start with just four platforms.

Social media sites fall in the following categories: social networks, bookmarking sites, social news, media sharing, micro-blogging services, blogs, forums and wikis. Sometimes, a social site may fall into two categories, but each has a different purpose and can help your business in different ways.

As I mentioned earlier, do not overwhelm yourself with managing multiple accounts if you do not have the time to update all. Start with one and increase your usage over time. Here is an insight into four social networks to help you decide which to start with

Blogs

This is one of my favourite means of online business promotion. It allows you to engage with your target market on areas of similar interests so others get to recognise you as an expert in your field. Secondly, blogs are great for businesses too, as you can share updates on industry news, corporate culture, employees and stakeholders, product launches, etc.

Besides, there are diverse ways of making money off your blog when it starts to garner traffic. There are many other reasons. Blogs can either be part of your website as a page so visitors never have to leave your business website; or you can get a free blog separate from your website via free content managing systems such as wordpress.com, blogspot.com, etc. Blogs can be run by almost any business as its use varies widely.

Tip: To get the most out of blogging, publish useful articles frequently.

Twitter

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging site known mainly for its 140-character post updates. The beauty of Twitter is that you can customise your business page to reflect the personality of your brand, share posts publicly or privately through Direct Messaging, all in 140 characters or less. Twitter is called a micro-blog because it combines the special functionality of blogging (regular content updates) in as few words as possible.

Read more:
Business owners dilemma when going social