How to Use Social Media to Bring You Business

If you think that social media is for teenagers or people sharing pictures of their kids and cats, then here are a few statistics that will blow your mind:

• • 65 percent of Pinterest users earn more than $49,000 and have college experience
  • 30 percent of Snapchat users are over 30, and 40 percent earn over $50,000
  • 70 percent of adults are on Facebook daily
  • 24 percent are on more than two sites
  • 27 percent of adults who use twitter make over $75,000

(ref: http://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics)

We could go on and on, but here’s the summary: people with money to spend are on social media sites, and you should be too.

There is a caveat to this: social media used strategically can and should be utilized to bring you business; otherwise, social media is glorified procrastination.

Here’s a Quick Start Guide:

1. Create a blog post or short article

The most common popular articles are:

• Commentary – These are basically your opinions on something. If you are an IT consultant and cyber security has been in the news, write a piece explaining your opinion on the reports.
• Aggregate – You bring together other people’s articles, link to them and write a short summary.
• Instructional – People like to learn things, so ‘How to X’ are always popular, as are lists e.g ‘The 5 ways X’, or ‘the top 8 X’.

Make this piece conversational and helpful; where appropriate, be fun and approachable. We all prefer to do business with real people so let readers know you are human. Be sure to include a call to action and your contact details at the bottom.

2. Create an image

Using PowerPoint, canva.com or any of the other image creation software, create a compelling and attention-grabbing image.

Upload the article and the image to your site.

3. Release the article

Across all social media channels on which you are active, write a short and attention-grabbing paragraph and upload a link to your article.

4. Share the Post

In the search bar of any of the social media sites you can put in your subjects, and groups, pages or people engaged with that subject will come up. Share your post with them, saying something like: ‘I just wrote this brief article on ‘X’, I really respect your opinion and would love your feedback on it’. Flattery really does get you everywhere and people are often keen to share their opinions. This increases your social reach by tenfold.

5. Automate

There are hundreds of social media management software platforms available for just a couple of bucks per month. Find one that lets you upload your articles and then recycles them daily/weekly for you (for example, Meet Edgar). Once you have uploaded your message and blog link, it will share it as often as you like across as many of the sites as you tell it to. Effectively, you can do it once and then you don’t have to do it again, ‘Set & Forget’. If you write one blog post per week and upload this to your social media manager, before long you have a ton of awesome content out there driving traffic your way.

6. Reach out to Social Influencers

Some people have more clout than others. It’s a fact. However, if you stay alert and see what is going on and what is being talked about you can often have your work picked up by journalists, media figures, news broadcasters, etc. Whenever your subject is mentioned on social media, share your most relevant post with them. More often than you imagine you will be featured in other people’s content.

7. Paid Traffic

All social media sites now allow advertisements. Most businesses ignore this opportunity altogether and the ones that do use it don’t make the most of it. Rather than sharing a blatant ad (remember consumers don’t want to be sold to while relaxing), pay to have the site share a helpful blog post or article. Have people follow your account or like your page because of the value you are offering, and then engage your follow up sequence to convert them into customers.

These are a Few Golden Rules to Get Social Media to Bring Business to You:

1. Do not sell. It seems counterintuitive, but people are on social media to be social, not to be sold directly to. There are a ton of ways to raise awareness of and bring attention to your business, including:
   • Joining relevant LinkedIn and Facebook groups and contributing to the conversation; with a great profile headline people will reach out to you.
   • Search using hashtags (#) to find people talking about your subject on twitter and join the conversation.
2. Be very active on one or two sites, rather than having a ton of accounts you don’t use.
3. Use tools and software to automate as much as possible.
4. Build your personal brand; consumers want to do business with someone they know like and trust. Give them the opportunity.
5. Respond to feedback in a timely and professional manner.
6. Avoid overly political, personal or contentious subjects, unless of course, that is your niche.
7. Don’t go looking for the next big thing, or next big social media site. Build a following and a high-value profile on one or two long-standing platforms with a high and ideally growing number of users.

Like it or not, social media is not going anywhere. Ride the wave, don’t fight it.

About Scale Funding

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