The Importance of Social Media Marketing and Branding for Your Buiness

Social media marketing. The term alone is enough to strike fear in the hearts of many a small business owner, and for good reason. There’s an ocean of options out there, and each platform has its own unique set of rules. Learning to use social networks like Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn is a huge time suck, and most business owners simply don’t have the hours to spare. The awesome thing is, we know how to automate posts to these important web properties, and more using syndication!

It’s a pity, really – social media enables businesses to connect with their customers on a highly personal level. Today, a strong and recognizable brand spread across the most popular social networks is critical for online business success.

What Are Your Social Media Goals?

If you’re a business owner, you likely have quite a bit on your plate. Although maintaining a unified social presence across multiple platforms sounds like a terrific strategy, who has that kind of time? Certainly not you if you’re running a business.

At this point, you may be wondering how to choose the right social network for your small biz. To decide, you must analyze what you expect the network to do for your bottom line. For example, you may want a way to advertise and promote new products. Alternately, you could be looking for a venue to connect with your professional community. On that note, let’s look at a few of the biggest social networks and how they can work for your business.

Picking a Front-runner

The biggest social networks out there – YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter – can help your small business immensely, and you can use most of the features absolutely free. However, each social network boasts its own unique angle for helping your business grow. We also connect these sites to our Syndication Networks for greater search engine influence.

Take YouTube, for example. Although the infamous video-sharing site doesn’t have business- specific accounts per se, you can establish a free public YouTube channel for your business. From there you can create compelling promotional videos to highlight your brand. You can share the videos you make on social networks or even embed them directly on your company website.

You may be seeing a lot in the media about Facebook for business. The hype is for good reason – Facebook works. Some scoff at Facebook advertising since many have experienced mixed results. However, the real power of Facebook doesn’t lie in ads – far from it – it’s all about your company’s Fan Page. Gathering likes, offering deals, and getting in on the domino effect of the platform’s word-of-mouth action is a surefire way to grow your client base and gain some much-needed exposure.

The biggest draw of Google Drive properties is the powerful collaborative capability the platform offers business users. You can share documents and spreadsheets in Google Docs, use hangouts for business meetings, and share files Google’s free suite of office tools. You can also post content for people in your circles and keep them up-to-date about your biz. We use Google Drive properties extensively in our RYS Stack product.

If you’re more worried about hooking up with other companies in your niche, then look instead to LinkedIn. Once you’ve created an account, you can search for people in your industry and build a network of professional contacts. This is a great way to open the door to collaborative projects with other companies down the road.

Finally, of course, there’s Twitter. This social network is designed around the idea of breaking “real-time” announcements and news. If you want to keep your customers up-to-date with your company’s latest products and events, this is without a doubt the network for you.

When to Call Social Media Marketing Experts

It’s all a bit overwhelming at first, sure, but once you’ve figured out your objectives, you can match them to the right social network for your company. Learn the platform little by little and build your network slowly but surely. You can put in a bit of time each day, but if you do things consistently, there will come a point when the daily management demands will become too crazy for you to handle alone.

At Pan-Galactic Networks, we offer a social media set-up service for that very reason. Moreover, if you want to bypass the hassle of social media altogether, you can turn to us to create profiles for you across many of the major platforms – complete with consistent branding.

If you need someone to actively manage the whole ball of wax, we can do that too – simply check out our pricing page for more details.

Remember, the ROI for most small businesses can be insane once they take the plunge into the world of social media. Bottom line: there’s simply no better way to get the word out about your biz and make connections than social media marketing… so what are you waiting for?