Visit www.lifestylegroup.co.za

For example top of mind questions include is my business suited for a social media strategy, will it increase sales, could it backfire if I have a business where service or products can cause negative reviews and so forth.

I read a very interesting article by Christopher Mills on Memeburn this morning and sums it up extremely well. So if you are busy contemplating the big socialmedia question please do yourself a favour and read “How to tell if your site should be concentrating on search or social“. It should help you to better understand and decide if Social Media is truly for you.

www.smartstove.co.za

We wish you a wonderful festive season and trust that you and loved ones will be safe and merry.

How to market your business online – the basics

To have a successful online and social media marketing strategy you need to really create synergy between the two main elements, they need to live of each other. As in most cases the one will be very dependent on the other for success. An important factor to keep in mind is that not all businesses are alike and what works for one, might not work for another. This essentially means you need to carefully analyse your market before embarking on any type of digital marketing plan. Be it online marketing, or social media marketing.

That is however not to say that if your business does not have any form of online or social media marketing strategy in place, that it would not work for you. There have been thousands of companies that have converted to these approaches with great success. Unfortunately it all lies in the approach and implementation and for every success there have probably been 10 or more failures.

This could be attributed to numerous factors, such as the already mentioned and hugely important wrong approach and bad implementation factors. Another major factor is that there might be a lack of focus, you need to keep your eye on the ball at all times and when you see some element is not performing to expectation you need to immediately rectify this.

There have been cases of a dishonest approach that have seriously hurt some businesses reputations. Add to this a general lack of cohesion and synergy between your online and social media plans plus your traditional marketing and it all could be a giant waste of time.

So how do we go about creating a solid, safe and effective online marketing and social media strategy? Start with the basics then build on what works. Let’s look at the basic options:

Online Marketing: Website.

Everyone has a website these days, sure yes. But not everyone has a website working for them, in fact in some cases a badly executed website can cause more harm than good to your business.

Your website could be one of your best sales tools without having a single product on it. It is also said that a website is now seen as your company’s business card. Essentially this means whenever you direct or someone visits your company’s website they immediately look at the site and form an opinion of you and your services and products. So your direct business might not come from your website per se, but it could influence the business that you might get from the prospective client all the same.

Make sure your website always defines your brand message! Ensure you have a good stats tracking tool in place, I would recommend Stats counter and Google Analytics.

Then you can see exactly where the traffic is and if your website is a sales tool you will know where the drop off is.

Social Media Marketing: Facebook Business Page.

A well thought out Facebook page will complement your website. It is almost like a mini-website only on the biggest, fastest expanding social media network in the world. That makes it very powerful.

You could also go with a Facebook group, but my personal recommendation would be a page. With Facebook pages you could list all your important services or products (in compact form preferably) as tabs and for more information link to the website. You must entice visitors to engage by leaving comments or suggestions, clicking the Like button, add their videos if applicable, spread it to their friends. Facebook page could even function as a method of answering and appeasing disgruntled clients. As long as it is done professionally an angry rant by an unhappy client could lead to a great PR moment when you show you care in front of everyone else and make it up to them.

Build your army, it’s a process and it needs to be nurtured, always monitored and you need to continuously engage by posting updates, adding content and providing reasons for your users to regularly visit your page. Try to keep it light though, don’t overdo it. You can also run your page in conjunction with competitions, but know the rules otherwise your page might disappear overnight.

Visit: http://www.kenjama.co.za/