Social Networking Unleashed: Building Your Brand and Simplifying Social Media with Expert Tips and Tools
Social networking is truly a very powerful way to build your brand. Today, with the proliferation of online platforms, social networking has taken on a brand new and often difficult to understand the role in both online and offline marketing.
Difficult or not, one thing is very clear – social networking is the best way to build your brand. Plus, if you develop a social media strategy in advance instead of acting without thought, then follow your plan, you will succeed.
Expert Tips for Networking
Connect to Your Audience All Over the World
More than half the population of the world is using social media. That’s an amazing thing when you think about it. You don’t need to market to all of them; you just need to attract enough to meet your goals. There is no doubt that you can find your audience on social media in order to build your brand.
Research Your Competition Accurately and Simply
Social networking is also a way in which you can easily research your competitors. You can find them on social media and observe their actions and their audience’s behavior, and use what you find out with your own audience.
Communicate Instantly and Easily with Your Audience
Never in history has it been possible to be in touch with your audience practically 24/7. And not only that – you’re in the palm of their hand. You may not even want to think about this, but people take their phones into the bathroom with them. You’re in the bathroom with your customers and that is honestly a privilege that enables you to communicate with them so much more directly and personally.
Inspire Your Audience by Providing Value
If you pay attention to what your audience values and wants and needs, you can provide amazing value to them via social networking. You can share and curate important information and content with them that makes them see you as an expert (even when you’re sharing other people’s work). And when that happens, your brand will expand like never before.
Learn and Share Niche-Specific News and Information with Your Audience
Social networking enables you to learn so much news fast. If you are tuned in to your niche, you can learn information prior to your audience and share with them. When you do that, they’re going to feel as if it’s a service and always check with you before anyone else for this type of information.
A Low Barrier to Entry for Business Owners
It doesn’t cost that much to use social networking as a brand-building force. Combine online platforms with offline meetings and workshops if you want to. Or stay only online. Social networking today can work in both ways and combined as well. But it doesn’t cost much to get started and almost anyone can do it.
Enables You to Test Ideas before Implementing
You can use social networking to test out product and service ideas before you start selling them. You can test out concepts on your audience in a smaller way before it blows up to the world at large. It’s a great way to test interest before implementing and spending too much time or money.
Social Networking Is Powerful but also Fun
This is a powerful thing about social networking but it’s also one of the cons: social networking is great to do and it works. But because it’s also fun, if you go into it without a strategy, you may find yourself wasting time.
Efficient Brand Management
Building your brand using social networking is a no-brainer. Over half the population in the world uses social media platforms. Your audience is there. You just need to learn who they are and know how to find them so that you can show them what you have to offer. Set up your social media strategy, implement it, and watch your brand grow fast.
Simplified Social Media
Did you know that more than half of the world’s population is on social media? Even if your audience is only in your own country, that is a tremendous opportunity for any business owner to be able to connect with people near and far using technology that so many have. However, if you’re having issues creating an effective social media marketing strategy and are ready to give up, listen up.
Understand Your Buyers
Don’t just start posting on social media without understanding who you’re talking to. You need to use the words and terms and ideas that generate good feelings. You can only do this by diving in and researching who your audience is fully. Try creating a buyer persona to help you keep focused.
Be Who You Are
It’s easy to become a brand online but the problem is, people don’t trust or engage with brands – they trust and engage with people. For this reason, you need to figure out who you are and be the real you in your social networking, whether online or off.
Provide Real Value
When you post anything on social media – whether it’s a meme, a link to a blog post, an article, or really anything – the content needs to be valuable or feel valuable to your audience.
To do that, get very clear on who they are, who you are, and what you do for them.
Show That You Are a Credible (Real) Person
As mentioned before, people don’t engage with or like brands all that much. They tend to like the people behind the brands. A brand can be great one day and down the next, while the person can be forgiven when they are credible and real. It’s therefore crucial to show your audience that you’re a real person.
Build Your Reputation
Use social networking and your content, start slowly building your reputation over time. Blog, write articles, publish books if you want to, speak at events, speak at your own events, go “live” on Facebook or YouTube… Give your audience every chance to see you stick by your word and be who you say you are.
Stop Over-Marketing
People do not go to social media to buy anything. This is not to say they will not buy. However, understanding that people are not using social media to find things to buy will go far in helping you stop over-marketing. Instead, focus on providing valuable content with a relevant call to action.
Create, Curate and Post Sharable Content
An effective way to get more engagement on social media sites is to create, curate, and post sharable content. The way to make content sharable is to make it interesting, beautiful, and informative. Plus, ask them to share.
Understand SEO for All Posts
Search engine optimization isn’t just for your websites; it can also be used on your social media posts. A blog post is a type of social media, though, as a blog with comments is socially driven. So, if you think of it that way, you’ll want to always include a keyword-rich, targeted and compelling title, keyword URLs and more. Learn about the technology that you use to find out more about how you can enhance SEO on the platform you’re using.
Use Compelling Images
How your posts look, whether on your blog or a social networking site, is what will attract your audience to click – or not. Including gorgeous images that really enhance the meaning of the post will ensure more shares as well as more reading. Consider using more images that you make yourself rather than stock images.
Finally, no matter what platform you are using, research the ways in which you can optimize all aspects of that network.
Whether you are using one or more, if you know why you’re doing it and for whom, it’s going to help you organize it and keep it together so it doesn’t get away from you.
Tips and Tools to Simplify Social Media
Using social media to market your business and build a brand is an excellent way to make the most of social media and social networking. It’s the best place to showcase who you are, what you do, and who you do it for in a friendly and open environment. Having said that, if you want to use social media effectively and not waste time, these tips and tools to simply social media will be appreciated.
Know Your Goals
Do you want to build your brand, increase engagement, get more followers on Twitter, or something else? Whatever your goal is, write down the steps required to meet that goal so that you can break down the task into easy-to-do steps.
Create a To-Do List
Based on the goals you’ve set, create a to-do list to follow for each of the platforms that you’ve determined you will use. Remember that you don’t need to use them all. However, creating a basic profile on them all is a good idea for a backup, assuming your audience will use that platform.
Develop a Schedule for the Tasks
Don’t just say, “I’m going to build my brand via social media.”
This is not enough. You need to know what the goal is for each action and why your audience should care about it. Put the to-do list actions into your calendar, giving yourself enough time to accomplish each task.
Make Your Time Count
When you set up your goals, to-do list, and schedule, it’s important that you make your time count. Don’t multitask when doing things on social media for your business. Whether it’s answering questions on Twitter or setting up a Facebook contest, do it without distraction so that you can get it done fast.
