No business today can survive without some sort of web presence. There are some that try to go without it, but they do not usually possess the longevity needed to make serious moves online. If you want to gain the upper hand in any industry today, you have to look at how the world has changed today. The world of marketing is no longer isolated to just one type of solution, you need to rise to the standards of what modern promotional considerations showcase.


It’s within that framework that you should consider social media. Social networks are not losing steam, even though some pundits are going to tell you that they are losing steam or becoming boring to users.

No matter what your business strategy is, if it doesn’t include internet marketing within the banner of social networks, you are going to drop out of the public’s eye. At first glance, this may not seem like a big deal, but as you start to look into the internet marketing collateral needed to create substantial gains, you need these pages to help you grow.

The Growth Issue

First and foremost, you will find that the world of marketing has changed in the last few years. In fact, just in the past few months, search engines have changed how they’ve been listing and ranking websites. The ranking of sites has changed through algorithmic shifts.

These changes have caused small businesses to get a lot more attention than through other methods. However, it has also ruined many site’s popularity, because it’s easy to lose sight of how to navigate these pages. If you do not navigate these sites in the right manner, you will end up losing out, and perhaps even get hit with the dreaded “spam” moniker.

It’s not easy to grow any brand today, especially online, and that’s something that you are going to have to balance as you move forward within the marketing that you are going to try to do.

The Profile Division

As you start to look at social media, you will need to separate personal and professional pages. Do not have them mixed, you need to create branding that is within the social framework of your business, or someone else will come through and take over your monikers, namesakes and more.

Once you separate business and personal, you will want to start updating the business side of things with more than just promotional considerations.

This is the key to understanding how social networks work. As a business marketer, you cannot just put your link in the updates. If you do that, you will lose out, guaranteed. It takes roughly a few self-serving links to end up with the wrong side of the proverbial coin here.

Make sure that you understand this as you divide the two types of profiles you may want to have.

Gaining a Lot of Followers

No matter what social media site you decide to work on, you will want to look into gaining a lot of followers through the tried and true solutions online today. The starting line here is simple, you will need to befriend others online. You have to befriend others that are in your niche, and create a platform to share, comment on, and like all sorts of different updates.

You cannot just sit back and hope people follow you and interact with you. You’ll have to be progressively shifting towards becoming more social online. That’s the key, if you do not do this, you are going to end up losing out. Focusing on social interactions is a good thing, especially when you are showcasing interest in others. If you do not showcase any interest in others, you will end up losing out, simple as that.

The Paid Solutions

The next thing that you need to look into when focusing on growing your business through social media is simple, you need to look at paid solutions. Paid options within these pages include several options. The starting point is through “sponsored” posts, or “boosted” posts.

You can boost your update for as little as $5 and you will ensure that your update will sit at the top of the profiles of all of your followers, and the followers of others. Imagine having leverage where you get a boost of traffic and visualization when someone logs in. If you’re the top of every feed, you will get a click through ratio that is a lot higher than if you were to try and promote things without paying for it.

The next pay option is through PPC options. You will not have to pay a thing until someone clicks on your ad. Imagine paying $0.10 per lead to your site. That’s guaranteed targeted traffic from a real source, and it’s well worth investing into.

If you’re the top of every feed, you will get a click through ratio that is a lot higher than if you were to try and promote things without paying for it.

The Management Side

Perhaps the hardest thing to realize about business relationships and social media is that you will need to create management of these pages. You either need to hire someone that is going to sit on these pages and create interest, or you’ll have to spend several hours of your time working on these pages. Cultivating influence is an important thing, and it’s very much like a garden.

You plant seeds, you water them, and you wait for the harvest. That’s something that happens within social media all the time. You start with setting up a profile, and then start to cultivate different elements so that you can gain an upper hand, and move forward with the main point of the site; social interaction.

Let’s assume that you ignored everything mentioned above. You would not be able to leverage billions of users that are on these pages right now. More people are on social media online right now, than anything else that is going on. Social sharing sites are the #1 pages that are trafficked on a regular basis. The average person on these sites are sitting on there for hours on end. The hours spent there means that they are a captive audience, where you could gain a great deal of influence for just about any business.

This article was first published on StartUp Mindset.


WRITTEN BY

SWAAY Editorial