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5 Benefits of Launching your Business on Social Media 

1. Launching your business on social media means FREE Exposure and Branding! Use YouTube, Tube Mogul, Twitter, Facebook Flickr and LinkedIn to engage and educate people about your product or services.

2. Create Backlinks and website traffic! With social media, users can drive large amounts of traffic and backlinks for your company website. Example: Write testimonials for service providers to get your link on their website. That’s a backlink.

3. Hold competitions make announcements – Use social media to inform people of a new product, service, new development or competition in your business quicker than ever before.

4. Promote clearance or special offers – Use it to promote special offers that are only available to members of your social networks.

5. Feature articles, tips or industry developments on your website then do a small post to your social networks with a link that drives them back to your website for all the information.

Reasons why you should consider using social media:

It’s natural. Not only do you get natural links without any discernible pattern, but your website is also exposed to large groups of people in a spontaneous fashion. This differs from paid advertising which has overt commercial overtones.

It’s defensible. Once successfully mastered, social communities can be a great source of web traffic on top of any traffic you are already receiving from search engines. While you can’t easily increase your search engine traffic, social media traffic can be very easily controlled through strategic marketing.

It’s low-cost/high returns. If done by yourself, costs are limited to only time and perhaps the expenses involved in hiring a freelance programmer/designer. The benefits will often exceed the cost. It would take you thousands of dollars to buy many links; social media has the ability to give you that for free.

Social media complements other efforts. Social media optimization and marketing is usually community-specific. It doesn’t interfere with any other methods of getting traffic to your website. It can and will fit perfectly with an advertising campaign targeting other websites or search engines.

Launching your business, product or service on social media

Let’s say you want to open up a new nail salon business. Instead of spending thousands of dollars placing ads in local newspapers and publications here’s how you can use social media.

STEP 1. Grab a Facebook Page, Twitter Profile, YouTube account, LinkedIn and a Flickr account.

STEP 2. Six weeks or so before your grand opening or product launch you start growing your community.

You use the search function in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to engage with potential customers by running localised, real-time searches for people talking about nails, manicures, and other related services.

STEP 3. You then post videos and pictures to your YouTube account of you getting your location ready for opening day.

You notice that as you spend more time on these networks, more people are talking to you and you’re expanding your reach.

STEP 4. Then three weeks or more before the grand opening, you announce you’re running a competition. You upload photos or video of the worst nails you’ve seen and ask your social media community to do the same. The winner with the worst nails gets free nail treatments for a month or something as their prize. Your Internet audience loves the contest. After all, who hasn’t had a bad haircut before?

By now, photos are uploaded, videos are being posted and people are spending time with you and your brand. By the time opening day runs around, you’ve built up so much interest in your nail Salon that people are dying to find out more. On opening day, you send out a digital coupon to your social network – 20% off of a nail treatment if you mention the network you found it on.

People with good nails, bad nails and downright ugly nails come into your Salon in droves, coupons in hand.

Even after opening day, your social media efforts continue to pay off as people talk about your Salon to their friends, and your brand starts to grow through word of mouth. You continue to engage in the coming months by posting regular videos and photos of the services you provide. Your booking book is filled for the next 6 months – and all because you spent a few hours with some social media tools.

Lead Generation

Through the power of Twitter Search, you’re able to search for people who are talking about bad nails within 5km, 10km or 30kms of your nail salon. Whenever someone mentions a bad nail experience, you’re able to start up a conversation, and offer them a special offer or price on an “I can fix your nail problem for you”. Over time, about 50% of the people you offer this coupon to come in, and of those, let’s say anywhere from 20% – 40% come back for another nail treatment. That’s powerful.

You’ve maintained your Flickr and YouTube accounts since launch, and every now and then, you’ll post a coupon code in a photo or video. You estimate that you get about 5 extra people coming in for nail treatments each month, and the average customer value of these is about $25 more than standard walk-ins.

The great aspect of social media is with proper attention, it significantly expands the entry points for your brand and business. Now, instead of customers finding you through just Google Search, or the Yellow Pages, they can find you through Search, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, and many, many more.

Goodwill

What’s even more powerful with social media is its capabilities for engaging people while generating exposure for your company and brand. If people are involved with you on an emotional level, they will be much more likely to refer friends and family to your business, as well as talk positively about your brand.

Good luck with it, best wishes Eddie For more FREE copywriting, marketing and other